Cities as nuclei of sustainability?

Diego Rybski, Dominik E Reusser, Anna-Lena Winz, Christina Fichtner, Till Sterzel and Jürgen P Kropp

Environment and Planning B, 2017, vol. 44, issue 3, 425-440

Abstract: We have assembled CO 2 emission figures from collections of urban GHG emission estimates published in peer-reviewed journals or reports from research institutes and non-governmental organizations. Analyzing the scaling with population size, we find that the exponent is development dependent with a transition from super- to sub-linear scaling. From the climate change mitigation point of view, the results suggest that urbanization is desirable in developed countries. Further, we compare this analysis with a second scaling relation, namely the fundamental allometry between city population and area, and propose that density might be a decisive quantity too. Last, we derive the theoretical country-wide urban emissions by integration and obtain a dependence on the size of the largest city.

Keywords: Scaling; cities; climate change; development process; allometry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envirb:v:44:y:2017:i:3:p:425-440

DOI: 10.1177/0265813516638340

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