Is Density, by Nature, Green? Myths and Prospects of City and Climate

Keywords: urban, city, density, climate change, sustainability, green, carbon emissions
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Questions about density and urban life have occupied urban thinkers throughout the long urban century. But they have grown only more pointed along with the intensification of the climate crisis. There is a now well-worn belief – held by practitioners and many researchers, and noted in recent IPCC reports – that dense urban centers are important for urban sustainability, enabling lower greenhouse gas emissions. Urban economists invoke the supposed benefits of density for climate to advocate for the deregulation of land use controls in cities (e.g., Krugman 2022). But is density, by nature, green? Consumption-based carbon footprint studies have shown that income, not density, is the biggest driver of emissions (Jones and Kammen 2014). The issue is even less clear if we consider that urban sustainability, from the perspective of social justice and ecological systems, cannot be reduced to emissions per area or population. How do urban researchers approach the question of how and why density matters? This paper examines the concepts of the city, density, and climate, and brings a climate justice framework to a social and spatial analysis of urban density. It reviews the prevailing understanding of the relationship between city form and emissions, and explores what might be called the socionatural life of urban density. And it conceives of a framework to understand density not as a simple measure of people per area that is assumed to be correlated to a particular emissions outcome, but as a process of urban change.