Later this week, the Antiplanner will review The Triumph of the City, a new book by Harvard economist Edward Glaeser. But because a crucial part of that book is based on a working paper written by Glaeser and UCLA economist Matthew Kahn, I first want to review that paper.
Titled “The Greenness of Cities: Carbon Dioxide Emissions and Urban Development,” the paper attempts to estimate household CO2 emissions from 66 major urban areas. The paper concludes that some urban areas produce substantially less emissions per household and also that suburban emissions are larger than central city emissions, especially in the case of older cities such as New York.
