Global warming impact of suburbanization: The case of Sydney

Abstract:Suburbs have naturally become a focal point of carbon mitigation for cities undergoing rapid suburbanization, as is the case in several Australian capital cities and especially in Sydney. This has created a debate... [ view full abstract ]

Abstract:

Suburbs have naturally become a focal point of carbon mitigation for cities undergoing rapid suburbanization, as is the case in several Australian capital cities and especially in Sydney. This has created a debate over which urban form can more effectively lead to a lower-carbon household carbon footprint (CF). Previous suburb-scale studies using economic input-output life cycle assessment at national scale have demonstrated the mitigation potentials in households via urban planning. However, there is a need for suburb-scale multiregional input-output (MRIO) table to model suburb-specific carbon intensity accounting for the heterogeneity of both production and consumption in different suburbs. In this study, we first show household CF breakdowns into 111 sectors at 248 divisions of Greater Sydney by employing a suburb-scale MRIO model. We model the influence of population growth on household CF with a time series of data during 2009-2015, and allocate this to different ethnic groups. The results suggest that residents in the highly dense city core have a comparable CF to residents in disperse outer city suburbs, thus contradicting previous studies supporting the notion that dense city core yields a relative low CF. The residents in the inner city core even have higher transport-related CF on average, due to the purchase of less-driven cars. The ongoing Sydney metropolitan development plan may not be enough to provide a sustainable carbon emissions strategy by increasing the density of suburbs without constraining resident consumption. Governors should take advantage of the sharing economy to change consumption behaviour and reduce product ownership, and also need to direct the investment brought by immigration towards a green economy.