Are Cities More Sustainable Than Suburbia?

Is living in the city inherently greener than living in the suburbs? Researchers like Edward Glaeser have argued a resounding yes: “In almost every metropolitan area, carbon emissions are significantly lower for people who live in central cities than for people who live in suburbs.” This conclusion has common sense on its side. Despite the literal greenness of many suburbs, high density living would seem to reduce energy use by default: less car and fossil fuel dependency, more infrastructure efficiency, with the largest cities generating the biggest energy-saving boost.

But new research from Canada’s Dalhousie University contests the claim that cities are immensely greener than their suburbs and adds additional information to consider when comparing population density and emissions. Researcher Jeffrey Wilson and his team looked at greenhouse gas emissions around Halifax, Nova Scotia, and found a negligible difference between suburban and city pollution: only a 0.3kgCO2e/person/day difference. While suburbanites did drive more, those in the city produced more home-energy emissions per household member than their suburban counterparts, bringing their total emissions closer to each other. Exurbs dwellers, however, needing to travel the furthest, polluted the most. Those in the exurbs produced 11 percent more emissions than those living in the inner city.

This research does broaden the conversation, illustrating that not all cities necessarily have a significant environmental edge over their suburbs. As Eric Jaffe at The Atlantic Cities points out, however, the study has a few problems: it doesn’t account for income level (the wealthier exurb dwellers may emit more greenhouse gases in part because they have more disposable income), and doesn’t compare the data by season--only across a year. Additionally, while Halifax Regional Municipality’s suburbanites and urbanites might be similar in greenhouse gas emissions, its hard to know how much this can speak to other regions’ internal relationships when other studies have looked at more metropolitan areas.

via: The Atlantic Cities

image CC BY-SA 2.0 by Roger Wollstadt

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