The Impact of Urban Form and Spatial Structure on per Capita Carbon Footprint in U.S. Larger Metropolitan Areas

Ivan Muñiz,Andrés Dominguez

doi:10.3390/su12010389

Ivan Muñiz, Andrés Dominguez

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su12010389

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Abstract

Different studies have estimated cities’ contribution to total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at between forty and seventy percent. According to the so-called Compact City Approach, high density and centrality should lead to low GHG. This study compares the effect of the urban density and spatial structure (monocentrism, polycentrism, and dispersion) of the main U.S. cities on their greenhouse gas emissions from mobility and housing. The estimated models include control variables in order to improve the statistical adjustment, these variables are grouped into three categories: basic controls as temperature and Gross Domestic Product (GDP); historical-demographic controls since 1900; and geographic-urban planning controls. The results detect an environmentally positive effect, albeit a moderate one, associated with monocentric and polycentric spatial structures as compared to dispersed structures. Within the tradition of urban planning, these results can be used as an argument to stop the dispersed decentralization of cities. However, the efficacy of some policies encouraging density should be accompanied by specific policies which increase the energy efficiency of housing and promote the use of public transport.

Highlights

Different studies have estimated cities’ contribution to total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at between forty and seventy percent [1,2,3,4,5]
Despite the differences in magnitude, (.) the correlation between the carbon footprints calculated in Brown et al [38] and Glaeser and Kahn [44] is positive and statistically significant, 0.57, which indicates that cities with the highest carbon footprint according to the authors of reference [38] tend to follow a pattern similar to those of Glaeser and Kahn [44]
The results of this study confirm that urban form and spatial structure affect the per capita carbon footprint of mobility and housing

Summary

Introduction

Different studies have estimated cities’ contribution to total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at between forty and seventy percent [1,2,3,4,5]. According to the so-called Compact City Approach [6,7,8], dense and centralized cities have lower per capita emissions in comparison with low-density dispersed cities, given that in the former cars are used less and commuting distances are shorter [9,10,11,12,13,14,15], and the buildings require less energy to reach an acceptable climate comfort level [16,17,18] Continuing along this line of argumentation, urban planning policies modify the built environment (urban form and spatial structure) of cities, which should affect their volume of GHG emissions. In the case of housing, the type of residential buildings in dense neighborhoods is characterized by the small size of the houses and the existence of shared walls, which leads to low energy consumption [16,17,18,37]

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