IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v11y2019i8p2352-d224306.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Right-Sizing Cities for Maximum Power: Urban Form Parameters for New York City and the Greater Philadelphia Region

Author

Listed:
  • Jae Min Lee

    (School of Architecture, University of Ulsan, Ulsan 44610, Korea)

  • William Braham

    (Department of Architecture, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA)

Abstract

This paper examines the urban form parameters in theories and ideas related to the urbanizing world. Adopting emergy (spelled with an “m”) synthesis, we studied New York City and the Greater Philadelphia region to determine the appropriate urban form, including building height, development density, bulkiness, and transportation. The European and North American mid-rise urban block is an effective settlement type for reducing per capita emergy in construction and building operations. Buildings over 40 stories with a development density exceeding a floor area ratio of 5 tend to show higher emergy investments per person. Large and bulky buildings with low surface-area-to-volume ratios that reside on the periphery of cities consume a significant amount of energy due to conditioning building space and the increased transportation needs for commuters.

Suggested Citation

  • Jae Min Lee & William Braham, 2019. "Right-Sizing Cities for Maximum Power: Urban Form Parameters for New York City and the Greater Philadelphia Region," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(8), pages 1-17, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:8:p:2352-:d:224306
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/8/2352/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/8/2352/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Frans M. Dieleman & Martin Dijst & Guillaume Burghouwt, 2002. "Urban Form and Travel Behaviour: Micro-level Household Attributes and Residential Context," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 39(3), pages 507-527, March.
    2. Reid Ewing & Fang Rong, 2008. "The impact of urban form on U.S. residential energy use," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(1), pages 1-30, January.
    3. Lee, Jae Min & Braham, William W., 2017. "Building emergy analysis of Manhattan: Density parameters for high-density and high-rise developments," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 363(C), pages 157-171.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Daniel Bergquist & Daniela Garcia-Caro & Sofie Joosse & Madeleine Granvik & Felix Peniche, 2020. "The Sustainability of Living in a “Green” Urban District: An Emergy Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(14), pages 1-20, July.
    2. Teresa Santos & Raquel Deus & Jorge Rocha & José António Tenedório, 2021. "Assessing Sustainable Urban Development Trends in a Dynamic Tourist Coastal Area Using 3D Spatial Indicators," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(16), pages 1-22, August.
    3. Ling Yang & Lin Wang, 2022. "An Improved Emergy Analysis of the Environmental and Economic Benefits of Reclaimed Water Reuse System," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(9), pages 1-12, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Silva, Mafalda C. & Horta, Isabel M. & Leal, Vítor & Oliveira, Vítor, 2017. "A spatially-explicit methodological framework based on neural networks to assess the effect of urban form on energy demand," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 202(C), pages 386-398.
    2. Li, Jingjing & Kim, Changjoo & Sang, Sunhee, 2018. "Exploring impacts of land use characteristics in residential neighborhood and activity space on non-work travel behaviors," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 141-147.
    3. Estiri, Hossein, 2014. "Building and household X-factors and energy consumption at the residential sector," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 178-184.
    4. Wang, Xueqi & Liu, Gengyuan & Coscieme, Luca & Giannetti, Biagio F. & Hao, Yan & Zhang, Yan & Brown, Mark T., 2019. "Study on the emergy-based thermodynamic geography of the Jing-Jin-Ji region: Combined multivariate statistical data with DMSP-OLS nighttime lights data," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 397(C), pages 1-15.
    5. Jaroslav Burian & Lenka Zajíčková & Igor Ivan & Karel Macků, 2018. "Attitudes and Motivation to Use Public or Individual Transport: A Case Study of Two Middle-Sized Cities," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 7(6), pages 1-25, May.
    6. Zhang, Junyi & Teng, Fei & Zhou, Shaojie, 2020. "The structural changes and determinants of household energy choices and energy consumption in urban China: Addressing the role of building type," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    7. Bereitschaft, Bradley, 2020. "Gentrification and the evolution of commuting behavior within America's urban cores, 2000–2015," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    8. Andrea CIRILLI & Paolo VENERI, 2010. "Spatial Structure and CO2 Emissions Due to Commuting: an Analysis on Italian Urban Areas," Working Papers 353, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    9. Van Acker, Veronique & Witlox, Frank, 2010. "Car ownership as a mediating variable in car travel behaviour research using a structural equation modelling approach to identify its dual relationship," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 65-74.
    10. Hairuo Wang & Yexin Liu & Junxue Zhang & He Zhang & Li Huang & Dan Xu & Chunxia Zhang, 2022. "Sustainability Investigation in the Building Cement Production System Based on the LCA-Emergy Method," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(24), pages 1-22, December.
    11. Nicolas, Jean-Pierre & Pelé, Nicolas, 2017. "Measuring trends in household expenditures for daily mobility. The case in Lyon, France, between 1995 and 2015," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 82-92.
    12. Liu, Xiaochen & Sweeney, John, 2012. "Modelling the impact of urban form on household energy demand and related CO2 emissions in the Greater Dublin Region," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 359-369.
    13. Elldér, Erik, 2014. "Residential location and daily travel distances: the influence of trip purpose," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 121-130.
    14. Rubin, Ori & Bertolini, Luca, 2016. "Social and environmental sustainability of travelling within family networks," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 72-80.
    15. Fang, Kevin & Volker, Jamey, 2017. "Cutting Greenhouse Gas Emissions Is Only the Beginning: A Literature Review of the Co-Benefits of Reducing Vehicle Miles Traveled," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt4h5494vr, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    16. Saeed Ghavidelfar & Asaad Y. Shamseldin & Bruce W. Melville, 2017. "Future implications of urban intensification on residential water demand," Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 60(10), pages 1809-1824, October.
    17. Hong, Jinhyun & Thakuriah, Piyushimita Vonu, 2018. "Examining the relationship between different urbanization settings, smartphone use to access the Internet and trip frequencies," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 11-18.
    18. Philipp Rode & Alexandra Gomes & Muhammad Adeel & Fizzah Sajjad & Andreas Koch & Syed Monjur Murshed, 2020. "Between Abundance and Constraints: The Natural Resource Equation of Asia’s Diverging, Higher-Income City Models," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(11), pages 1-33, October.
    19. Böcker, Lars & Prillwitz, Jan & Dijst, Martin, 2013. "Climate change impacts on mode choices and travelled distances: a comparison of present with 2050 weather conditions for the Randstad Holland," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 176-185.
    20. Minghai Luo & Sixian Qin & Haoxue Chang & Anqi Zhang, 2019. "Disaggregation Method of Carbon Emission: A Case Study in Wuhan, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-17, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:8:p:2352-:d:224306. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.