Contrary to conventional thinking about the environment, New Yorker staff writer David Owen argues in his book Green Metropolis that the greenest community in the United States is not Portland, Oregon, or Snowmass, Colorado, but New York, New York. Most Americans think of crowded cities as ecological nightmares, yet residents of compact urban centers, Owen shows, individually consume less oil, electricity, and water than other Americans. Hear the author share his views on why living in cities is the best way to be green.

Recorded Thursday, October 01, 2009 at Chicago Architecture Foundation.