Cities and Energy

As of the 2010 Census 80.7 percent of U.S. residents lived in urban areas according to the Census Bureau.  The U.S. has experienced a long trend of urbanization as have other developed countries and similar patterns are observed in developing countries.  In fact more than half of the world's 7 billion people now live in urban areas.

This has important implications for energy use.  Ed Glaeser, an economist at Harvard, has studied this issue and shown that households in urban areas use less energy and therefore have lower carbon emissions.  In addition to this, within urban areas households that live in the central city are more efficient compared with those in suburban areas.  The research examines four sources of energy and emissions: home heating, electricity, driving, and public transportation.  The main drivers of the findings are the facts that urban households are characterized by smaller living spaces, higher population densities, and less reliance on the automobile.

The geography of economic and residential activity is an important part of understanding our energy use.  As the world continues to urbanize it is important to understand how this could influence energy use patterns across the globe.  The chart below from the UN provides a snapshot of the global urbanization trend.