The Season of Green

Suburbs may be by definition a rum deal for the environment (see last item). Or maybe green-ness is just something that occurs later in a suburb's life cycle. In Levittown, N.Y., often called America's first suburb, local authorities are pushing the owners of the village's 17,000 once-identical houses to improve the energy efficiency of the aging burb one house at a time. Few of Bill Levitt's one-story capes look at they did when they went up in the 1940s amid Long Island's potato fields. But it's estimated that more than a third have their original boilers; replacing them would save as much as 1.5 million gallons of fuel oil annually. Under the aegis of Green Levittown, which hopes to convince every homeowner to make some upgrade, discounts and low-interest loans will be offering for residents upgrading appliances, heating systems, even lightbulbs.

Levittown isn't the only town to come to its environmental senses in middle age. Around Washington, D.C., some areas have begun to reform themselves around newly erected Metro stops and their attendant, walkable shopping districts. Critics point out that making individual homes more eco-friendly won't save the planet, and that the greenest communities are those that are planned that way from the start. But focusing on the money and resources that can be saved while giving older burbs necessary may be an easier sell than asking developers of new areas to forego profits.