Quote Originally Posted by tulip View Post
I think alot of environmentalists would argue with that. It's pretty well-established that urban living has been shown to be less harmful to the environment than spread-out living. You can grow your own food in urban areas in community gardens. The necessity of a car in rural and semi-rural areas is a huge environmental suck. You don't need that in an urban area because you can walk or ride a bike everywhere, and infrastructure is already in place. Now that more and more urban areas are allowing chickens, and many more people are growing some of their own food, and farmers markets are pretty much normal in urban areas (with produce from urban farms), I'd say that urban living can be alot lighter on the earth than rural living mainly because of the car and infrastructure issues.

One of my biggest peeves of "green building" are the houses built in the middle of nowhere that require personal transport in the form of an internal combustion engine (or electric car--coal fired plants required) to get anywhere and to obtain anything. If you never leave the farm, then that's different. But most people leave the farm every day, multiple times a day.

Just as an example, take someone who lives in a 900 SF house that is in an established urban neighborhood--no new roads or pipes required! This person could grow some of his or her own veggies, shop at local farmers markets that are accessible by foot or bike. Even better if there is an urban farm in the same city--they are becoming more and more common. And that person could telecommute or walk or bike to work. The benefits would be even greater if that person lived in an apartment and had a plot at a nearby community garden because that person would take up less space and use fewer resources than someone who lived in a house in a rural or suburban area, had to drive 20+ miles to work and back everyday (double that for a couple unless they carpool), and also had to drive everywhere to get other necessities.

1700SF for a house is a moderately sized house. I don't understand the need for 4000+ SF houses. However, I would not want to grow up in a 2-bedroom house with 6 kids and 2 parents like Shootingstar did!
Tulip - I totally understand your point and I agree that an urban setting can be less of an impact that a rural one. As we both know, that's not usually the case though, is it?

Anyway, my point was that many of us make the best choices we can with what is available to us in our respective living areas. Maybe I should not have have spoken up if 1700 sf is considered a big house. I guess I was wrong to even have participated in this thread.