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The greenness of cities: Carbon dioxide emissions and urban development

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  • Glaeser, Edward L.
  • Kahn, Matthew E.

Abstract

Carbon dioxide emissions may create significant social harm because of global warming, yet American urban development tends to be in low density areas with very hot summers. In this paper, we attempt to quantify the carbon dioxide emissions associated with new construction in different locations across the country. We look at emissions from driving, public transit, home heating, and household electricity usage. We find that the lowest emissions areas are generally in California and that the highest emissions areas are in Texas and Oklahoma. There is a strong negative association between emissions and land use regulations. By restricting new development, the cleanest areas of the country would seem to be pushing new development towards places with higher emissions. Cities generally have significantly lower emissions than suburban areas, and the city-suburb gap is particularly large in older areas, like New York.

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Bibliographic Info

Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Journal of Urban Economics.

Volume (Year): 67 (2010)
Issue (Month): 3 (May)
Pages: 404-418

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Handle: RePEc:eee:juecon:v:67:y:2010:i:3:p:404-418

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Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622905

Related research

Keywords: Greenhouse gases Cities Urban growth Transportation Electricity consumption Regulation;

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References

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Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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  1. Douglas Holtz-Eakin & Thomas M. Selden, 1992. "Stoking the Fires? Co2 Emissions and Economic Growth," NBER Working Papers 4248, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. Arik Levinson, 2001. "Energy Use By Apartment Tenants When Landlords Pay For Utilities," Working Papers gueconwpa~01-01-09, Georgetown University, Department of Economics.
  3. Edward L. Glaeser, 1998. "Are Cities Dying?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 139-160, Spring.
  4. Tol, Richard S. J., 2005. "The marginal damage costs of carbon dioxide emissions: an assessment of the uncertainties," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(16), pages 2064-2074, November.
  5. Marcy Burchfield & Henry G. Overman & Diego Puga & Matthew A. Turner, 2006. "Causes of Sprawl: A Portrait from Space," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 121(2), pages 587-633, May.
  6. Antonio M. Bento & Maureen L. Cropper & Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak & Katja Vinha, 2005. "The Effects of Urban Spatial Structure on Travel Demand in the United States," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(3), pages 466-478, August.
  7. Glaeser, Edward L. & Ward, Bryce A., 2009. "The causes and consequences of land use regulation: Evidence from Greater Boston," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 265-278, May.
  8. Edward L. Glaeser & Joseph Gyourko & Raven Saks, 2003. "Why is Manhattan So Expensive? Regulation and the Rise in House Prices," NBER Working Papers 10124, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  9. Auffhammer, Maximilian & Carson, Richard T., 2008. "Forecasting the path of China's CO2 emissions using province-level information," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 55(3), pages 229-247, May.
  10. Stephen P. Holland & Erin T. Mansur, 2007. "Is Real-Time Pricing Green? The Environmental Impacts of Electricity Demand Variance," NBER Working Papers 13508, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  11. Edward L. Glaeser & Kristina Tobio, 2008. "The Rise of the Sunbelt," Southern Economic Journal, Southern Economic Association, vol. 74(3), pages 610-643, January.
  12. William D. Nordhaus, 2007. "A Review of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 45(3), pages 686-702, September.
  13. Martin L. Weitzman, 2007. "A Review of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 45(3), pages 703-724, September.
  14. Nicholas Stern, 2008. "The Economics of Climate Change," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(2), pages 1-37, May.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. Derek Jeter's Carbon Footprint
    by Matthew E. Kahn in Environmental and Urban Economics on 2011-02-27 21:12:00
  2. Green Housing Development in the San Francisco Bay Area
    by Matthew E. Kahn in Environmental and Urban Economics on 2010-06-03 17:01:00
  3. Professor Mitchell Moss Debates Matthew Broderick Over the Future of NYU's Expansion Plans
    by Matthew Kahn in Environmental and Urban Economics on 2012-07-01 17:39:00
  4. Some Links for Today
    by Matthew E. Kahn in Environmental and Urban Economics on 2011-08-20 18:13:00
  5. Center City Job Growth Caused by High Quality of Life Downtown
    by Matthew E. Kahn in Environmental and Urban Economics on 2011-06-08 14:25:00
  6. Ranking Cities
    by Matthew E. Kahn in Environmental and Urban Economics on 2011-05-04 04:14:00
  7. Ed Glaeser's "Triumph of the City" is Published!
    by Matthew E. Kahn in Environmental and Urban Economics on 2011-02-10 15:15:00
  8. The Solution to Pollution is Still Dilution: The Case for Sprawl Rests on Second Hand Smoke in Multi-Family Apartment Housing
    by Matthew E. Kahn in Environmental and Urban Economics on 2010-12-14 00:56:00
  9. Do Liberal Cities Block New Housing Development?
    by Matthew E. Kahn in Environmental and Urban Economics on 2010-11-25 01:53:00
  10. Low Carbon Cities in the U.S and China
    by Matthew Kahn in the reality-based community on 2011-02-26 17:31:17
  11. Journey to the Center of Los Angeles
    by Matthew E. Kahn in Environmental and Urban Economics on 2012-04-27 22:08:00
  12. Some Economics of the Green Partisan Divide
    by Matthew E. Kahn in Legal Planet on 2012-09-03 15:55:52
  13. The Rise of the Low Carbon Consumer City
    by Matthew E. Kahn in Legal Planet on 2013-01-26 20:17:25
  14. My Harvard Business Review Blog Piece on China's Bullet Trains and a History of My Economic Thought About China
    by Matthew Kahn in Environmental and Urban Economics on 2013-04-08 15:50:00
  15. Exploring Green Cities in China
    by Matthew Kahn in Urbanization Project on 2013-04-09 23:17:09
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
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Cited by:
  1. Eichholtz, Piet & Kok, Nils & Quigley, John M., 2010. "The Economics of Green Building," Berkeley Program on Housing and Urban Policy, Working Paper Series qt3k16p2rj, Berkeley Program on Housing and Urban Policy.
  2. Michael I. Cragg & Matthew E. Kahn, 2009. "Carbon Geography: The Political Economy of Congressional Support for Legislation Intended to Mitigate Greenhouse Gas Production," NBER Working Papers 14963, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  3. Gaigné, Carl & Riou, Stéphane & Thisse, Jacques-François, 2011. "Are Compact Cities Environmentally Friendly?," CEPR Discussion Papers 8297, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  4. Strand, Jon & Miller, Sebastian & Siddiqui, Sauleh, 2011. "Infrastructure investments under uncertainty with the possibility of retrofit : theory and simulations," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5516, The World Bank.
  5. Siqi Zheng & Rui Wang & Edward L. Glaeser & Matthew E. Kahn, 2011. "The greenness of China: household carbon dioxide emissions and urban development," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 11(5), pages 761-792, September.
  6. Gaigne, Carl & Riou, Stephane & Thisse, Jacques-Francois, 2012. "Are Compact Cities Environmentally (and Socially) Desirable?," Working Papers 121692, University of Laval, Center for Research on the Economics of the Environment, Agri-food, Transports and Energy (CREATE).
  7. Jukka Heinonen & Antti Säynäjoki & Seppo Junnila, 2011. "A Longitudinal Study on the Carbon Emissions of a New Residential Development," Sustainability, MDPI, Open Access Journal, vol. 3(8), pages 1170-1189, August.
  8. Bi, Jun & Zhang, Rongrong & Wang, Haikun & Liu, Miaomiao & Wu, Yi, 2011. "The benchmarks of carbon emissions and policy implications for China's cities: Case of Nanjing," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(9), pages 4785-4794, September.
  9. Miquel- Àngel Garcia-López & Adelheid Holl & Elisabet Viladecans-Marsal, 2013. "Suburbanization and highways: when the romans, the bourbons and the first cars still shape Spanish cities," Working Papers 2013/5, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
  10. David Albouy, 2009. "What Are Cities Worth? Land Rents, Local Productivity, and the Capitalization of Amenity Values," NBER Working Papers 14981, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  11. Matthew E. Kahn, 2011. "Urban Policy Effects on Carbon Mitigation," NBER Chapters, in: The Design and Implementation of US Climate Policy, pages 259-267 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  12. Brounen, Dirk & Kok, Nils, 2011. "On the economics of energy labels in the housing market," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 166-179, September.
  13. Felix Creutzig, 2012. "Avoiding Carbon Lock-In: Policy Options for Advancing Structural Change," Working Papers 1, Department of Climate Change Economics, TU Berlin, revised Feb 2012.
  14. Sophie Legras & Jean Cavailhès, . "Urban form and sustainable development," INRA UMR CESAER Working Papers 2012/5, INRA UMR CESAER, Centre d’Economie et Sociologie appliquées à l’Agriculture et aux Espaces Ruraux.
  15. Madalina DOCIU & Anca DUNARINTU & Ana Maria CALIN, 2012. "Driving Forces For Urban Design And Cities Functionality," Business Excellence and Management, Faculty of Management, Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania, vol. 2(1), pages 71-76, March.
  16. Michael Duncan, 2011. "The cost saving potential of carsharing in a US context," Transportation, Springer, vol. 38(2), pages 363-382, March.

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