The Location Efficiency of Your Neighborhood

The conventional wisdom is that urban areas are better places to live if you’re trying to keep your carbon dioxide emissions in check. Among other things, cities have more stuff packed in a tighter space, meaning less driving. Thanks to a new interactive feature from the Housing and Transportation Affordability Index, you can now see exactly how much carbon dioxide cars accounts for in neighborhoods all over the United States.

I compared my hometown of Davis, California, to my current home in Los Angeles. Davis is on top and Los Angeles is below. The left-hand side of each graphic shows the carbon dioxide emissions from household auto use per acre; the right side shows carbon emissions from household auto use per household. The darker, redder colors mean higher emissions.

Sure enough, while carbon emissions from car use are lower per acre in the smallish college town, they’re lower per household in the (more) densely populated city of Los Angeles. And Los Angeles isn’t even a particularly dense city. Conventional wisdom confirmed.

You can use the tool here to check areas you’re interested in. And kudos to the Housing and Transportation Affordability Index for helping us all better understand the location efficiency of housing.

Via Worldchanging.