Chapter 32. Chapter 32: Urbanization and Sustainable Communities

What are the trade-offs associated with cities...?

Interactive Study Guide

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Guiding Question 32.2

What are the trade-offs associated with cities or urban areas?

Why You Should Care

Chances are, if you haven’t been already, you’ll be faced with deciding where to live and start a career. You also probably have a good grasp of the pros and cons of city life. If you lived in the city, you’d probably be closer to work and a more diverse array of entertainment, people, and food. But you’d have to pay more to live there; in fact, you probably couldn’t afford to buy a home. It’s also crowded and could be noisy or polluted. If you lived in the suburbs, you’d have room to move around, but you’d have to do a lot more driving—to get to work, buy food, etc. Many of the environmental pros and cons are readily apparent, too. Living in cities saves land resources and should reduce carbon footprints since you don’t need to drive as much. But large amounts of waste are produced by cities, and disposing of it causes both environmental and social problems. Moreover, cities tend to be hotter than the surrounding countryside. Even the difference of a few degrees can make a huge difference in the environment—even if the hotter weather in cities is only enough to make air conditioners run a few extra minutes each day. Multiply that by millions of homes in a city and it’s a huge problem, especially if the electricity provided for the city is derived from coal. Although city and suburban living both have their drawbacks, the prospects of making city living sustainable are better than the suburbs, so hopefully, the current trends to make cities greener will continue.

Question 32.1

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CO₂ isn't the only greenhouse gas, and each greenhouse gas has a different warming potential in the atmosphere. If you calculated the entire warming potential created by all the greenhouses gases emitted, you could convert that potential to the tons of CO₂ alone it would take to reach it. So although these numbers are measuring CO₂, they actually represent the combined effect of CO₂ plus other greenhouse gases. For now, you can think of the CO₂ equivalent emissions as a way to represent a carbon footprint.

Incidentally, if you were to measure just CO₂ produced for energy and construction (making concrete releases CO₂) but not CO₂ and other gases emitted from other sources, like land clearing, China comes out slightly ahead of the United States.

Question 32.2

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Question 32.3

+1BBVEWRr3fT//c42hK4yBCPkcEUqFh7dPcKZ52CnogVPiZ01WCtWHesEUv+p2ncCfBijyhsfC1AkRxGvbYOCrRP/Qzf7JtaENogL68itG0NH9+dyJlhmLivddkJY9RAkqnO9QqMfk/Ve91hmIA6sMTK6EN9JbRtZX+uDwB2hVkNq7uy5J4m9CYU6Ia34VYvsrne3kZjatQKffa9tDyJ5X7eFFT3jQ0XyBeH+Y0us2leWgUGz+uR29h3oa50rnsZsMd/YxvIM1z/3KbPNfxjo/wQo119+A2StQfWc85l0SlWpDYT7JtOgo3uAnSfgYp6

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Question 32.4

xbdzneKyCvjC+SfMyHfO8VWZR+gwlMHmX8HHI+5nzUEFIq9kuPqqTmjht/UnGesDqAck1MDsjh4NJjg2AcuWx4ohcJKiObl0VC/eUItNk0ibJon52WntdYyEdpPqhwPPB0UEXfbdt5wA6IKtEdtcWyGLWFp7xQV6sMIl5jDEygmxF63auhM4uv0tmsDRnyMcuMlAgy+y6J8GpE1CgIpkImMQ3JMk/6kUl3+Hz8qoeBS4+wFVGlKQgdDtLHYsc4/P0ClI0Ynr9z/AQwoo53EyX5cYs7fNXHiejE4/Yqs4FigjAdJfwIopQm38eYfVFIooKP6y3tYPYn+1qllUG4CGi7HI1F7qPZ6QnoB1v8IJRU7C1LYwGepfB5P3OZMewcjS

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Per capita is per person, so the numbers refer to tons of carbon emitted per person each year, regardless of whether the person is in a city.

Question 32.5

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999

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Question 32.6

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The correct answer is to multiply the average per capita footprint by the total population. Remember that per capita means per person, so multiplying the carbon emitted per person by the number of people in the country should approximate the total carbon emitted by that country.

Question 32.7

Nation	Approximate Population in 2012*	Carbon Footprint in Tons of Carbon per Year
Spain	47,000,000	RItqJKsFGYAAt4Pgf5HB4CjwXunXjq9YhL/RRg==
United Kingdom	63,000,000	CI73aVBRMldJ5KNWKfwjOQcWtcZF9szyEzfY1Q==
United States	314,000,000	sXkDTMGhRQTmYKbDIiT0+wfaigdMoBKRPuRAAg==
Brazil	206,000,000_206000000	uEHMKtBdaMvtWfOdVE6xqyLOCOY=
Japan	127,000,000	AN2B9ji4bIu8QMKu02tUcCu0rbYfPOX6tA3D5Q==
China	1,343,000,000	2xP25UhSm0o5AHF3jWAgXtFZ8X6ZYIUM1QLa6Q==

*As found in the United States CIA World Factbook; rounded to the nearest million people.

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Question 32.8

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999

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Please note that this is true based on the way carbon footprint is measured here (remember that the CO₂ equivalent emissions convert several other greenhouse gases emissions into one number). If you were to measure just CO₂ produced for energy and construction (making concrete releases CO₂) but not CO₂ and other gases emitted from other sources, like land clearing, China comes out slightly ahead of the United States. Measuring CO₂ equivalent emissions is a more comprehensive way to estimate how much impact a person or country has on increasing the greenhouse effect, so it's fair to say that the United States is slightly ahead of China in contributing to global climate change.

Incorrect.

Question 32.9

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999

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Question 32.10

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An average has to be within the range of a set of numbers; so, some people must emit more than the average. You could therefore expect that, in at least some regions, suburbanites and exurbanites emit more than the national average.

Question 32.11

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999

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Question 32.12

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Question 32.13

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999

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Question 32.14

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Question 32.15

Relative to suburbs and rural areas, cities have:

5eLjcO3kzGriXKVp4UtVjA== traffic congestion.

IjgrRM/WKsqycMUxjJsBog== green space.

5eLjcO3kzGriXKVp4UtVjA== environmentally caused illness.

5eLjcO3kzGriXKVp4UtVjA== concentration of waste to be disposed of.

5eLjcO3kzGriXKVp4UtVjA== violence.

AHWsqiHalGfaSk2fXLaLtlYJA0s= transportation options.

wqjJUblyMeknVkP2nvD6YIaWQpU= ecological impact per person.

5eLjcO3kzGriXKVp4UtVjA== effective zoning ordinances (usually).

cpLIWcmcDhIHoTgKT0mWDCquxjw= average temperature.

5eLjcO3kzGriXKVp4UtVjA== dependence on food and resources that aren't local.

B/XphFheMK+GNPzLSHHC9FnnkrA= advanced health-care options.

5eLjcO3kzGriXKVp4UtVjA== diversity of job opportunities.

ZmIAY2tZ6qnAI6KLxT7FmtR+C7U= home energy efficiency.

IjgrRM/WKsqycMUxjJsBog== traveling to get to work and to buy goods or services.

5eLjcO3kzGriXKVp4UtVjA== difficulty handling stormwater runoff and flooding.

j4PQ12qm2qXjmARQ5E4p9CHs76I= air quality.

iEsKyHsm4uIdZnVVmkFztZXr+fRvEYtY homes on average.

B/XphFheMK+GNPzLSHHC9FnnkrA= educational opportunities.

999

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