The environmental effect of car-free housing: A case in Vienna

By Michael Ornetzeder, Edgar G. Hertwich, Klaus Hubacek, Katarína Korytárová, W. Haas. 2008

127 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Ecological Economics, 2008, 65(3): 516-530 A case–control study of the car-free model housing project in Vienna was conducted to evaluate whether people living in this settlement have more ‘sustainable lifestyles’ than people living in comparable buildings in Vienna. Another aim was to identify the lifestyle characteristics and household activities which significantly influence the environmental impact of the residents of the car-free housing project and a control group. The control group, referred to as the reference settlement, was chosen from a nearby building complex, with similar characteristics, but without the car-free feature. Household consumption patterns were estimated based on interviews in combination with data from the Austrian consumer expenditure survey and the national accounts. The evaluation of household environmental impacts uses emissions estimates from the Austrian national accounting matrices including environmental accounts and data from life-cycle assessments. Households from the car-free settlement have substantially lower environmental impacts in the categories of ground transportation and energy use; their CO2 emissions of these two categories are less than 50% of those living in the reference settlement. The households in the car-free settlement have somewhat higher emissions in the categories air transport, nutrition, and ‘other’ consumption, reflecting the higher income per-capita. As a result, the CO2 emissions are only slightly lower than in the reference settlement, but the emissions intensity is 20% lower. Both household groups have significantly lower environmental impacts than the Austrian average reflecting less car use and cleaner heating energy in Vienna.

Subfields: Automotive Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment, Transportation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/32b1568f79729e8d4829eebe594f7adb20a1cd0b

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Automotive Engineering

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

In Transportation

Citations in the corpus

Situated lifestyles: I. How lifestyles change along with the level of urbanization and what the greenhouse gas implications are—a study of Finland (2013, result): “Overall, the ﬁnding that a decrease in car use is actually compensated by increased air travelling is similar to that reported by Ornetzeder et al (2008), especially when taking into account the emissions from package holidays.”
The Impacts of Household Consumption and Options for Change (2010, unknown): “…arises from the fact that public transportation tends to be less expensive than automobile ownership, and final determination of comparative environmental efficacy depends on whether the savings are spent on comparatively lower impact-intensive consumption categories (Ornetzeder et al. 2008).”
The Carbon Footprint of Norwegian Household Consumption 1999–2012 (2016, methodology): “CFs can be calculated using various assessment frameworks that account for indirect emissions.”
THE LIFE CYCLE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF CONSUMPTION (2011, unknown): “…(2005); Jalas (2005) Liu et al. (2005); Moll et al. (2005); Munksgaard et al. (2005); Nijdam et al. (2005); Takase et al. (2005); Peters and Hertwich (2006c); Kok et al. (2006); Tukker (2006); Tukker and Jansen (2006); Tukker et al. (2006a); Wiedmann et al. (2007); Ornetzeder et al. (2008).”
Eight Tons of Material Footprint—Suggestion for a Resource Cap for Household Consumption in Finland (2014, background): “Yet, the total distances travelled and the flights made by carfree households are only slightly higher than in the reference group [95]; - Car-sharing can reduce the need of owning and using private cars by providing a possibility of car use when it’s especially necessary.”
The Impact of Social Factors and Consumer Behavior on Carbon Dioxide Emissions in the United Kingdom (2010, methodology): “Environmental input−output models have been used most frequently for the assessment of the direct and indirect carbon emissions associated with different lifestyles (e.g., Symons et al. 1994; Duchin 1998; Labandeira and Labeaga 1999; Weber and Perrels 2000; Wier et al. 2001; Pachauri and Spreng 2002”