An editorial in the San Jose Mercury News urges everyone to make the land use-climate change connection:
“It’s easy to see how installing solar panels or driving a hybrid can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But it’s less intuitive that the way we build new neighborhoods — how we lay out the streets, how close together we place the homes — affects global warming.
“But it does. And a new report by the Greenbelt Alliance provides a road map to greener development.
“Grow Smart Bay Area persuasively asserts that all of the growth in housing and jobs expected by 2035 around the bay can be absorbed within existing cities, without annexing an acre of open land. And it shows how building on the vacant or underutilized sites that the Greenbelt task force identified can create more livable, walkable neighborhoods — if cities adopt policies that encourage good neighborhood design. ”
Read the complete Mercury News editorial.
