More than half the world’s population lives in cities. There is clearly a significant benefit to living in a large permanent settlement with many other humans–the prospect of housing, work, theatres and restaurants, potential friends and mates, to name just a few.
But is living in a large city greener than living in a small one? Today we get an answer thanks to the work of Erneson Oliveira and pals at the Federal University of Ceará in Brazil. These guys have analysed the CO2 emissions from every square 10 km in the US, as determined by study called the Vulcan project from Arizona State University. And they use this to work out the amount of carbon dioxide generated by its cities. They then ranked cities by size to see how the CO2 emissions scale.
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To read the original article: Do Large Cities Produce More CO2 Per Capita Than Small Ones? | MIT Technology Review
