Scaling indicator and planning plane: an indicator and a visual tool for exploring the relationship between urban form, energy efficiency and carbon emissions

摘要

Ecosystems and other naturally resilient systems exhibit allometric scalingin the distribution of sizes of their elements. In this paper we define anallometry inspired scaling indicator for cities that is a first step towardsquantifying the resilience borne of a complex systems' hierarchical structuralcomposition. The scaling indicator is calculated using large census datasetsand is analogous to fractal dimension in spatial analysis. Lack of numericalrigor and the resulting variation in scaling indicators -inherent in the use ofbox counting mechanism for fractal dimension calculation for cities- has beenone of the hindrances in the adoption of fractal dimension as an urbanindicator of note. The intra-urban indicator of scaling in population densitydistribution developed here is calculated for 58 US cities using a methodologythat produces replicable results, employing large census-block wise populationdatasets from the 2010 US Census 2010 and the 2007 US Economic Census. We showthat rising disparity -as measured by the proposed indicator of populationdensity distribution in census blocks in metropolitan statistical areas (usingUS Census 2010 data) adversely affects energy consumption efficiency and carbonemissions in cities and leads to a higher urban carbon footprint. We thendefine a planning plane as a visual and analytic tool for incorporation ofscaling indicator analysis into policy and decision-making.