Implications of urban structure on carbon consumption in metropolitan areas

By Jukka Heinonen, S. Junnila. 2011

139 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Urban structure influences directly or indirectly the majority of all green house gas (GHG) emissions in cities. The prevailing belief is that dense metropolitan areas produce less carbon emissions on a per capita basis than less dense surrounding rural areas. Consequently, density targets have a major role in low-carbon urban developments. However, based on the results of this study, the connection seems unclear or even nonexistent when comprehensive evaluation is made. In this letter, we propose a hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) method for calculating the consumption-based carbon footprints in metropolitan areas, i.e. carbon consumption, with the emphasis on urban structures. The method is input–output-based hybrid LCA, which operates with the existing data from the region. The study is conducted by performing an analysis of the carbon consumption in two metropolitan areas in Finland, including 11 cities. Both areas consist of a dense city core and a less dense surrounding suburban area. The paper will illustrate that the influence of urban density on carbon emissions is insignificant in the selected metropolitan areas. In addition, the utilized consumption-based method links the climate effects of city-level development to the global production of emissions.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Environmental Engineering, Transportation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/550118558521ff011fc7b049070659eecd1e5dad

How researchers see this paper

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

In Economics and Econometrics

1. T. Wiedmann
2. Kuishuang Feng
3. J. Barrett
4. Klaus Hubacek
5. J. Minx
6. D. Guan
7. G. Baiocchi
8. G. P. Peters

In Environmental Engineering

1. T. Wiedmann
2. J. Barrett
3. Klaus Hubacek
4. Kuishuang Feng
5. J. Minx
6. G. P. Peters
7. D. Guan
8. G. Baiocchi

In Transportation

1. Klaus Hubacek
2. Felix Creutzig
3. Kuishuang Feng
4. Rainer Mühlhoff
5. J. Römer
6. Jukka Heinonen
7. S. Junnila
8. J. Barrett

Citations in the corpus

• Carbon footprints of cities and other human settlements in the UK (2013, background): “…(Druckman and Jackson 2009, Larsen and Hertwich 2009, Minx et al 2009, Larsen and Hertwich 2010a, 2010b, Lenzen and Peters 2010, White et al 2010, Heinonen and Junnila 2011a, 2011b, Heinonen et al 2011, Jones and Kammen 2011, Petsch et al 2011, Wright et al 2011, Chavez and Ramaswami 2013,…”
• Decarbonizing urban transport in European cities: four cases show possibly high co-benefits (2012, background): “Higher density settlements have lower GHG dimensions than sprawled areas in most cases (Glaeser and Kahn 2010, Weisz and Steinberger 2010) but not in all cases (Heinonen and Junnila 2011).”
• Situated lifestyles: I. How lifestyles change along with the level of urbanization and what the greenhouse gas implications are—a study of Finland (2013, background): “Heinonen and Junnila demonstrate the impact comparing Helsinki to Porvoo (Heinonen and Junnila 2011b), which belongs to cities in the samples of this study, but actually has a very different energy production profile from the Finnish average.”