Abstract
Compact city planning is obtaining significant attentions in many countries. It is expected that the planning contributes to inhibit urban sprawls as well as to mitigate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions with compacting and restructuring cities′ functions. There is, however, no verification whether the planning indeed reduces CO2 emissions. Hence, using Japanese municipal-level data, this paper examines effects of compact city planning on CO2 emissions. Population density is applied as a proxy for extent of compact city. We use CO2 emissions only from automobiles because size of city does not have influence on the emissions from stationary sources such as facilities. The estimation results show that the compact city planning considerably decreases per capita CO2 emissions from automobiles. Therefore, this study concludes that the planning is helpful for constructing environmentally friendly cities.
