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Less driving, more housing for Earth Day this year

Nels Nelson

SOLUTIONS

Across America’s cities and towns, how dense a place is turns out to be highly predictive of how much its residents drive. For Earth Day this year, CommunityScale explores that relationship, showing how more compact, housing-rich communities tend to generate far fewer vehicle miles traveled. The post connects the dots between land use and transportation, making the case that building more housing in the right places is also one of the more effective ways to reduce driving and its environmental footprint.

Earth Day 2026 graphic showing reduced driving and increased housing

Across America’s cities and towns, how dense the place is predictive of how much residents drive.

Hover any city in the chart above to see its population, density, and modeled annual miles driven per person. A resident of Manhattan drives about 1,600 miles a year. A resident of Brookhaven, NY or Frisco, TX, drives close to five times more. Brooklyn, Jersey City, and San Francisco land exactly where you would expect given their density. Chicago, Washington DC, and Los Angeles cluster together in the 4,500 to 5,000 mile band despite being in very different regions with very different reputations for car culture.

The VMT figures are modeled by HUD’s Location Affordability Index v3, which predicts miles driven for a fixed household profile (a median-income, four-person, two-commuter family), calibrated on Illinois odometer data and validated nationally against the National Household Travel Survey.

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