City Profiles / Large Cities / New York, NY

New York, New York

New York is a city of superlatives and is unique in the United States, yet when compared to other U.S. cities close to its size it shares similar advantages and disadvantages in maintaining its environment. Air pollution—especially particulates, which can trigger heart attacks and asthmatic episodes—remains a problem. And the city draws little power from alternative energy sources, though it is experimenting with some innovations such as water turbines in the East River. But the city's greatest advantages are perhaps its oldest: The sheer density of people makes car ownership more of a burden than a privilege and its robust public transportation system continues to keep cars off the road.

New York, however, isn't coasting on the accomplishments of the past. On Earth Day 2007, Mayor Bloomberg released a detailed plan to reduce New York's carbon footprint and improve its environs, pushing the city toward a set of concrete goals by 2030. PlaNYC, as it became known, is comprehensive in breadth, encompassing improvements in land, water, transportation, energy, air and climate change impacts. In the first year of its implementation, PlaNYC launched 95 initiatives, with results ranging from the creation of 60 miles of bicycle lanes to the planting of 54,484 trees and the launch of a program to create a public plaza in every community.

The city government knows New York is threatened by rising water levels: Over half a million New Yorkers live in a flood plain and in the last hundred years the water at the Battery in Lower Manhattan has risen by over a foot—and may rise another five inches by 2030. To help reduce these risks and others, the city plans to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. In 2005, New York City's emissions were the equivalent of Ireland's. Nonetheless, per capita, New Yorkers produce 71 percent less greenhouse gas emissions than the average American. That's the advantage of density.