Recent research has shown that cities produce lower amounts of greenhouse gas emissions than suburbs do, on a per capita basis. The thinking here, broadly speaking, is that dense residential buildings and public transit systems are more energy efficient than large personal dwellings and private transportation modes. According to a new study conducted by a pair of Finnish researchers, this approach is flawed because it fails to account for all emissions related to “consumer behavior.”

Jukka Heinonen and Seppo Junnila of Aalto University in Finland performed a life-cycle comparison of emissions in two metropolitan areas: Helsinki and Tampere. Each area has a dense urban core as well as two surrounding suburban regions. The researchers included typical variables like building and transportation energy use in their analysis, but also added consumption factors such as leisure goods and services.

In both metro areas the researchers found that the urban cores – Helsinki in one, Tampere in the other – finished in between the suburban areas in per capita carbon emissions. That led Heinonen and Junnila to conclude that “there is actually no clear correlation between urban density and the carbon consumption” (full study).

Interestingly, the results show that the type of the urban structure, whether a dense metropolitan core with apartment buildings or a less dense suburban area with primarily detached housing, has quite a small effect on the carbon emissions. Whereas some earlier studies have shown substantial differences between the core and suburbs, no clear pattern between the different types of urban structures was found in this study.

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Photo Caption: Central Helsinki