ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the paths by which urban form influences household sector carbon dioxide emissions in the 125 largest urbanized areas (UAs) in the US It explores individual household carbon emissions from travel and home energy use by processing household surveys, including the census, and quantify spatial structure of urbanized areas in several dimensions beyond a simple population density measure. The chapter examines the effects of urbanized area level urban form on individual household level carbon dioxide emissions, accounting for both transportation and residential energy uses. Connections between urban form and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been studied in the fields of transportation and building energy research. Private vehicle driving is a predominant source of carbon emissions from household travel simply because it is the dominant travel mode. The average household carbon dioxide emissions are considerably lower in UAs of the West Coast and Florida, with good climatic conditions, and Northeastern cities that are transit dependent.
