The influence of urban structure on individual transport energy consumption in China's growing cities

Abstract

The energy consumed by urban transportation systems has implications for local environmental protection and greenhouse gas emission reductions. It is widely claimed that in growing cities, individuals' transport energy use could be made more efficient by planning to control urban sprawl and create polycentric urban structures. However, existing conclusions are mixed. This paper contributes to this issue with an in-depth analysis of China's cities. Interestingly, polycentric cities demonstrated lower travel energy efficiency than monocentric ones. This is mainly because urban sub-center developments have failed to combine employment and residential land use. In these planned sub-centers, land use is usually dominated by either housing or industrial park developments, requiring people to commute long distances between home and work, and use cars at high rates. Increasing fragmentation of development management due to political decentralization has apparently worsened the job-housing imbalance. Though a significant effect of urban structure on transport energy consumption was observed, car use control policies had no effect, while a high level of metro services was associated with lower energy consumption.