What steps could we take to make suburban living more environmentally friendly?

I live in the ‘burbs and I personally do not use any chemicals on my yard. I don’t like the idea that my kids and dog would play on a lawn with chemicals.

$4/gal fuel prices was a part of what’s necessary to encourage smarter growth. Not being able to afford the McMansion and all its trappings (high utility bills, longer and more expensive commute) is what will change attitudes. Necessity is the mother of change, if you’ll forgive the paraphrase.

I think what would really encourage families to move into higher density areas would be better public schools. People with means and families move out to the burbs because they want a cleaner, newer, safer place for their kids to grow up. The problem is stable families with interested parents beget better schools, and it’s difficult to decide to sacrifice your child’s development for a social cause.

Better public transportation, and a big push to get people to use it would help a bit. In my hometown, there is only bus service, and it is mostly only used by people on the lowest rungs of the socio-economic ladder. This discourages those on the higher rungs from utilizing it. (I know, I know, but it’s true.)

Some things my hometown does right: It is a designated “Tree City USA”, and has very strict building codes requiring x number of trees per x square feet of grass (I think it’s 3 or 4 trees per 1/4 acre), infill building (building where there are already buildings, instead of continuing to spread out across the land), a very walkable downtown (but, if you don’t live there, you’ve pretty much got to drive there, and there is no grocery store – so it could be a lot better!)

McMansions will soon be broken up into apartments. People living in the resulting semi-rural McGhettos will be forced by the upcoming resumption of high gas prices to share rides, make friends, begin having potlucks, trade knitting tips, and give one another gardening advice, not to mention broccoli and chard seedlings. Then they will begin talking about the hardness of life post-Bush-economics and rise up to elect a new….
oh wait, we took care of that…. and after that, the birthrate will fall because there will already be so many available and charming children living in every home; in a generation or two, as the nation becomes prosperous once again as a result of all this New Dealness, people will be able to rehab the by-now-“classic” McMansions and begin driving really big cars and…. not be friends any more, and….. someone will ask on an etheric community structure we have yet to invent, “How can we make suburban living more human and earth-friendly, like it used to be?”

Pain is an unrelenting teacher.

The biggest problem with suburban development, as they have been historically built, is that there are large separations between the residential and the commercial. That is, suburbia consists of housing developments and strip malls.

We’re starting to see them getting built (in some areas) as more of a “small town” style—apartments and townhouses in a semi-urban setting with retail and transportation centers surrounded by the housing development. The key is making the trip from your house to the transportation center as “painless” as possible—but I think the higher gas prices woke people up (at least for a few months) that maybe they shouldn’t count on their cars in their long term planning.

This doesn’t just apply to the suburbs, however: People can eat less meat; or go vegetarian, or even vegan. The livestock industry is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions.