For years, New York has been the city that not only never sleeps, but the city that hardly ever remembers to turn the lights out. On the coldest days of winter, New Yorkers raise their windows to let out the heat. In the dog days of summer, a husky could freeze in the open doorway of a Fifth Avenue boutique.

But now, measures like more efficient traffic lights and refrigerators are speeding up a long trend making New York one of the most energy-efficient cities in the nation - and officials in cities like Portland and Seattle that might, in the public mind, seem more environmentally conscious are taking notice.

Environmentalists and urban planners from around the nation hail some of New York City's efforts at energy efficiency as models for doing more with less and, importantly, doing it without asking sacrifices of anyone.

One of the enduring memetic legacies of the popular environmentalist movement is the equation of "green" with bucolic rural countryside, and that connects to the yearning to leave the city and live in an area which resembles more closely that ideal. But the flight to the suburbs leads to the flght to the exurbs and that leads to the extremes of sprawl which characterize not only the outskirts of the older cities like New York, but the entirety of younger cities such as Los Angeles and those in the Sun Belt. The desire for space inexorably results in the ruination of that space.

It's the older cities, with their density and relative compactness, which are actually better suited for being "green":

"Counter to what most non-New Yorkers might think, New York is a very progressive city for green building," said Jim Himes, director of the Enterprise Foundation office in New York. The mass transit system, multifamily housing, mixed neighborhoods and the fact that developments never go up on virgin land anymore, all make building in New York very energy efficient.

"It's easier to be green here," Mr. Himes said.

(Of course, newer cities which recognize the dangers of sprawl and take steps to control and minimize it could be even greener.)

[New York Times (12/11/2005)]