Journal
SUSTAINABLE CITIES AND SOCIETY
Volume 41, Issue -, Pages 711-727Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.scs.2018.06.023
Keywords
Cities and climate change; Decarbonization; Urban planning policy; Urban climate change mitigation; Climate policy; Buildings; Transportation; Demand-side measures; Regional planning; Utilities
Categories
Funding
- University of Texas at Austin's Energy Institute
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This study reviews the research literature's recommendations on which policies a city can pursue to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Using these recommendations, we develop a multi-parameter, analytic scoring rubric for quantifying the comprehensiveness of a city's climate action policy plans. The scoring rubric is used to assess the plans of 29 major U.S. cities revealing trends about urban climate policy in the United States. Most of these plans strongly pursue policies aimed at building quality, mass transit, non-motorized transport, and independence from automobiles. However, the general absence of dense development and parking restriction policies from U.S. cities' climate action plans impedes their ability to leverage those strengths to achieve broad strategies that reduce building energy consumption and shift transportation modes. Moreover, low-density, high-population, high-emitting cities in energy-intensive climates - places that need greenhouse gas reductions the most - are more likely to have deficient climate action plans. These results suggest that many U.S. cities' climate action plans lack the cohesiveness to make them fully successful. Consequently, unless they reevaluate their climate action plans, many U.S. cities might struggle to achieve the broader greenhouse gas reduction strategies needed to significantly contribute to global climate change mitigation.
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