The Effects of Urban Form on Ambient Air Pollution and Public Health Risk: A Case Study in Raleigh, North Carolina

Abstract

Since motor vehicles are a major air pollution source, urban designs that decrease private automobile use could improve air quality and decrease air pollution health risks. Yet, the relationships among urban form, air quality, and health are complex and not fully understood. To explore these relationships, we model the effects of three alternative development scenarios on annual average fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations in ambient air and associated health risks from PM2.5 exposure in North Carolina’s Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area. We integrate transportation demand, land-use regression, and health risk assessment models to predict air quality and health impacts for three development scenarios: current conditions, compact development, and sprawling development. Compact development slightly decreases (−0.2%) point estimates of regional annual average PM2.5 concentrations, while sprawling development slightly increases (+1%) concentrations. However, point estimates of health impacts are in opposite directions: compact development increases (+39%) and sprawling development decreases (−33%) PM2.5-attributable mortality. Further, compactness increases local variation in PM2.5 concentrations and increases the severity of local air pollution hotspots. Hence, this research suggests that while compact development may improve air quality from a regional perspective, it may also increase the concentration of PM2.5 in local hotspots and increase population exposure to PM2.5. Health effects may be magnified if compact neighborhoods and PM2.5 hotspots are spatially co-located. We conclude that compactness alone is an insufficient means of reducing the public health impacts of transportation emissions in automobile-dependent regions. Rather, additional measures are needed to decrease automobile dependence and the health risks of transportation emissions.

Landscapes for compact cities

“…2 Denser developments also seem to contribute to higher levels of exposure to environmental pollution. 3 Perhaps the most intuitively understood and widely-recognized problem of a compact urban form is that densification is also accompanied by a reduction of open space. The logic is obvious: in a finite land area, more land set aside for buildings and infrastructure, especially under conditions of high land cost, simply means less land for parks, plazas, woodlands, and other forms of green and open spaces in the city.…”

Effects of Urban Forms on Separate Drainage Systems: A Virtual City Perspective

“…Comparing based on sprawl pattern, the compact form will have a positive impact on the reduction of energy consumption, carbon emission [26], and air pollution [27,28]. However, some studies drew a different conclusion, e.g., compact development will increase the concentration of PM2.5 in local hotspots [29]. Among the effects of macroscale urban forms on water systems, the distribution system received some research attention.…”

Disentangling the Complex Effects of Socioeconomic, Climatic, and Urban Form Factors on Air Pollution: A Case Study of China

“…Overall, air pollution and its spatiotemporal patterns are influenced by a number of socioeconomic and environmental factors [6,16,21,22,[24][25][26][27][28]. However, a comprehensive understanding of the underlying drivers of air pollution in China's cities is still lacking from multiple perspectives (air pollutant emissions and concentrations) and time scales (year and season).…”