Low-carbon City Planning Research Articles

Does urban sprawl lead to carbon emission growth? ——Empirical evidence based on the perspective of local land transfer in China

The rapid expansion of urban areas has caused a series of impacts on the ecological environment. Exploring the effects of urban sprawl on carbon emissions and its mechanisms is crucial for realizing sustainable development patterns and low-carbon city planning. This study integrates used nighttime light data and population grid data to construct an Urban Sprawl Index. It employs a spatial Durbin model to analyze the spatial impact of urban sprawl on carbon emissions, examining the mechanisms from the perspective of local land transfers. The research reveals the following findings: (1) Urban sprawl significantly contributes to a positive spatial spillover effect on carbon emissions, leading to increased emission levels in surrounding cities. (2) The overall local impact of urban sprawl on urban areas is not significant. It suppresses carbon emissions in municipal districts but increases them in counties, with these effects counterbalancing each other. (3) Mechanism analysis indicates that different types of land transfers have varied effects on carbon emissions in districts and counties, and the regulation of the floor area ratio regulation strengthens the impact of land transfers. (4) Heterogeneity analysis shows that the size of urban populations significantly reduces the local effects of sprawl on carbon emissions, while environmental regulations strength attenuate the impact of urban sprawl on carbon emissions in municipal districts. The findings of this study provide practical references and policy implications for formulating reasonable urban development and land use plans, facilitating the achievement of peak carbon and carbon neutrality goals.

The Correlation between Urban Form and Carbon Emissions: A Bibliometric and Literature Review

Urban carbon emissions contribute significantly to global warming, but various factors impact these emissions. This study focuses on the correlation between urban form and carbon emissions. Urban form is an entity that can be directly manipulated and optimized by disciplines such as architecture, urban design, and urban planning. The improvement of urban form, particularly at the meso–micro scale, is relatively rapid and affordable compared to other carbon-related factors, such as macro-industry or energy structure. Therefore, conducting a study on the correlation between urban form and carbon emissions is crucial, and the findings will provide direct scientific support for low-carbon city planning. The paper combines bibliometric analysis with a literature review. First, we explore research hotspots and trends using bibliometric analysis. Second, we organize the literature review based on the main research components, methods, and findings in this field. Finally, we propose a framework and direction for future research. It was found that (1) numerous study methodologies are currently being used to investigate the direct and indirect impacts of urban form on carbon emissions, with Chinese scholars’ research progressing rapidly; (2) the primary focus of the study is on the carbon emissions related to residents’ consumption, and there are still issues with inconsistent measurement approaches; (3) there is more research conducted on the macro-scale of cities but not enough on the meso–micro scale. Future research must focus more on meso–microscale analysis, quantifying the key influences and pathways of urban form on carbon emissions. Additionally, it is crucial to establish a comprehensive research framework that can serve as a guide for more effective urban development aimed at reducing carbon emissions.

Trade-offs among productive-living-ecological lands for facilitating low-carbon and efficient cities: evidences in 30 major Chinese cities from 2015 to 2020

ABSTRACT Low-carbon and efficient city, a sustainable city development mode, requires the land to carry more people and economy, but cause no ecological damage, which is essentially a trade-off among diverse land functional zones (LFZs), e.g. living, productive, and ecological lands, from a land system perspective. Unfortunately, there is little knowledge about how to trade off LFZs for building low-carbon and efficient cities. To fill the gap, the study first proposes a fine-grained LFZ mapping method to sort the land into seven kinds of LFZs based on multimodal geographic data; then, the study defines carbon efficiency (CE) as a reference to evaluate efficient cities considering their economics, society, and ecology; finally, the study presents a cross lasso regression method to explore how LFZ patterns as well as their temporal changes influence CE, based on which LFZ features are optimized at both national and city levels for improving CE and facilitating efficient cities. The proposed methods are verified in 30 major Chinese cities from 2015 to 2020. The experimental results indicate that the 30 cities have different LFZ patterns in area proportion, morphology, and temporal change, where LFZ proportions are master control factors to CE; and LFZ feature trade-off at national level works better than per city, as it can improve CE by 58.5% compared to that in 2020, which increases population carrying capacity by 88.5% and economy producing capacity by 81.0% with no change in carbon emission, or reduces carbon emission by 55.2% by keeping population and economy constant. These findings directly contribute to low-carbon and efficient city planning, and facilitating sustainable city development.

Mapping urban carbon emissions in relation to local climate zones: Case of the building sector in Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, Thailand

This study focuses on carbon emissions of the building sector in relation to local climate zone (LCZ) classification, concentrating on two major parts. First, we estimated carbon emissions in the building sector, which were calculated for weekdays and weekends real-time daily energy consumption patterns. The estimations were divided into direct (from petroleum products consumption) and indirect emissions (from electricity consumption). Second, we examined urban carbon emissions mapping in relation to LCZ. Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) was used as the case study and 2016 as the base year for examination. The results illustrate that indirect emissions in Bangkok can be up to ten times higher than direct emissions. The analysis indicates that LCZ, such as compact high-rise, large low-rise, light industry, and warehouse zones had a relatively higher carbon emission intensity than others. Additionally, we identified that the compact high-rise zone has the highest indirect emission intensity, while the light industry and warehouse zone have the greatest direct emission intensity. These results provide insights into the dynamics of carbon emission characteristics in the building sector and the methodology purported here can be used to support low carbon city planning and policymaking in Bangkok.

Analysis and Evaluation of Factors Influencing the Low-Carbon Effect of Urban High-Rise Settlement Planning Schemes Based on AHP-Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation Method

With the rise of low-carbon concept and the trend of low-carbon planning, the evaluation of low-carbon planning has been paid more and more attention by the academic and planning circles. Carbon evaluation has become a hot topic after “environmental evaluation” and “green evaluation.” In order to promote the important content of energy conservation and sustainable development in the construction of low-carbon cities, this paper constructs and plans the content of low-carbon city planning and construction. On the basis of the effectiveness evaluation index system, this paper discusses the linkage between analytic hierarchy process and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method and makes a comprehensive quantitative evaluation on the effectiveness of case planning EIA. Combining the advantages of analytic hierarchy process and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method, the subobjectives and weights of each index are determined by the analytic hierarchy process. The multi-level fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method is used to evaluate the factors that affect the low-carbon effect of urban high-rise residential district planning. This study leads the new trend of future urban construction, and the construction of low-carbon residential areas, as an important part of promoting urban sustainable development, is the core component of future low-carbon urban planning and construction.

Planning strategy of green economy city from the perspective of low carbon and environmental protection

At the current stage, in order to promote the all-round development of low-carbon economy, the development model of building green industry has been introduced into urban construction and planning. In this context, in order to promote urban construction and development, carry out the research on the planning strategy of green economy city from the perspective of low-carbon environmental protection. On the basis of fully clarifying the practical significance of low-carbon and green economy city planning, clarify the development objectives of low-carbon and environment-friendly cities, from building a comprehensive and intensive city; Build a high-quality low-carbon green transportation system; Put forward relevant planning strategies from the aspects of building green space system and ecological economic unit. It is expected to provide guidance for promoting low-carbon cities into the public vision and provide innovative ideas for the future development and construction of cities.

The multi-objective spatial optimization of urban land use based on low-carbon city planning

As the spatial carrier of carbon emission from land ecosystems and human activities, land use plays an important role in representing the spatial distribution of carbon emissions and carbon sinks. The intension of CO2 emission is closely attached to the fundamental unit of urban form—land use patterns. The exploration of the low-carbon oriented spatial optimization provides new scope for solving the high carbon emission in the urban area through spatial planning. In this paper, Eindhoven in the Netherlands was selected as the case study to implement spatial optimization. A set of parameters containing the spatial attributes of buildings and vegetation were introduced to classify the land use patterns into six categories through a combined random forest algorithm and regression tree approach. The results show the geographic features of vegetation are the crucial factors for the carbon emission. The multi-objective spatial optimization model integrated carbon emission, population, and constraint conditions. It is solved with non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-II (NSGA-II), in which each gene represents a specific type of land use category. The optimal solutions were incorporated with a regression model to analyze the impact of the variation in each land use category. Three categories were proved to be more influential on carbon emission performance. The optimized land use structure shows the potential to reduce the carbon emission and offer valuable consults to low carbon land use plan.

A Quantitative Study of the Influence of Urban Form on Large-Scale Application of Rooftop Photovoltaics Using Simplified Method

The large-scale application of distributed photovoltaic system is often impeded by the shading effect between buildings and mismatch between the solar power generation and building energy consumption. This paper explores the relationship between urban form and rooftop photovoltaic installation and utilization potential with implications for low-carbon city planning. This study first investigated the influence of the urban form on the installation potential of the solar rooftop photovoltaics for 12 cities across China which covering different solar climate zones. The significant impact of the urban density on the photovoltaic installation potential is only observed in the cities in high latitude areas with medium solar radiation, and the negative impact can be mitigated by reducing the building height differences, which up to 25% improvement can be expected. Then, taking Shenzhen as an example, the influence of the urban form on the photovoltaic power generation utilization was further investigated for residential, commercial and office type of district building energy consumption profiles. It is found that the densely developed urban built-up environment has positive effect on the solar power utilization in which high percentage of the self-consumption ratio is observed. The self-consumption ratio of the residential district which is the lowest can be effectively improved by mixing with office and business buildings. For typical urban form in Shenzhen which the BCR and FAR are 0.35 and 2.5 respectively, if carefully planned, the rooftop photovoltaics can provide 12.6~18.5% of the building energy consumption and 69.8~75% of the solar power can be directly used by the building, which make the rooftop photovoltaics an important clean and economical energy resource for low-carbon city development.

Research on Strategies of Low-Carbon City Planning and Construction

With the continuous development of China's economy, the policy of sustainable development has increasingly become the leading direction of urban planning and construction at all levels, and the concept of low-carbon city construction continues to emerge. In the process of low-carbon city construction, it is required to start from reducing carbon emissions, uphold the five concepts of innovation, coordination, greenness, openness, and sharing, explore low-carbon eco-city planning strategies and methods, and make urban planning become the local government's emission reduction measures an important means to make the city’s low-carbon development more smoothly and realize the sustainable development of low-carbon cities.

Urban Design Strategy from the Perspective of Low-Carbon City Planning

<p>The economy growth has improved the development of cities. In cities' continuous development and construction process, carbon emissions are also gradually increasing, causing serious environmental pollution and energy shortage. At present, low-carbon urban planning and design has become the demand of contemporary urban construction, and sustainable low-carbon economy has become the inevitable choice of urban planning. Based on this, this article briefly introduces the concept of low-carbon city planning and the principles of urban design from the perspective of low-carbon city. By analyzing the existing problems in current urban planning, this article proposes urban design strategies from the view of low-carbon city planning, seeking to make contributions to the improvement of urban planning levels.</p>

Low-carbon optimization of spatial pattern in Shenfu New District based on genetic algorithm

The realization of low-carbon development is the key to solving the global climate change problem. China’s total carbon emissions share in the world is increasing year by year. Taking the road of low-carbon city development is the inevitable trend of China’s city development in the future. Increasing the concentration of urban land space can improve energy utilization and achieve the optimal goal of energy conservation and emission reduction. Genetic algorithm is a method to search the optimal solution by simulating the natural evolution process, providing a scientific solution for low-carbon city planning. This paper starts with the spatial arrangement of land use, minimizes people’s spatial travel distance through the global optimization ability of genetic algorithm. It summarizes the low-carbon spatial organization characteristics of Shenyang-Fushun New City, explores the analysis method of urban spatial low-carbon pattern, puts forward the optimization strategies of urban spatial structure, urban transportation network, green space system and low-carbon industrial layout, adjusts the development trend of urban areas, promotes low-carbon living and production behaviours, and provides theoretical basis and practical experience for the planning of low-carbon cities.

A Graph Theory-Based Method for Regional Integrated Energy Network Planning: A Case Study of a China–U.S. Low-Carbon Demonstration City

With the significant attention on global climate change, regional integrated energy systems (RIES) in low-carbon city planning has become one of the most important ways for global cities to achieve the goal of energy conservation and emission reduction. However, the planning strategy used in the primary stage of RIES establishment will greatly affect the system economy and environment. In view of the lack of planning guidance mechanisms for the large-scale RIES in China, a method for RIES preliminary overall planning, focused on energy types and use, is proposed in this paper. A graph theory-based mathematical optimal model was established with the lifetime costs of the whole system as the economic goal, and an improved Prim algorithm was put forward to solve the costs of the transmission and distribution network with the dynamic weight set of pipeline flow. The model was solved by an algorithm based on the idea of a dynamic minimum spanning tree and optimal path planning. The model and method were applied in a China–U.S. low-carbon demonstration city to verify feasibility and validity. The results could help us to comprehensively integrate regional energy and accurately plan future cities.

Modelling household travel energy consumption and CO2 emissions based on the spatial form of neighborhoods and streets: A case study of Jinan, China

This paper presents a direct modelling approach to evaluate household travel energy consumption and CO2 emissions based on the spatial form of neighborhoods and streets. It integrates one multinomial logit model and four double hurdle models to predict travel outcomes: vehicle ownership portfolio choice, car travel distance, bus travel distance, motorcycle travel distance and ebike travel distance. The energy consumption and CO2 emissions are then estimated using these travel outcomes. A full application of the modelling approach is demonstrated through a pilot project in Jinan, China. A holdout validation is also performed to address the over-fitting problem of models calibrated from the training set data. Results show that the proposed approach is operational and appropriate for sketch planning applications to promote clean energy and low carbon city planning in urbanizing China.

都市域における防災・環境面からみた分散型エネルギー拠点構築ポテンシャル評価

In this study, we evaluated the potential of the installation of distributed power generators toward emergency response and energy conservation in the Tokyo area. In this regard, we first selected the facilities installed with Co-generation system (CGS), such as government administration offices, medical facilities, head offices of private companies, and railway stations, which are the most essential places to be functioning immediately after a disaster, thus requiring the most power at this time. Then, we selected the high-density area and planned to install CGS in the above-mentioned buildings. The results of this study indicated the effects of the installation of CGS on both disaster management and low-carbon city planning.

An Integrated Algorithm for Low-Carbon City Evaluation Based on Neural Network and Analytic Hierarchy Process

The low-carbon city evaluation has great significance to promote the urban construction management and sustainable development of city. In order to establish a suitable low-carbon city evaluation method to measure the performance of low-carbon city planning and construction, based on the index system of low-carbon city evaluation in the Pressure Status Response (PSR) framework, an integrated algorithm for low-carbon city evaluation combining BP neural network with the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is proposed. Furthermore, the possible ways for optimization have been discussed. The model and algorithm have the following properties: rapid, flexible and feasible.

Low Carbon City Planning Method Based on Value Engineering Theory

Exploration of low carbon city planning is the key to achieve sustainable development, which also has important meaning for the construction of energy-saving society. The value engineering theory was introduced into low carbon urban planning in this work, with the analysis method of three steps proposed. Firstly, sort out the planning index system and determine the key parameters. Secondly, quantify the value coefficient of each parameter by the expert scoring method. Lastly, get the highest priority value coefficient to achieve the purpose of carbon effect with lowest cost. Through illustrating the principle of the method by an example, the actual meaning of low carbon city planning using value engineering theory was proved effective.

BUILDING LOW-CARBON CITIES: ASSESSING THE FAST GROWING U.S. CITIES' LAND USE COMPREHENSIVE PLANS

Cities affect and are affected by climate change. Local land use comprehensive plans have an essential role in greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction. The study addresses two critical research questions: 1) How well do the fastest growing cities in the U.S. implement the low-carbon principles in their local comprehensive land use plans? and 2) How can local comprehensive land use plans be improved to promote low-carbon development? An evaluation protocol with five plan components and thirty-five indicators was developed to measure local land use planning capacity in building low-carbon cities. Results show that the majority of these cities have already established their comprehensive low-carbon city framework; however, they fail to fully incorporate specific low-carbon planning strategies into their plans. These cities can improve their local plan quality by enhancing the scientific basis of the plans, adopting more specific goals and policies, and expanding the planners' toolbox to achieve low-carbon city planning.

Towards Low Carbon City Planning in a Medium Sized Low Density City

Adelaide is a medium sized low density city located in south eastern Australia. Typical of highly urbanized Australia, where abundant land and low cost private transport contribute to urban sprawl in all major cities, Adelaide is poorly placed to move to a low carbon future, despite access to abundant renewable resources and a favourable policy environment. Australians have some of the highest emissions per capita in the world. This study examines the spatially explicit nature of CO2 emissions across the metropolitan area and explores the relationships between emissions and a range of socio-economic variables. Contrary to findings from other westernized cities, incomes, rents and housing prices are not well correlated with distance from the city centre or train stations. Household emissions are strongly correlated with household size, rooms per household and number of motor vehicles per household. Household emissions are therefore highly associated with private car use and daily commuting distances. Public transport is poorly utilized and many urban residential areas surrounding the most heavily used public transport routes also have very high household emissions. Attitudinal change to car and public transport use is therefore essential if Australian cities such as Adelaide are to move towards a low carbon future, and governments must design and implement policies which can achieve such change.

Developing a Low-Carbon Ecological City Planning Model from the Viewpoint of Eco-Region: Case Study of Shenzhen

With the impact of global climate change, how should the concept of low-carbon ecological city be implemented in urban planning practice has become a critical issue challenging decision-makers and planners. This issue is particularly important for the fast-growing regions in China which has experienced rapid urbanization and an increase in carbon emission. In view of these problems, this study uses the Shenzhen city, an extremely fast-growing city in China, as an empirical case setting to address this issue. A systematic approach that integrates research methods including literature review, case studies, field survey, and stakeholder-based interviews was employed. Through our research investigation, a comprehensive low-carbon ecological city planning framework was developed. Several selected planning strategies that address the key elements of the framework were also suggested.

저탄소 도시계획의 단계별 평가지표 설정 및 적용 연구 -도시계획 수립, 설계 및 운영, 유지·관리 단계를 중심으로-

Abstract Current global issue of climate change is growing and greenhouse gases occur in most cities. To solve the problem of climate change, the city should be changed to low-carbon structure. Low-carbon city planning is a step-by-step plan from the initial establishment, from design and operation of urban structure, to maintenance and management should be considered as an integrated whole process. Under this background, this study evaluated the whole process of low-carbon urban planning ways. For this step, divided into three steps and eight divisions, 30 sub-indicators are derived. Through domestic and foreign cases analysis studies and survey of the relevant experts, results were derived. In order to improve these points, in the intial planning establishment stage, planning of urban policy and institutional steps should be made and the plan should be appropriate to the local characteristics. In the design and operation of urban structure stage, detailed and feasible approach is needed and maintenance and management stage, participation of various stakeholders, including establishing governance and management practices could see the need.