Mission Impossible: Towards a Big Change - Transforming American Urban Landscape

While I touched upon why growth or urbanization is good for India in last post, let us explore why the reverse - deurbanization or de-growth is very much relevant for U.S. Let us begin by making one statement – the extrapolation of U.S. to next century in the same trajectory will lead to massive changes in the Earth’s climate landscape. How can we reverse it, stop it or prevent the worse from taking shape. The answer lies in massive course correction, present day correction and past correction of this nation. We have to correct the past mistakes in the present day to herald a sustainable future. You have to work as if the very life in the coming decades depends on your actions of the present day. Because, once the time passes, the mistakes will be forgotten, and life goes on by continuing and repeating the same models all over again. The result will be catastrophic at that moment. Just ask ourselves – can we frankly tell the year 2100 look same or better than today, just 75 years from now. Science tells if we continue on same path, Earths’ temperatures will rise by 4–5°C by 2100 itself which would bring tremendous changes to the planet, including extreme weather, food shortages, loss of coastal life and mass displacement. It means we simply cannot pass on the same planet to our grandchildren, and it would be the biggest mistake to regret once our working time elapses. This message can be repeated and re-repeated any number of times till there is change on the ground. Leave about the individual sin, we should not be a part of collective sin which is ongoing in our actions to make life dangerous and uninhabitable for future. Let us explore to reverse this one step at a time. This should be our mission impossibly possible. 

I mentioned in the last post why Indian villages need to grow. Even if we leave the growth factor aside, Indian villages are most sustainable places on earth. They just need to balance with the parallel trends of the times elsewhere and catch up with the wave to stay relevant for the next century. While this applies to the Indian subcontinent, U.S. needs to follow the opposite to arrest the most pressing and impending change due to climate crisis. We may leave a number of factors that may affect climate but look at one major characteristic of U.S. that needs urgent correction. This is predominant ‘urban culture’ or colossal urbanization of the country. Picture this – there are 346 cities in U.S. with population of at least hundred thousand or 83.3% of American population lives in urban areas. Compare the same with just 35% of Indian population living in urban areas. We need to bring down this 83% to 30% or less to drastically alter the ‘urban culture’ or per capita emissions or to lead a life for future. As we know and from what anyone can see firsthand, this nation is powered by this ‘urban culture’ which is extremely detrimental to planet. One way to begin with is reduce the number of cities – small, big and large following as models for one another. Why do we need nearly 400 cities in a country if not just 4 or 5 other than to hit the climate. Why do we need 30 MLB, NBA teams for each of these big cities if not 5 to 10. For the huge population, India has just 10 IPL teams from the largest cities. An America built on rural backbone will be a huge disconnect and improvement to present day version. 

First, let us accept that ‘urban culture’ will degrade environment. There should be no two arguments on it. Simply, all urban dwellers live for present day without any consideration for next half century, leave the one after that. We cannot be urban on one hand and live for future on the other. Urban lifestyle operates in what sociologists call "the perpetual present"—a cultural orientation that treats the current moment as the only relevant timeframe. Urban entertainment, news cycles, work cultures, and social interactions all emphasize immediate response and immediate satisfaction. Planning horizons in urban environments typically extend weeks or months, while effective climate action requires thinking in decades and centuries. This temporal orientation manifests in urban policy and planning. Cities build for 20-year infrastructure cycles while climate impacts will persist for 200 years. The cultural programming of urban life—from 24-hour news cycles that treat every day as crisis to career cultures that reward immediate performance over long-term value creation—systematically undermines the generational thinking required for climate action. When urban culture defines success as immediate achievement and immediate consumption, the delayed gratification required for environmental stewardship becomes psychologically foreign. 

The most devastating aspect of urban living may lie in how its underlying scientific and technological systems are fundamentally optimized for present-day efficiency at the expense of long-term climate stability. What we call "urban living science"—the engineering, technology, and systems thinking that makes cities function—operates on principles that create exponential climate damage over time.  

Urban science prioritizes what engineers call "point-source optimization" rather than "systems resilience." Every urban system is designed to maximize immediate performance: buildings engineered for minimal construction cost rather than century-long carbon footprint, transportation systems optimized for current traffic flow rather than emissions reduction, energy grids designed for reliable delivery rather than renewable integration. This optimization creates what climate scientists term "carbon lock-in"—where short-term efficient solutions create long-term climate catastrophe. Consider urban building science. The concrete and steel that enable urban density generate 8% of global CO2 emissions during production, but urban engineering continues using these materials because they optimize for immediate structural requirements rather than lifecycle carbon impact. A typical urban skyscraper requires 40,000 tons of CO2 emissions before a single person moves in, yet urban architectural science treats this as an externality rather than a design constraint. 

Perhaps most perversely, urban living science has created what economists call "the innovation paradox"—where technological advancement accelerates rather than reduces climate impact. Urban areas concentrate research and development that consistently creates new consumption opportunities faster than efficiency improvements. Silicon Valley, the global center of technological innovation, has generated technologies that dramatically increase global resource consumption: smartphones requiring rare earth mining, cloud computing consuming massive energy, social media platforms designed to increase consumption. Urban innovation consistently creates what economists term "consumption rebound effects"—where efficiency gains are overwhelmed by increased usage. 

American cities, home to 82.7% of the population according to the U.S. Census Bureau, generate a staggering 70% of global carbon emissions despite occupying only 3% of the Earth's land surface. This concentration creates what urban climatologists term "carbon multiplication effects"—where dense populations amplify individual environmental impacts exponentially rather than reducing them through efficiency. 

We can veer off the subject to innovation, technology etc. but we need to note that global urbanization trends are a huge detriment to the planet. The biggest takeaway should be we need to identify the problem that urbanization is a disadvantage to the humanity of the present and to the future. The solutions should also be discussed to address this problem at the core. 

What if, instead of concentrating 330 million Americans into 400 metropolitan areas, we redistributed populations across the country's 1.9 billion acres of land? The mathematics are striking: if Americans were evenly distributed, each person would have access to nearly 6 acres—more than enough for food production, renewable energy generation, and carbon sequestration through reforestation. 

This isn't merely theoretical. Historical precedents exist in countries that have successfully managed population distribution. Denmark maintains one of the world's lowest per-capita carbon footprints partly through policies that prevent excessive urban concentration while supporting distributed renewable energy systems. Rural Danes generate more renewable energy than they consume, creating carbon-negative communities. 

Small-scale distributed living could enable what urban systems cannot: true circular resource flows. Human waste becomes fertilizer for food production. Rainwater collection eliminates the need for massive water transport systems. Local materials reduce transportation emissions. Solar panels and wind turbines, impossible to deploy at scale in dense cities due to space constraints, become viable for every household. 

Perhaps most critically, deurbanization could enable the transition to regenerative agriculture that scientists increasingly view as essential for climate reversal. The Rodale Institute's 40-year farming systems trial demonstrates that organic, small-scale farming can sequester 1.85 tons of carbon per acre annually while producing yields comparable to industrial agriculture. 

If even 10% of America's current urban population transitioned to small-scale farming on the 770 million acres of farmland currently managed by only 2 million farmers, the carbon sequestration potential would be enormous. Distributed populations practicing permaculture, agroforestry, and regenerative grazing could transform agriculture from a carbon source into a carbon sink. 

Currently, industrial agriculture—designed to feed concentrated urban populations—generates 24% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The massive monocultures, petroleum-based fertilizers, and long-distance transportation required by the urban food system represent an inherently unsustainable model. Distributed populations practicing diverse, local agriculture could eliminate these emissions while actively removing carbon from the atmosphere. 

Critics argue that distributed living would require sacrificing the technological and economic advantages of urban concentration. However, advances in distributed technology may have eliminated this trade-off. High-speed internet enables remote work for knowledge workers. Renewable energy systems now achieve grid parity in all 50 states. Electric vehicles eliminate the pollution concerns of rural transportation. Telemedicine provides healthcare access without urban hospitals. Online education delivers world-class learning to any location. The technological prerequisites for distributed living may already exist—we simply haven't organized society to take advantage of them. 

Climate scientists warn that we have less than seven years to reduce global emissions by 45% to avoid catastrophic warming. Urban retrofitting—making existing cities sustainable—represents a massive, slow process that may not achieve necessary reductions in time. The International Panel on Climate Change estimates that urban carbon reduction through efficiency improvements can achieve at most a 30% reduction by 2030, far short of what's required. 

Deurbanization, while initially disruptive, could achieve faster emissions reductions by eliminating rather than optimizing urban systems. Moving populations to carbon-negative rural lifestyles could create immediate emissions reductions while building carbon sequestration capacity for long-term climate reversal. 

The transition wouldn't require abandoning all cities immediately. Strategic downsizing could begin with the most carbon-intensive metropolitan areas while maintaining smaller urban centers that serve essential functions. The goal isn't a return to pre-industrial living, but rather the creation of a distributed, high-tech, low-carbon civilization. 

The cities that have defined American life for two centuries may need to give way to something entirely new—a distributed civilization that works with natural systems rather than against them. As extreme weather makes urban areas increasingly uninhabitable and resource scarcity threatens urban supply chains, managed dispersal may prove more humane than the chaotic migrations that climate collapse could trigger. The question isn't whether this transformation is possible, but whether we'll choose it before climate change chooses for us. The transformation should be our next big mission impossible – the path to deurbanization.