Is Compact Growth Good for Air Quality?

This paper, which is part of a study sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on the impact of land use and transportation on future air quality, assesses the effectiveness of compact growth in improving air quality at a geographic scale compatible with secondary pollution formation and transport and over a planning horizon sufficient to capture the longer-term benefits of regional land use change. Future air quality is associated with alternative land development scenarios through the integration of three separate and previously unrelated modeling components. These components consist of a set of standard population projection techniques, a household vehicle travel activity framework, and a mobile source emissions model developed by the EPA. The results suggest that the median elasticity of vehicle travel with respect to density change over time to be -0.35, suggesting metropolitan areas can expect a 10% increase in population density to be associated with a 3.5% reduction in household vehicle travel and emissions. Compactness was associated with greater reductions in vehicle travel than in previous studies, which suggests land use change can play a measurable role in improving regional air quality over time. In addition, vehicle elasticities derived for urban and suburban census tracts across the 11 metro regions suggest density increments within urban zones (-0.43) to be more than twice as effective in reducing vehicle travel and emissions as density increments within suburban zones (-0.19). A comment on this paper appears on pp 418-420 of this issue.

• Record URL:
  • https://doi.org/10.1080/01944360708978521
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/oclc/4626214
• Authors:
  • Stone Jr, Brian
  • Mednick, Adam C
  • Holloway, Tracey
  • Spak, Scott N
• Publication Date: 2007

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Print
• Features: Figures; References;
• Pagination: pp 404-418
• Serial:
  • Journal of the American Planning Association
  • Volume: 73
  • Issue Number: 4
  • Publisher: American Planning Association
  • ISSN: 0194-4363
  • Serial URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjpa20/current

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Air quality; Automobile travel; Land use; Land use models; Land use planning; Metropolitan areas; Pollutants; Population density; Population growth; Real estate development; Smart growth; Suburbs; Travel behavior; Urban areas
• Identifier Terms: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
• Subject Areas: Energy; Environment; Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; I15: Environment; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01084518
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Jan 28 2008 8:08AM