If you care about the environment, stop fighting downtown high-rises. That’s the gist of an article in the current issue of City Journal by Harvard professor Edward Glaeser (who wrote about the effect of zoning laws on housing costs for CommonWealth magazine in 2006). Opening with an anecdote about Henry David Thoreau accidentally burning down 300 acres of woodland in Concord, Glaeser argues that “green” cities can do more harm than good in fighting new development:

When environmentalists resist new construction in their dense but environmentally friendly cities, they inadvertently ensure that it will take place somewhere else—somewhere with higher carbon emissions. Much local environmentalism, in short, is bad for the environment.

Glaeser and co-researcher Matthew Kahn build their case by measuring the carbon footprints of average households in both the central cities and the suburbs of 48 metro areas, including Boston. They report that the “greenest” metro areas — that is, places where more housing should be built — are all in California (topped by San Francisco), thanks to a combination of temperate weather and light driving patterns. Boston is in the “moderate carbon emissions” category; auto pollution is low, but cold winters require lots of home heating.

But Boston is near the top in the list of metro areas with the greatest difference in carbon emissions between those living in the central city and those living in suburbs. That’s partly because of the difference between T-taking city dwellers and car-dependent suburbanites, but the fact that it takes less energy to heat small city apartments also seems to be a factor. (“Thanks to New York’s famously tiny apartments, Glaeser writes, “Manhattan is one of the greenest places in America.”)

Glaeser does not have much more to say about Boston, but his disdain for people who want to impose height restrictions and other limits in New York has some resonance here: “Building more apartments in Gotham will not only make the city more affordable; it will also reduce global warming.”

What do residents of the Back Bay, the South End, and Chinatown think of this reasoning?