Residential planning, driver mobility and CO₂ emission: a microscopic look at Borlänge in Sweden

ABSTRACT

In a city there are hotspots that attract citizens, and most of the transportation arises when citizens move between their residence and primary destinations (i.e. hotspots). However, an ex ante evaluation of energy-efficient mobility and urban residential planning has seldom been conducted. Therefore, this paper proposes an ex ante evaluation method to quantify the impacts, in terms of CO₂ emissions induced by intra-urban car mobility, of residential plans for various urban areas. The method is illustrated in a case study of a Swedish midsize city, which is presently preoccupied with urban planning of new residential areas in response to substantial population growth due to immigration. In general, CO₂ emissions increase from the continued urban core area (CUCA), to the sub-polycentric area (SPA), to the edge urbanization area (EUA), where CO₂ emission of EUA is twice that of the CUCA. The average travel distances also increase in the same pattern, though the relative increase is more than four times. Apartment buildings could be more effective in meeting residential needs and mitigating CO₂ emissions than dispersed single-family houses.

KEYWORDS:

• Ex ante evaluation
• GPS-tracking data
• spatial distribution
• urban form

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We regard the starting point of a trip as the origin, and the end point of the trip as the destination.

2. The three coefficients in the model were derived from experiments by testing real-time traffic conditions on urban roads which have been directly applied in various scenarios and found to be suitable for estimating CO₂ emissions (Carling et al., 2013; Zhang and Zhu, 2015).

3. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Population_and_population_change_statistics.

4. A truncation is applied for the estimate of the middle speed; if the speed profile implied that the maximum speed exceeds the speed limit plus 30 km/h, then we trim this one as set to be the speed limit plus 30 km/h. For road segments that have no recordings, the speed limit is assigned to the middle position.

5. Unsurprisingly, a great deal of car stops takes place in the residential areas as people return to their homes. In the analysis, residential areas are not considered as destinations, albeit some mobility in a city could be attributed to residents visiting other residents.

6. http://www.itsdalarna.se/sv/sailor, accessed at 2017-03-16.