Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change
"Curbing emissions from cars depends on a three-legged stool: improved vehicle efficiency, cleaner fuels, and a reduction in driving," said lead author Reid Ewing, Research Professor at the National Center for Smart Growth, University of Maryland. "The research shows that one of the best ways to reduce vehicle travel is to build places where people can accomplish more with less driving."Depending on several factors, from mix of land uses to pedestrian-friendly design, compact development reduces driving from 20 to 40 percent, and more in some instances, according to the forthcoming book Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change. Typically, Americans living in compact urban neighborhoods where cars are not the only transportation option drive a third fewer miles than those in automobile-oriented suburbs, the researchers found.
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The Three-Legged Stool Needed to Reduce CO2 from Automobiles
Transportation CO2 reduction can be viewed as a three-legged stool, with one leg related to vehicle fuel efficiency, a second to the carbon content of the fuel itself, and a third to the amount of driving or vehicle miles traveled (VMT). Energy and climate policy initiatives at the federal and state levels have pinned their hopes almost exclusively on shoring up the first two legs of the stool, through the development of more efficient vehicles (such as hybrid cars) and lower-carbon fuels (such as biodiesel fuel). Yet a stool cannot stand on only two legs.
As the research compiled in this publication makes clear, technological improvement in vehicles and fuels are likely to be offset by continuing, robust growth in VMT. Since 1980, the number of miles Americans drive has grown three times faster than the U.S. population, and almost twice as fast as vehicle registrations (see Figure 0-1). Average automobile commute times in metropolitan areas have risen steadily over the decades, and many Americans now spend more time commuting than they do vacationing.
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This raises some questions, which this report addresses. Why do we drive so much? Why is the total distance we drive growing so rapidly? And what can be done to alter this trend in a manner that is effective, fair, and economically acceptable?
The growth in driving is due in large part to urban development, or what some refer to as the built environment. Americans drive so much because we have given ourselves little alternative. For 60 years, we have built homes ever farther from workplaces, created schools that are inaccessible except by motor vehicle, and isolated other destinations <a href="http://postcarboncities.net/node/1466">http://postcarboncities.net/node/1466</a>;
<a href="http://postcarboncities.net/files/SGA_GrowingCooler9-18-07small.pdf">http://postcarboncities.net/files/SGA_GrowingCooler9-18-07small.pdf</a>;
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