Meidad Kissinger

Compact development without transit: life-cycle GHG emissions from four variations of residential density in Vancouver

Numerous studies have shown that compact, mixed-use, transit-oriented developments contribute to reduced use of automobiles and in turn contribute to lower greenhouse gas emissions. When everyday destinations are within walking distance, people are more likely to walk or cycle, and if transit is within walking distance people are more likely to use it. Other studies have shown that compact development enables reductions in building energy consumption that contribute further to emissions savings. The reduced emissions are assumed to rely on the combination of compactness and transit connectedness. However, this combination requires an extensive transit network covering large areas both of residential and of employment destinations. Such networks often do not exist and are too costly to construct. When they do exist, the transit networks often do not reach those outlying neighbourhoods with the greatest potential for future growth and densification. This paper therefore asks what emissions savings compact development can achieve in the absence of high-frequency transit. In an examinination of the life-cycle emissions of four variations of density in three different neighbourhoods in Vancouver, none of which is well served by transit, we found a wide range of emissions profiles. A mixed-use new urbanist development produced 22% fewer emissions than an adjacent development of large single-family homes, both of which were in a transit-poor area on the far edge of a suburban city. A high-density neighbourhood adjacent to a suburban city centre, and one adjacent to a central city centre, produced 50% and 67% fewer emissions than the neighbourhood of large single-family homes. Findings suggest that, while compactness may be most effective when it is coupled with high frequency transit, decoupling the pair and building compactness before or without transit can still yield considerable household emissions reductions.

Assessing the state of environmental quality in cities - A multi-component urban performance (EMCUP) index.

Urban environmental quality indices can provide policy makers and the public with valuable information. However, common assessment tools have several shortcomings: most indices do leave out some important components of the state of urban environmental quality; they use a relative assessment in which urban environmental performance is evaluated relative to other cities, not against established environmental benchmarks; and only a few assessment tools compare urban performance to environmental quality standards. This paper presents a new multi component urban performance (EMCUP) index aiming to tackle those shortcomings. It analyses the overall state of urban environmental quality by using a list of indicators to evaluate key urban environmental quality topics such as air, water, open space, sanitation and solid waste. It presents an absolute score calculated in relation to both the standard and desired optimum levels. The use of the index is demonstrated by three Israeli cities.

Real-data-based high-resolution GHG emissions accounting of urban residents private transportation

ABSTRACT Worldwide, cities are monitoring their greenhouse gas emissions as a means to inform future greenhouse gas emissions mitigation policies and advance urban sustainability. Most urban GHG accounting frameworks provide data at the overall city scale. Studies have suggested that internal socioeconomic factors and location-specific spatial circumstances influence and shape urban greenhouse gas emissions emission volumes. This manuscript presents a comprehensive high-resolution spatial analysis of private vehicle travel-related greenhouse gas emissions of Tel Aviv-Jaffa (Israel) residents and explores some initial linkages to various socio-spatial explanatory factors. The studied city was divided into 1,121 small areas (ranging between 0.5 and 0.1 km2). Therefore, it allows exploring the extent to which the unique specific characteristics (social and spatial) of different parts of the city contribute to the private vehicles use levels and their rates of emissions, and identify areas that present different consumption patterns. This type of analysis can be used to advance tailored policies suitable for any socio-spatial circumstances as well as to examine existing and emerging approaches to greenhouse gas emissions mitigation and advancement of urban sustainability.

Quantity-based analysis of household food consumption patterns and drivers: The case of Israel

The interest in better understanding the characteristics and drivers of food consumption by individuals and social groups has grown in recent years, because of various social, environmental, health and economic issues. Most analyses have focused either on the macro or national scale, using food balance/disappearance data, or on the micro scale, focusing on nutrition analysis in limited groups of individual consumers. While various household characteristics are expected to influence food-purchasing habits, the scope and methodology of most previous studies limited their ability to relate to multiple factors, and integrate all into specific consumption patterns. A third, mezzo approach focuses on analyzing household food purchasing, mostly using expenditure surveys. However, focusing on the value spent may result in different quantities of food purchased. This paper aims capturing the amount of food purchased by Israeli households and to analyze the socio-economic factors shaping that consumption. It joins limited number of studies worldwide that focused on the quantity purchased, and the first such analysis of household food purchasing in the State of Israel. It quantified food purchased by more than 30,000 households, and analyzed key shaping factors e.g., income, household size and age. It first, established the need for quantity based analysis. Then, an extensive breakdown of consumed food is presented and the unique diets of different parts of the society were identified. Finally, it examined the consumption of different lifestyles to find that couples lifestyles tend to consume more per capita, and that income has a crucial role in determining the rate of consumption both in terms of quantity and variety purchased. However it highlights that other variables should also be examined in order to assess properly why households consume the way they do. Nevertheless, the findings of this research can be used as the basis for examining the health, social, or environmental implications of the different identified food consumption habits, support long-term research that examines changes over time, and may be the basis for examining the potential benefits of implementing specific policies.