Concrete solution for environment

Andres Duany believes his brother was an environmental saint for many years. He got by with 420 feet of living space, didn't own a car, and walked or took public transportation everywhere he went. And he loved it.

Was he some societal outcast living out in the woods in a Unabomber shack? Hardly. He was a Manhattanite.

The problem with the environmental movement is its advocates have made it impossible to build any more Manhattans, Duany said.

"The solution is building great, dense cities, and current environmental law doesn't allow that," Duany told an audience of almost 300 in San Francisco during World Environment Day events Thursday. "Environmental law only has one setting, and that's wilderness. Environmentalists must become urbanists."

Duany is one of the leaders of the New Urbanism movement, which promotes the development of dense, compact and walkable mixed-use communities.

In his speech, Duany painted a picture of an environmental movement and a building industry that have thoroughly adapted to each other, with the end result being endless suburbs. With all their efforts to limit growth in California, environmentalists have made it so anytime a developer does get a permit, it's like winning the lottery.

Environmentalists, he said, have tried to make each new developed space as green as possible, often to the detriment of the overall environment.

The real aim, he said, should be to have some areas of wilderness and others that are just for people. This goal should hold, he said, even if it's necessary to pave over wetlands and put streams in underground pipes to create these cities.

"There are only four trees in Times Squares, and I guarantee you that none of them are happy," Duany said. "But at least the 10 million people who go there aren't out in Yellowstone bothering the bears."

The failures of the current approach include urban "open space" that turns into places for people to have sex and take drugs, mandatory automobile ownership and the needless alienation of property owners from the environmental movement.

"God bless the people who live on 80 acres and are willing to pay taxes on it and not develop it," Duany said.

Modern advantages, such as Internet shopping, have taken away many of the negatives of suburban living, he said. But the suburbs will never be able to match the cultural life of America's dense urban cities. This includes not just giants like New York, but smaller cities such as Portland, Ore., and Charleston, S.C.

On the bright side, Duany said, is that a growing number of people seem to be waking up to the combined excesses of both greedy developers and an inflexible environmental movement.

"The greatest aspect of a democracy is not that you avoid mistakes but that you correct them," Duany said. "I come from a country, Cuba, that has been making the same mistakes for 400 years. People need to stop waiting for the next man on a white horse to come save them."