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Compact urban form and residential energy use

A broad literature investigates the impact of urban form and transport energy use, clearly demonstrating the benefits of compactness for lowering energy use and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Myriad qualifications apply, of course, highlighting the importance of street accessibility and job-housing balance (e.g. Ewing and Cervero, 2010).

Ewing and Rong (2010) finally explored the other side of the story: the impact of urban form on residential energy use, relying on US data. Intuitively, sprawled residences have higher space requirement and need more energy for heating. The authors show that single-family detached housing consumes 54% more energy for heating and 26% more energy for cooling than otherwise comparable multi-family housing. With equal income, black, Hispanic and Asian household are more likely to live in multifamily housing than white households do. Multifamily housing is highly correlated with compactness.

The Urban Heat Island effect introduces another dimension. Compact neighborhoods are warmer than sprawled neighborhoods, causing less heating demand but higher cooling demand. The less-heating effect dominates in most regions in the US. The exception is the Sunbelt, where higher temperatures require higher additional cooling demand, creating an energy penalty for more compact housing. With global warming, this energy penalty is likely to increase.

Altogether the housing effect clearly dominates the energy balance. An average household in a compact neighborhood (one standard deviation above mean) consumes 20% less energy than the average household in a sprawled neighborhood (one standard deviation below mean). Let us look forward to seeing other detailed studies on this issue, also from other parts of the world. 

Posted by Felix Creutzig on November 24, 2011 2:15 PM | Permalink