NYC inner core may be toxic, but the average New Yorker’s environmental impact is well below the national average.
I'm also curious if you could actually back up that New York statement with some unbiased research.
“New York residents were using an average of 572 kWh a month in 2017.” NYC is so efficient that: “New York ranks 50th out of the 51 states and the District of Columbia. The only state with a lower per capita consumption is Rohde Island at 176 million Btu (MMBtu) or 51.6 MWh. The total 2016 U.S. consumption per capita was 301 million Btu (88.2 MWh).”
It’s consistent across different countries, here’s UK’s data: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49639003
Second that article makes it really unclear what is being included in "energy expenditures". In the earlier paragraphs it talks about electricity which makes sense given a.) it's extremely expensive in NY and b.) I'd imagine more heating comes from natural gas as opposed to AC in southern climates which comes from electricity.
It lacks a lot of critical information to measure environmental impact vs. other cities.
Lastly who is being included? Inner city residents only? Or metro area?
Using electricity has an environmental impact. As does burning fossil fuels for heat etc, which is where the BTU numbers show up.
The biggest benefit is land use it’s self has an environmental impact. The ability to leave land for nature requires people not to be living on it. We don’t want wolves and buffalo walking through suburbs. Rabbits etc can’t graze on a paved roads, and drained swamps stop being swamps.
If you look at the actual population vs land available it needs a far higher density than I am talking about. 1k people per square mile is really low density. That’s single family homes with 1/2 acre back yard territory.
The problem isn't about land - there's plenty of that elsewhere. The problem is people all wanting to live in the same area and having high standards. You have a visous cycle where the denser places have the most jobs or the highest paying jobs, while the cost of living goes way up and the standard of living goes down.
It would be nice to have smaller cities. The real problem is how to convince businesses to reinvigorate the dying cities, or for people to change their preferences (either for locality or property type/size). These are being largely ignored in these conversations.
The problem is as cities grow a smaller percentage of the overall population can live in a small suburb. The next 10 mile ring is Pi * (25^5 -15^2) = less than double the area at 1,256 square miles and now needs a longer commute through the inner ring.
PS: Geography adds it’s own constraints. If the cities core in next to the ocean then much of the hypothetical low density ring is under water.