which is the greenest living choice? Urban, suburban, or rural?
I think there are valid arguments for each choice. We used to live in an urban area, then suburban and now rural so I’ve encountered the advantages and disadvantages in each situation.
When we lived in the city everything was much more to hand – schools, shops, work etc so there was much less travelling required. Resources such as street lighting, road and utility networks were shared by many more people so the environmental impact per person was comparatively small.
Now that we’re out in the country there’s a lot more travelling involved and given that there’s only one public bus service nearby means we’re much more reliant on private vehicles.
Compared to life in the city, we now buy much more food produce from local farms, which is not only fresher and tastier, but it hasn’t had to travel half way around the world before reaching the supermarket shelves.
I guess also, in the country there’s a far greater awareness of surroundings and the environment in general, people tend to be more aware of the consequences of their actions and more likely to take measures to reduce their impacts. I don’t have any specific figures, but from observations I would guess than 80% of household rubbish around here gets recycled against perhaps 30% in the city.
There’s far more people out here who grow their own food, although I suspect the larger garden sizes will have a significant role to play.
One drawback of being out in the country is that houses tend to be larger and the weather is generally cooler than in cities, the consequence of which is that significantly more energy is consumed to heat homes with.
There are other environmental considerations to take into account such as health and general well-being. Undoubtedly it is much better in the country and people live on average 7 years longer than city dwellers – there’s much less pollution, infections aren’t spread so easily, there’s less stress, people are infinitely friendlier etc.
From my own perspective, there’s no way I’d ever go back to living in a city. I lived in London for a few years and that was a horrible place (great to visit, awful to live there). We’re very fortunate to have other properties and one of them is an old farmhouse way out in the country, there’s no sign of other humans from there, no lights or other properties visible anywhere, just trees and hills.
It would be quite easy to live there almost entirely self-sufficiently. Lots of wild foods grow in the area, there’s sheep pens and a large byre for animals, an unlimited supply of firewood and the power is generated from water driven hydro-electrics and dynamos. If that type of lifestyle were to be adopted then it would take some beating in terms of minimal environmental impact.
Source: yahoo answers
