The Heterogeneous Effects of Urban Form on CO2 Emissions: An Empirical Analysis of 255 Cities in China

Abstract

Urban form is closely related to CO2 emissions and the accurate estimation of the impact of urban form on CO2 emissions plays an important role in tackling climate change caused by the emission of greenhouse gases. In this paper, we quantitatively investigate the effects of urban form on CO2 emission and its efficiency from three perspectives: urban expansion, compactness, and complexity. By using panel quantile regression with fixed effects, we show that: (1) The estimation results about the relationship between urban form and CO2 emission and its efficiency are consistent with the literature. (2) The partial effects of urban form without controlling for socioeconomic factors are heterogeneous throughout the conditional distribution of CO2 emission and its efficiency. (3) Taking into consideration that the partial effects of urban form on CO2 emission and its efficiency might depend on the magnitude of socioeconomic factors, we include interaction terms into our model and find that the interaction effects between socioeconomic factors and urban form are heterogeneous across cities with different levels of CO2 emission and its efficiency. Our empirical findings shed light on the optimization of urban form in improving the CO2 emission efficiency, providing policy makers with effective ways of reducing CO2 emissions across cities with different levels of CO2 emissions.

Exploring the Differentiated Impact of Urban Spatial Form on Carbon Emissions: Evidence from Chinese Cities

“…In general, relevant studies have explored the impact of urban spatial form on carbon emissions from two main perspectives: urban sprawl and urban compactness. The expansion of construction land and the conversion of agricultural land is a general trend of urban land-use change, and urban expansion profoundly affects urban spatial form [10]. Sprawling and low-density development greatly impacts the environment [11], and curbing urban sprawl is essential to tackling climate change [12].…”

Smart Land Use Planning: New Theories, New Tools and New Practice

“…Now, we will provide an overview of the content included in the collected papers for this issue. Jia et al (2023) focused on the issue of urban form changes in land use planning (Appendix A). Using the Carbon Emission Accounts and Datasets (CEADs) and studying 255 cities in China, they applied a fixed-effects panel quantile regression model to examine the heterogeneous effects of urban form on CO 2 emissions and its efficiency from three perspectives: urban expansion, urban compactness, and urban complexity.…”