Influences and pathways of urban form and lifestyle on carbon emission reduction
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-1-2022
Abstract
Urban areas experience high carbon emissions, impeding sustainable development, and causing global environmental changes. Low-carbon planning and lifestyle have the co-benefit of reducing carbon emissions and mediating environmental threats. However, the relationship among carbon emissions, urban form, and lifestyle remains unclear, limiting low-carbon urban and societal development. Thus, the objective of this study was to simultaneously clarify the direct and indirect influences and pathways of lifestyle (i.e., expenditures on diet, housing, transport, and entertainment) and urban form characteristics (i.e., dispersion, patch area, fragmentation, and aggregation of building patches) on carbon emissions, and identify vital factors for mitigating carbon emissions. Moreover, a partial least squares model was established and analyzed using urban-scale data from 352 townships in Taiwan, which was used at novel spatial scales. The empirical results demonstrate that maximizing the building patch area and minimizing the dispersion, fragmentation, and aggregation of building patches can reduce carbon emissions. Furthermore, minimizing expenditures on diet, housing, transport, and entertainment would have a similar effect. The findings established that proper policies for lifestyle and urban form can reduce carbon emissions and serve as useful strategies for developing low-carbon societies and cities.
Keywords
Landscape metrics, Sustainable urban planning, Low-carbon city, Built environment, Household expenditure, Carbon dioxide
Divisions
ocean
Funders
Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No: 132C35KYSB20200007 & 2019TW2ZA0001),Ministry of Science and Technology, China (Grant No: RW2019TW006),National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Grant No: 42007418),Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (Grant No: MOST 110-2621-M-035-001),Universiti Malaya, RU Grant (Grant No: TU001H-2018),FIO-UM Joint Centre of Marine Science and Technology
Publication Title
Urban Climate
Volume
46
Publisher
Elsevier
Publisher Location
RADARWEG 29, 1043 NX AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS