The American Dream: The Biggest Threat to an Environmentally Conscious Urban Future

The concept of the American dream might be responsible for our nation's imminent demise. It’s fairly well known that one of the key challenges of the 21st century is mitigating Climate Change. Well, the seemingly non-threatening white picket fence surrounding the perfectly groomed green lawn and the cookie-cutter house sitting behind it directly threaten this environmental initiative. In most cases, the environmental impact of living in suburbia is significantly worse than living in an apartment in the city.[1] As such, an urban future is preferred to a suburban future when considering the mitigation of Climate Change. But due to the history of both the city and suburbia in America, the reputation of both lifestyles actively threaten the ability for cities to be part of our future. In particular, consumerism, as it relates to the marketing of suburbia as the realization of the American dream, is one of the largest threats to achieving an urban and sustainable future.

The history of cities in America is a mixed bag. David Owen’s 2003 article in the New York Times “Green Manhattan” comments on the serendipitous historical accidents that gave rise to the notorious New York City. He writes of the geographical responsibility of the city's development: “Insularity gave Manhattan more shoreline per square mile than other ports, a major advantage in the days when one of the world’s main commercial activities was moving cargoes between ships. It also drove early development inward and upward.”[2] Additionally, Owen mentions the role of merchants’ in the dense layout of the city “who were more interested in economic efficiency than in boulevards, parks, or empty spaces between buildings.”[3] As a result, Manhattan became a social hub of development and economic trade. This is probably the most well-known positive characteristic of cities in the world: the accessibility of people to opportunity, social or economic. The reputation of cities is also historically negative. Stephen Johnson’s The Ghost Map, outlining the story of Victorian London’s cholera epidemic stemming from their waste management methods is a testament to the health and safety hazards that are characteristically urban.[4] While cholera is less of an issue in American cities today, the health and safety hazards from the density of its urban life remains a problem. Inadequate access to water and sanitation, urban air quality and solid waste disposal are among the main issues suffered by the urban poor.[5] The COVID-19 pandemic has also raised concerns surrounding the disease spreading characteristics of an intensely interactive and compact urban life. As a result, the reputation of the “city” in America, though positive in terms of opportunity and accessibility, is not without its highly visible negative consequences.

The history of urban sprawl and the concept of suburbia in America begins in the mid-20th century. Adam Rome’s book The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism comments on this peculiar history of suburban home ownership. Rome notes that after the First World War and the Depression, “almost a generation had passed with little homebuilding,” and “According to government estimates, the nation needed 5 million new homes and apartments to satisfy the demand.”[6] Previously, single-family homes were a privilege of the upper-class rather than an average American reality. This all began to change in the late 1920s and early 1930s when President Herbert Hoover, with an eye towards the health of the American economy and the issue of housing availability, realized that the “purchase of a house led to the purchase of furniture, appliances, and gadgets.”[7] As a result, the long-term prioritization of improving the affordability of homes as part of a large-scale manufacturing initiative began. Rome writes, “The Housing Act of 1949 funded research on ways to reduce costs and increase production,” and “In the early 1950s, a handful of unheralded amendments to the housing act offered special incentives to large builders” and an improvement to the loan system.[8] Paired with improving the affordability of housing was a series of marketing campaigns produced by electrical companies which focused on stressing suburbia's role in realizing the American Dream. Throughout the 1930’s, the electric industry promoted ‘the home of tomorrow’ equipped with the finest gadgets the electric industry had to offer.[9] One particular advertisement during the Second World War from General Electric Consumers Institute depicted “a young couple sat together on a park bench. With a stick, the man – a private in uniform – drew the outline of a house in the ground, while the woman, in Sunday best, held his arm and shoulder.”[10] Beneath the image was writing: “Jim’s going away tomorrow...But that little home sketched there in the sand is a symbol of faith and hope and courage. It’s a promise, too. A promise of gloriously happy days to come . . . when Victory is won.”[11] This was only one of many initiatives aimed at marketing the suburban lifestyle as the ‘American way of life’.[12] By the end of the war, mass consumer culture fueled by mass production of housing would become America’s reality.[13]

            To the detriment of the environment, the reputations of the urban and suburban lifestyle remain mainly the same in the 21st century. The urban is still a hub of society, culture and the economy while the suburban lifestyle remains embedded in the realization of the American Dream. Owen comments on this modern conceptualization of the two lifestyles in Green Manhattan. He begins his article writing about New York City’s limited environmental footprint due to its compactness. “Placing one and a half million people on a twenty-three-square-mile island sharply reduces their opportunities to be wasteful, and forces the majority to live in some of the most inherently energy-efficient residential structures in the world: apartment buildings.”[14] Despite the environmental benefits of city living, the compactness of the lifestyle remains a disadvantage. To this end, Owen offers the example of his friend who grew up in a townhouse in the high-income neighborhood of Greenwich Village. Owen recalls the reaction of his friend while visiting a classmates’ house in the suburbs: “[he was] staggered by the house, the lawn, the cars, and the swimming pool, and thought, with despair, You mean I could live like this?”[15] This example demonstrates that even the high-income urban lifestyle can lose out to the open space offered by suburbia. That being said, by the 21st century, a multitude of environmental downsides to suburban life were observed. Suburban life requires a car, a commute, personal air conditioning and heating, and extended waste management plans and water infrastructure to name a few.[16] These additional energy costs have significant environmental impact especially due to the splayed out nature of suburbia.[17] Both the 21st century suburban consumer and manufacturer are well aware of the energy intensity of the lifestyle they contribute to and yet, the “You mean I could live like this?” allure remains as prevalent as ever before.

By historically marketing the suburban lifestyle, the urban lifestyle is positioned as its business competitor. This creates many challenges for realizing a sustainable urban future especially when considering that the suburban lifestyle has a monopoly on the American dream. Further, marketing to a consumer base is mainly about highlighting the advantages a commodity provides for the consumers’ quality of life. This creates an incentive to buy. The main marketable aspect of urban life that can actively improve a consumers quality of life is its accessibility. The positive environmental impact of compact urban living is a weaker approach to marketing because the positive impact is not physically visible. Conversely, suburbia is a gold mine for the consumer market. Owen writes of just one of these reasons in Green Manhattan: “One of the main attractions of moving to the suburbs is acquiring ground of your own, yet you can travel for miles through suburbia and see no one doing anything in a yard other than working on the yard itself...The modern suburban yard is perfectly, perversely self-justifying: its purpose is to be taken care of.”[18] That is to say, suburbia has mastered the marketable appeal of the one thing urban life cannot provide: open space. As such, the city lifestyle is utterly threatened as long as suburbia dominates the consumer market and so too is the urban’s potential for Climate Change mitigation.

Consumerism directly threatens an urban future as long as it contributes to urban sprawl and the promotion of the suburban lifestyle. That being said, city planners have a few options when considering how to re-market the urban lifestyle. The city can incorporate more of the positive qualities of suburban life such as green spaces or decreased motor-vehicle traffic. This method is included in the smart-growth model proposed by the New Urbanism movement.[19] But as long as suburbia remains a part of the American Dream, those who have the means to choose that lifestyle, will. As a result, the American Dream must be directly challenged. This can possibly be achieved by increasing taxes on land developers, or maybe homeowners in the suburbs. The method by which the urban becomes alluring again is undetermined, but the necessity of this transformation is clear.

[1] Owen, David. “Green Manhattan.” The New Yorker. Accessed February 12, 2021. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/10/18/green-manhattan.

[2] Owen, Green Manhattan.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Johnson, Steven. The Ghost Map : The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic-- and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World. New York: Riverhead Books, 2007.

[5] McGranahan, Gordon, ed. The Citizens at Risk: From Urban Sanitation to Sustainable Cities. London ; Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2001., 5.

[6] Rome, Adam Ward. The Bulldozer in the Countryside : Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism. Studies in Environment and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. https://ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/login?qurl=https%3a%2f%2fsearch.ebscohost.com%2flogin.aspx%3fdirect%3dtrue%26db%3de025xna%26AN%3d676279%26site%3dehost-live%26scope%3dsite., 18.

[7] Ibid., 37.

[8] Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 35.

[9] Ibid., 38.

[10] Ibid., 36.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid., 37.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Owen, Green Manhattan.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Owen, Green Manhattan.

[19] UN-Habitat worldwide. UN-Habitat NY – World Habitat Day Conference 2020, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXRIeXe6h8s&t=6895s&ab_channel=UN-Habitatworldwide.