The greening of suburbia: don't let all that grass fool you: big houses, lawns, and longer commutes make suburbs a lot less energy-efficient than cities. Now, some suburbanites are trying to reduce their oversize carbon footprints.

• Author: Smith, Patricia
• Position: ENVIRONMENT

Gabe Schwartzman, 17, grew up outside Washington, D.C., in Garrett Park, Maryland. It's the kind of place that embodies the classic image of American suburbia: big houses, big cars, and manicured lawns.

The problem is that all three are big consumers of energy, which makes suburbia a particular challenge for environmentalists.

But recently, amid a growing awareness of global climate change and after a summer of record-high gas prices, Schwartzman is noticing some changes in Garrett Park. He sees fewer SUVs, more hybrid cars, and more kids biking to school. The local supermarket now devotes an entire aisle to local, organic products, and more shoppers are choosing reusable bags instead of plastic on the checkout line.

"This is an issue that's motivating people on every side and bringing people together," says Schwartzman, a senior at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda.

If the United States is ever to reduce its carbon emissions, suburbanites--that is, roughly half of all Americans--are going to have to play a big role. And lately, they're trying.

Since 2005, the mayors of hundreds of suburban communities across America have pledged to meet or beat the emissions goals set by the Kyoto Protocol, a controversial inter national treaty to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions that the U.S. has not ratified. At the same time, more individual homeowners are trying to help--and save money--by choosing solar heating for their pools, old-fashioned clotheslines for their backyards, or hybrid cars for their commutes.

GREEN CITIES

But the problem is that the very things that make suburban life attractive--lush lawns, spacious houses, and three-car garages--also disproportionately contribute to global warming. In short, suburbs are fundamentally less energy-efficient than cities, where most people walk or use mass transit instead of relying on cars, and where housing is much smaller and more densely packed and therefore less expensive to heat and cool.

As some environmentalists argue that suburban life is simply not sustainable, cities are trumpeting their green credentials. The average New Yorker is responsible for the emission of 7.1 metric tons of greenhouse gases each year, compared with 24.5 metric tons for the average American. Still not satisfied, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has developed a plan to reduce carbon emissions from the nation's largest city by 30 percent by 2030.

"The very essence of the post-Second World War America suburb militates against 'greening,'" says Thomas J. Sugrue, a professor of history and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. "Given the almost complete dependency of suburbanites on the car, it's an uphill battle."

Longtime suburbanites might wonder how they suddenly became environmentally incorrect. In the 1950s and '60s, people who left cities for "planned communities" that sprung up in places like Levittown, N.Y., thought they were being green just by moving, says Robert Beauregard, a professor of urban planning at Columbia University.

Then, green "just meant open space and privacy," Beauregard says. "Those Levittowns were 'green' because they had lawns."

In the last few decades, the suburbs have expanded dramatically as rings of outer, more-distant communities have sprouted up in previously rural areas (see box, p. 16). At the same time, the average single-family home nearly doubled in size from 1970 to 2005, to 2,434 square feet. These larger homes require a lot...