Evolving United States Metropolitan Land Use Patterns

We investigate spatial patterns of residential and non- residential land use for 257 U.S. metropolitan areas in 1990 and 2000, measured with 14 empirical indices. We find that metropolitan areas became denser during the 1990s but developed in more sprawl-like patterns across all other dimensions, on average. By far the largest changes in our land use metrics occurred in the realm of employment, which became more prevalent per unit of geographic area, but less spatially concentrated and further from the historical urban core, on average. Our exploratory factor analyses reveal that four factors summarize land use patterns in both years, and remained relatively stable across the two years: intensity, compactness, mixing, and core-dominance. Mean factor scores vary by metropolitan population, water proximity, type, and Census region. Improved measurement of metropolitan land use patterns can facilitate policy and planning decisions intended to minimize the most egregious aspects of urban sprawl

The geography of greenhouse gas emissions from within urban areas of Asia

This paper aims to advance two objectives: (1) identify and explore greenhouse gas emissions from urban areas in Asia at the regional level; and (2) explore covariates of urban greenhouse gas emissions. We use the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research estimates for carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and sulfur hexafluoride from 14 source activities for the year 2000, which are allocated on a 1/108 global grid. We extract emissions for 3535 urban extents all with populations over 50,000, accounting for approximately 91% of the region’s urban population. We use regression analysis to associate emissions with urban area and growth, economic, and biophysical characteristics. Our findings suggest that urban areas account for between 30 and 38% of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions for the region and that emission per capita averages from urban areas are lower than those at the national level. Important covariates for total urban greenhouse gas emissions include population size, density and growth rate, income per capita, development status and elevation. This is a first and preliminary assessment of regional baseline trends using these data and this top-down analysis

The geography of greenhouse gas emissions from within urban areas of India

This paper examines the patterns of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from urban areas in India—a rapidly growing and urbanizing nation. It uses a new dataset, Emission Dataset for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) to estimate the urban share of national GHG emissions. It presents a geographic picture of emission variation by urban form (urban population size, area size, density, and growth rate), and economic (GDP and GDP per capita), geographic (location of emissions released: 20, 40, and 80 km from urban areas), and biophysical (ecosystem and climate: cooling degree days) characteristics. Dependent variables include emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and hexafluoride (SF6) from 14 source activities (agricultural soils, agricultural wastes, aviation, energy, fossil-fuel fires, fugitive escapes from solids, industry, livestock, navigation, non-road transport, oil and gas production, residential, road transport, and waste) for the year 2000 that are allocated on a 0.1° global grid. We examine 721 urban areas with more than 50,000 residents (accounting for 92% of the total Indian urban population), present findings, and compare our results with urban-level carbon footprint analyses. The results demonstrate that GHG emissions from urban areas in India are lower than that presented in the literature, and that differences in emissions levels vary with urban form, economic, geographic, and biophysical variables

Mountain megas: America\u27s newest metropolitan places and a federal leadership to help them prosper

The Initiative The Brookings Institution and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, are collaborating to bring Brookings’ high-quality, independent and impactful research to the issues facing the dynamic and fast-growing Mountain West region: the states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. Every year, Brookings will send scholars from each of its five research programs to spend three weeks at UNLV to conduct research, meet with faculty, and deliver lectures and seminars. The project begins September 8, 2009, with presentations on national and local trends. The new initiative builds upon the work of Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program, which focuses on helping metropolitan areas like Las Vegas grow in robust, inclusive, and sustainable ways. But Brookings Mountain West will go farther by bringing to the region the perspective of Brookings experts on domestic and international economic policy, foreign policy, and governance

The Role of Suburbia in the Attribution of Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The original goal of the research presented here was to quantify by world region, the contribution of urbanized areas to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (EDGAR, 2011). Regressions on population density and growth rate, GDP, and heating/cooling degree days, as well as a row of other non-significant variables, show that the contribution of urban extents is between 38% and 49% of total emissions (Marcotullio et al., 2012). In spite of using very liberal definitions of urban extents (GRUMP, 2011) this is at the low end of academic estimates (Satterthwaite, 2008; WEO, 2008; Dhakal, 2010). It is no surprise that the relative weight of individual variables varies by world region and economic development. We were, however, very surprised to find that around the world, the highest levels of GHG emissions are in a belt 20-40 km around urban centres. This result is consistent using both traditional fixed-effects and spatial regression techniques, which will be discussed in detail in this paper. There are variations (e.g. the role of African suburbs is smaller than that of their Asian and European counterparts) but the signature prevails. We suggest that this has consequences for both planning and geography theory as well as for policy. In spite of globalization, we have very few local indicators that are so consistently the same across cultures, economic and physical regimes. On a practical level, our results are an urgent reminder that cities by and large are rather efficient constructs while the biggest impacts on minimizing GHG emissions can be achieved by optimizing suburban energy use and transport

Assessing Urban Greenhouse Gas Emissions in European Medium and Large Cities: Methodological Considerations

Policymakers need clear, consistent, and reliable information about the location of greenhouse gases and drivers of emitting activity in order to design appropriate mitigating strategies. At the urban scale, there have been challenges in developing consistent and reliable emissions inventories. This chapter examines selected methods to determine greenhouse gas emissions at the urban scale. We describe the various criteria considered when constructing an urban greenhouse gas protocol including the definition of urban, the gasses that are measured, the source they come from, the scope of analysis and how the measurements are undertaken. We then present results for European medium and large sized cities derived from alternative methodologies to demonstrate the range of results. Finally, we briefly discuss the policy implications of the various approaches

Energy Discovery-Innovation Institutes: A Step Toward America's Energy Sustainability

Part of the "Blueprint for American Prosperity"http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/88629/1/2009_Brookings_Energy_Report.pd

Inside the metropolis: the articulation of Spanish metropolitan areas into local labor markets

In this article, we delimit local labor markets (LLMs) in order to analyze the internal structure and organization of Spanish metropolitan areas. LLMs are defined as self-contained and cohesive areas in terms of commuting flows. Unlike the conventional approach to polycentrism based on the analysis of commuting flows that begins with the identification of subcenters, our analytical strategy does assume any a priori structure and is compatible with the relationship between places of work and residence having other locational and spatial organization patterns. The analysis is performed at three different scales of detail linked to three self-containment levels for the LLMs delimited and three population groups (total, males, and females). The results show that metropolitan areas are complex, fuzzy, multidimensional spaces, where the conditions of spatial organization are manifested in different ways depending on the parameters and variables used.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [grant numbers CSO2011-29943-C03-01, CSO2011-29943-C03-02, CSO2014-55780-C3-1-P, and CSO2014-55780-C3-2-P (National R&D&I Plan)]