Urban sprawl and climate change: A statistical exploration of cause and effect, with policy options for the EU

This study provides a brief evaluation of the relationship between trends in transport emissions and urban land-use by analysing correlation between transport CO2 emissions data, GDP and population data with land-use change data from the CORINE database for EU Member States between 1990 and 2000.It concludes that the correlation between transport CO2 emissions and the increase of artificial land area is much stronger than the correlation between CO2 emissions and GDP or population data. The paper argues that this correlation is a strong justification for using land-use based policies to reduce CO2 emissions.