Role of urban planning in encouraging more sustainable lifestyles

Where urban planning is used to promote environmental sustainability, it has traditionally focused on reducing emissions from housing and traffic. However, cities are increasingly being recognized as consumption centers of the global economy, as the origin of demand, and as the point of termination for complex economic supply chains. Based on results produced by a hybrid life-cycle assessment model, which attributed the end-to-end emissions of supply chains to end users, consumption that is not related to housing or ground transportation was found to account for 30% of regional greenhouse gas emissions on average. In highly urbanized areas, the figure was even higher, at 45%. Furthermore, a literature review indicated that most environmental assessment tools for local city-level and subcity-level urban planning are neither able to identify the environmental impacts of personal consumption nor the relationships between urban structures and personal consumption. Thus, this study concludes that there is an apparent gap between the needs and the means of the regional environmental management of urban areas.