Life-Cycle Energy Implications of Downtown High-Rise vs. Suburban Low-Rise Living: An Overview and Quantitative Case Study for Chicago

Du, Peng; Wood, Antony; Stephens, Brent; Song, Xiaoyu

doi:10.3390/buildings5031003

Cited by 36 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Specifically, Perkins et al [7] used site energy instead of source energy, which could significantly lower their BOE value as well as the share of the total OE since electricity has a high primary energy conversion factor (typically~3). Further, our estimates of BOE as a fraction of total OE are similar to those reported in Fuller et al and Du et al [11,12].…”

Section: Comparison To Previous Studiessupporting

confidence: 90%

“…This result is in conflict with some early studies such as Norman et al [3], Perkins et al [7], and Stephan et al [10], in which OE for urban high density living was found to be 55%, 24%, and 27% lower than in suburban low density living on a per-person basis, respectively. However, these results are generally in line with other studies such as Fuller et al and Du et al [11,12]. Fuller et al [11] found that city-center living consumed approximately 33% more than inner-suburban low-density living.…”

Section: Comparison To Previous Studiessupporting

confidence: 89%

“…Similarly, the average annual source OE for all modes of transportation was estimated to be 31.4 GJ/person/year in Oak Park, which was approximately 1.6 times greater than in the downtown Chicago high-rise residences at 19.9 GJ/person/year. Clearly, residents in the suburban low-rise cases studies herein used much more operational TOE than residents in the downtown high-rise cases, primarily because of greater per-person and per-household automobile travel, which is consistent with most previous literature [3,7,12]. Table 9 summarizes the average annual source OE requirements of the supporting transportation infrastructure (i.e., for automobile, bus, local CTA train, and regional Metra train travel) estimated for downtown high-rise and suburban low-rise residences on both a per-household and a per-person basis.…”

Section: Travel Behavior Analysissupporting

confidence: 83%

“…Fuller et al [11] found that city-center living consumed approximately 33% more than inner-suburban low-density living. Similarly, Du et al [12] found that downtown high-rise living (using only public data sources and data from the existing literature) consumed approximately 34% more than suburban low-rise living. Table 11 summarizes the OE results in these previous studies in more detail.…”

Section: Comparison To Previous Studiesmentioning

confidence: 95%

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Empirical Operational Energy Analysis of Downtown High-Rise vs. Suburban Low-Rise Lifestyles: A Chicago Case Study

Wood

Stephens

2016

Energies

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Abstract:It is widely accepted that the concentration of people living in high-density city centers offers greater operational energy efficiency and lower greenhouse gas emissions than lower-density expanded suburbs. The prevailing assumption is that lower-density suburbs are dominated by larger low-rise buildings that have higher building energy use requirements and greater per-person automobile travel requirements than high-density city centers dominated by medium-and high-rise buildings located in close proximity to a variety of public transit systems. However, very few studies to date have utilized empirical data at an individual household scale to evaluate differences in the operational energy (OE) footprints for both building and transportation energy end-uses between high-rise urban and low-rise suburban households. Therefore, this work collects empirical data on building and transportation OE consumption by individuals and households living in two economically similar groups: existing high-rise residential buildings in downtown Chicago, IL, USA and existing low-rise residential buildings in suburban Oak Park, IL, USA. Data were collected from over 500 households via an online survey. We considered the following components of residential living: (1) building OE (BOE), which includes electricity and/or natural gas use for all building energy end-uses; and (2) transportation OE (TOE), which includes the OE for multiple modes of transportation (i.e., automobile, bus, subway, regional train, etc.) based on average travel behavior in each location, as well as the OE for supporting transportation infrastructure. We estimate that downtown high-rise living in this sample of residences in Chicago, IL accounts for approximately 427 GJ of primary OE per household per year, on average, which was 14% lower than the average for suburban low-rise living in the Oak Park, IL homes (499 GJ per household per year). However, on a per-person basis, downtown high-rise living accounts for approximately 246 GJ of primary OE per person per year, which was approximately 61% higher than suburban low-rise living (153 GJ per person per year). In both building types, building OE was the single largest contributor to total OE use. This study accurately captured the energy requirements associated with realistic behaviors and lifestyles of occupants of both low-rise suburban and high-rise urban households, and found that building OE dominates the total OE, which suggests that efforts to reduce building OE should be given high priority in building design and management as well as urban planning.

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Section: Comparison To Previous Studiessupporting

confidence: 90%

Section: Comparison To Previous Studiessupporting

confidence: 89%

Section: Travel Behavior Analysissupporting

confidence: 83%

Section: Comparison To Previous Studiesmentioning

confidence: 95%

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Empirical Operational Energy Analysis of Downtown High-Rise vs. Suburban Low-Rise Lifestyles: A Chicago Case Study

Wood

Stephens

2016

Energies

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“…From the perspective of energy use and carbon emissions, there is generally support for higher density urban living [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. At the same time, from a social perspective, there has been a long-standing argument that people living in dense urban cities may have a lower quality of life (QoL) and are less happy or less satisfied with their lives than those living in the suburbs, based on city and regional data sets [11][12][13][14][15][16][17].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life Satisfaction of Downtown High-Rise vs. Suburban Low-Rise Living: A Chicago Case Study

Wood

Ditchman

et al. 2017

Sustainability

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There has been a long-standing debate about whether urban living is more or less sustainable than suburban living, and quality of life (QoL) is one of several key measures of the social sustainability of residential living. However, to our knowledge, no study to date has examined life satisfaction among residents of downtown high-rise living compared to residents living in suburban low-rise housing. Further, very few studies have utilized building or neighborhood-scale data sets to evaluate residents' life satisfaction, and even fewer have controlled for both individual and household-level variables such as gender, age, household size, annual income, and length of residence, to evaluate residents' life satisfaction across different living scenarios. Therefore, the goal of this study was to investigate residents' satisfaction with their place of residence as well as overall life in general via surveys of individuals living in existing high-rise residential buildings in downtown Chicago, IL, and in existing low-rise residential buildings in suburban Oak Park, IL. Over 1500 individuals were contacted directly, resulting in over 500 responses. The number of fully completed responses for this study was 177, including 94 from residents of four downtown high-rise buildings and 83 from residents in suburban low-rise homes. Residents living in downtown high-rise buildings had significantly higher life satisfaction scores than residents living in suburban low-rise homes when controlling for demographic differences; however, the differences were small, as housing type explained less than 5% of the observed variance in life satisfaction outcomes. The research also evaluated five life satisfaction domains including travel, accessibility, social interaction, safety, and overall residential environment (ORE). In all cases, residents of the downtown high-rises reported higher satisfaction levels, although the scores on all these five satisfaction domains reported from both urban scenarios were very high. Moreover, all five satisfaction domains were highly associated with each other, and accessibility and safety were found as the strongest predictors of ORE for individuals.

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Life-Cycle Energy Implications of Downtown High-Rise vs. Suburban Low-Rise Living: An Overview and Quantitative Case Study for Chicago

Cited by 36 publications

References 30 publications

Empirical Operational Energy Analysis of Downtown High-Rise vs. Suburban Low-Rise Lifestyles: A Chicago Case Study

Empirical Operational Energy Analysis of Downtown High-Rise vs. Suburban Low-Rise Lifestyles: A Chicago Case Study

Life Satisfaction of Downtown High-Rise vs. Suburban Low-Rise Living: A Chicago Case Study

High rise office building makeovers—Exploiting architectural and engineering factors in designing sustainable buildings in different climate zones

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