Low-carbon Cities

[018] Examining the relationship between urban compactness and Carbon emissions: In case of South Korea

Hyewon Yoon, Mijin Choo, Dong Keun Yoon

キーワード：Urban form, Carbon emissions, Centrality, Continuity

An urbanization has a strong relation with growing carbon emission, causing attempt to reduce carbon emissions through a “compact city” which is compressed and efficiently reorganized urban space. Previous studies shows that compact city have both negative and positive effects on energy use and CO2 emission. The objective of this study is to analyze the effect of urban compactness characteristics on carbon emission in South Korea. In this study, the influence relationship between urban compactness and carbon emission per sector(total, transportation, and building) was analyzed through spatial regression for 74 cities in metropolitan region. We measured urban compactness as population size, land use mix, and urban form consisted of centrality and continuity. We found that population size, and land use mix have considerable effect on whole sector of carbon emissions. In the case of urban form, there was no significant effect on the total carbon emission, but the transportation sector showed a negative relationship with continuity and the building sector also showed a negative relationship with centrality. In the case of continuity, the results were similar to those of previous studies showing that energy use and carbon emissions in transport and transportation sectors increase in multi-nuclear cities. Centrality increased carbon emissions in the building sector as the urbanization area of the city is concentrated in the center. This is contrary to previous studies that urban compactness will increase the green area and lower the temperature of cities, but it is judged that the above conclusion has been reached because domestic cities do not secure green areas emphasized in the theory of compact city. These results will help future urban planning and policy establishment as an indicator to confirm the pattern change (Centrality, and continuity) of the urban growth process.