Urban and Rural Green

A few days ago I drove from Louisville, where I live and work to Frankfort, the capitol of Kentucky.  Louisville has about 1.2 million people in its metro region, while Frankfort has around 35,000 people.  If it wasn't for the institutions of state government, Frankfort would be a sleepy town.  In between Louisville and Frankfort are about 40 even more rural miles: tiny villages, farmland, wooded hills and rocky knobs.  In the transition between the extremes of urban and rural, I began to think about what green living means in cities, versus what it means out in the country.

It is ironic that rural communities are not more green than they are.  First of all, most American farming is very energy dependent.  Farms use lots of water, lots of chemicals, lots of petroleum for all the mechanized equipment used, as well as transportation of farm produce to a point of sale. In the case of animals, eggs and milk production, farms also generate huge amounts of waste: solid, liquid, and gas (methane).   Because of sparse population, rural communities must rely on personal vehicles; public transportation is not feasible.  In addition, people in small towns often have to drive greater distances for grocery and other shopping, and day to day services.  While most people in rural communities heat with electricity or natural gas, burning wood is certainly common, and is more likely to occur in the country, where sources of wood are more plentiful.  Coal mines are also in isolated small towns; even people nearby who worry about green lifestyles are in a bind because those mines may be the only source of living-wage employment.  It may be that services to make home energy use more efficient, such as better insulation or improved window sealing are less available in small towns, just because there is not enough demand to support such businesses. 

To the extent that life in small towns is slower, it may be that there are some advantages compensating for the green deficits mentioned above.  For example, compared to city dwellers, rural residents might be more inclined to have their own vegetable gardens, using transported produce from distant factory farms less often.  It is also easier for rural residents to compost.

In comparison, urban communities also have a set of green pluses and minuses. People in cities usually have more options for public mass transportation, though our public transportation dollars are still heavily invested in cars, so that the infrastructure for transportation by bicycle, bus, train, light rail, and so forth is still not very advanced in most places. Even with mass transit systems, every city, including Louisville, has wasteful traffic jams, bad for air quality and energy conservation.  Because of population density, people are usually closer to shopping and services; they don't have to drive so far, and may have the option of walking to the store, the Post Office, the library, and so forth. Because of the congregation of vehicles and industries, there are usually more air quality concerns in cities. Water resources may be more at risk, but there are also more extensive resources to prevent water pollution.  Recycling is more common in cities because there will often be systems in place to collect, receive and process the recycling materials stream; this will less often be found in small towns and villages.

On the other hand, residents in both rural and urban communities can use compact fluorescent bulbs, they can turn off lights and other electronics not being used.  They can use electrical appliances like dish washers and clothes dryers more efficiently, and they can turn down heating temperatures and turn up cooling temperatures.  Whether in the city or the country, people can buy more fuel efficient vehicles, they can install more fuel efficient thermostats, and they can change furnace filters in a timely schedule. People in both types of communities could avoid heavily packed goods, though it is hard to do; more than individual consumers, decisions about packaging are dictated by WalMart and the large retailers.

While there are green advantages and disadvantages attached to living in cities and living in the country, we can all learn to care for the earth more consistently.  It is a state of mind that needs to be epidemic.