Growing Urbanization and the Impact on Fine Particulate Matter (PM 2.5 ) Dynamics

Lijian Han, Weiqi Zhou and Weifeng Li
Additional contact information
Lijian Han: State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China
Weiqi Zhou: State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China
Weifeng Li: State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 6, 1-9

Abstract: Changes in urban air quality and its relationship with growing urbanization provide an important insight into urban development strategies. Thus, we collected remotely sensed PM 2.5 concentrations, as well as urban population datasets, and analyzed the scaling relationship between changes in urban population and concentrations of PM 2.5 . The majority of large cities in North America and Europe had PM 2.5 concentrations which decreased significantly. Only 2.0% of large cities in the U.S. were found to have significant positive trends. PM 2.5 concentration trends of less than 0.5 μg/m 3 ·year were found in all large cities of Africa and Latin America. However, PM 2.5 concentration trends of more than 1.0 μg/m 3 ·year were found in 56.7% of the large cities in Asia, where only 2.3% of the cities in China were found with significant negative trends, and no cities in India were found with significant negative trends. Large cities in Asia were found with contributions of 4.12 ± 4.27 μg/m 3 ·year per million people, particularly large cities in China (5.40 ± 4.80 μg/m 3 ·year per million people) and India (4.07 ± 3.07 μg/m 3 ·year per million people). Significant negative or positive relationships were obtained between PM 2.5 trends and population change rates in large cities of North America (R 2 = 0.9195, p < 0.05) or Europe (R 2 = 0.9161, p < 0.05). Moreover, a significant inverse “U-type” relationship (R 2 = 0.8065, p < 0.05) was found between PM 2.5 trends and population change rates in large cities of Asia. In addition, the positive or negative relationships between the trends in population and PM 2.5 were obtained in typical low- and mid-income countries (e.g., China and India) or high-income countries (e.g., USA), respectively.

Keywords: air pollution; China; India; urbanization strategy; smart growth; PM 2.5; scaling approach (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/6/1696/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/6/1696/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:6:p:1696-:d:148496

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().