Cities, area and transport energy

Abstract

Energy and sustainability for cities have been a continuing topic of interest for many years with a particular focus on transport and land use parameters. There has been considerable investigation into the relationships between urban form and transport energy use. Some conflict between researchers has resulted. Much of the discussion surrounds ratio parameters such as energy use per capita and persons per area, and the validity of these relationships. This paper demonstrates a more fundamental relationship which directly links total transport energy use and city area. Six data sets are used to demonstrate this important relationship. The data includes cities in various locations all over the world for both developing and developed cities. Data for four separate decades provides separate relationships allowing interpretation of changes over time. The basic relationship shows that transport energy use is directly related to city area and is relatively independent of population density. It is also shown that while simple, this relationship is more important than common relationships between density and transport energy use per capita. The relativity between the energy-area relationship and the per capita energy use-city density relationship are also described. The implications of the relationship are discussed and the possible consequences for government transport and land use policy are described.

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