Forces driving urban greenhouse gas emissions

The contribution of urban areas to global greenhouse gas emissions has received substantial recent attention, in order both to allocate responsibility for climate change and to identify appropriate mitigation responses. The paper summarises these arguments, highlighting the challenges involved in creating an accurate and comparative measure of this. It shows how geography, urban form, and the urban economy influence the emissions from any given city. It then examines the use of ‘production’-based and ‘consumption’-based approaches for measuring emissions, and shows how particular lifestyles can be seen as the underlying drivers for manufacturing, food production, deforestation, and other activities that generate greenhouse gases.

Research highlights▶ Little agreement about contribution of urban areas to global climate change. ▶ Responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions complicated by boundary issues. ▶ Prevailing climate, urban form, and economic activity influence urban emissions. ▶ Underlying drivers of emissions best assessed through consumption-based approaches.