Today@Dal

From The Atlantic:

Blaming the suburbs for harming the environment sometimes seems as simple as adding low-density living to single-occupancy driving. But studies of greenhouse gas emissions have come out surprisingly mixed. Some researchers find that suburbs contribute more damage to the climate than cities, but many see cities as the biggest total (if not per capita) contributors. Still others fail to find any strong connection between energy use and urban form.

Now a group of Canadian researchers would like to remind us not to leave one area out of the conversation: the exurbs.

Most energy studies estimate greenhouse gas contributions of a broad region. The new work, led by Jeffrey Wilson of Dalhousie University in Canada, used a unique data method to isolate the housing and transportation emissions of 1,920 individuals in the Halifax region of Nova Scotia. In an upcoming issue of Energy Policy, Wilson and collaborators report that each person in the exurbs, on average, was responsible for more emissions than someone from the suburbs or the inner city.

Read the rest of this article at The Atlantic's website.