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Growing Closer found that families in low-density regions like Houston and Atlanta spend more than $8,000 per year to get around, while those in Chicago average $5,000 (McCann 2000). Chicago resi- dents, who have less expensive travel options such as walking, biking, and public transit, are able to translate their transporta- tion savings into better-quality housing through the Location Efficient Mortgage program. Lenders recognize the efficiency and cost effectiveness of urban locations and are willing to extend more credit to those buying homes in dense areas served by public transportation. Where homes are spread out, more energy must be expended to serve them: more gasoline to access them; more oil or natural gas to heat them; and more electricity to cool them. Freestanding or “detached” homes consume 85 to 99 percent more energy than houses of equal size that share a common wall. Combining energy used for travel, home, and an individual’s portion of what is used for community infra- structure, the contrast in energy consumption between low- density and high-density housing is striking. The owner of a 3-units-per-acre, detached, suburban house uses an average of 440 million British thermal units (Btus) per year compared to 360 million Btus per year for his urban counterpart living in an attached townhouse at a density of 24 units per acre (Allen and McKeever 1996). We don’t often think of cities as environmentally friendly places, but by most significant measures they are. City dwell- ers use fewer energy resources and generate less pollution than their suburban and rural neighbors. People drive less in places where densities are high, streets are interconnected, and jobs are interspersed with housing. They take fewer trips, and the ones they take are shorter. They don’t start up their cars— a significant source of harmful emissions—as frequently because they have other travel options. Fewer vehicle miles traveled translates into lower amounts of volatile organic com- pounds, nitrogen oxides, and particulates that pose risks of asthma and cancer. An urban resident living at a density of 12 units per acre generates about one-third less of these harmful emissions than someone driving the miles necessary to live at a density of 3 units per acre. She is also responsible for emitting a lower amount of the pollution that causes global warming—10.4 tons of greenhouse gases per year at 12 units per acre versus 16 tons at 3 units per acre (Holtzclaw n.d.). Cities generate high concentrations of pollutants, but on a per capita basis residents of leafy suburbs are far more responsible for air pollution and global warming than their urban neighbors. Living closer together helps save agricultural and resource land. The typical suburban density of 3 units per acre requires four times as much land as a medium density of 12 units per acre. At a small development scale, this may seem like a negligi- ble difference. To build 10 houses at the lower density, only 29 more acres of land would be needed. But when the growth rate 7806.12 Reading, Pennsylvania