Not really sure why I can't post a comment on Blake's blog, but I am tired of trying to figure it out. So here is what I wrote but couldn't get to post:
I do wonder about the balance between economic prosperity and environmental quality. I think a city could get into trouble if it doesn't have enough environmental regulation because how will it attract more residents if the air, ground, and water are polluted? However, finding that sweet spot seems almost impossible. You don't want to drive away industry and the money/jobs it can bring to a municipality, but you also don't want to create a situation where people work in your city, but choose to live in a bedroom suburb because of improved environmental quality. I like how you incorporated Potoski and Prakash into this argument. Clearly, there has to be an incentive for businesses to take on efforts to be more environmentally friendly and sustainable, otherwise they may cover up their activities. Also, government needs to encourage voluntary behavior, which is difficult with strict regulations that are costly to implement for businesses and costly for the government to enforce.
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I think that it is difficult for a city to get the business community to pay much attention to environmental quality. Many people think that air pollution is completely due to transportation but the reality is that buildings are the number 1 contributor to carbon pollution. Just looking at transportation, the modern sprawling communities are only adding to the problem and forcing people to drive long distances. In Phoenix for example, The large amount of industry that previously existed in the center of the valley heavily polluted the area before they left and as you mentioned, created a toxic environment that motivates people to move to the suburbs. Why can't we have both economic prosperity and environmental quality? Could one lead to the other? If we were climbing the ladder of economic prosperity do we need to allow ungoverned growth? I think that we could reasonably expect the ability to grow slowly instead of growing rapidly in order to spend a little money to climb the ladder of environmental quality as well.
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