City-Level Decoupling-Full Report

City-Level Decoupling: Urban resource flows and the governance of infrastructure transitions

studies has produced the first global comparative analysis of 155 cities from various parts of the world, 63 presenting data in the following categories:

Material Consumption (TMC) are more or less fairly low emitters of CO 2 . Figure 4.2 clusters the 155 cities by level of resource consumption as measured in terms of TMC (vertical axis) and by their pattern of resource consumption (horizontal axis). So, for example, although they come from vastly different economic and developmental contexts, Johannesburg, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Tashkent, Tel Aviv, Cape Town and St. Petersburg all display a similar pattern of resource consumption and so are clustered together in a typology labelled as Type 12. On the vertical axis (consumption levels 1-7): • Consumption level 1: Low resource consumption (TMC range from 2.09 to 4.5 t per capita) • Consumption level 1.5: Low/Medium resource consumption (TMC range from 4.5 to 7.6 t per capita) • Consumption level 2: Medium resource consumption (TMC range from 8.04 to 11.5 t per capita) • Consumption level 2.5: Medium/High resource consumption (TMC range from 11.5 to 14.96 t per capita) • Consumption level 3: High resource consumption (TMC range from 15 to 43.22 t per capita) middle income developing countries where resource consumption per capita is low, except for water which is low/medium and biomass which is medium. Type 1 corresponds to a low standard of living for the majority residing in these cities. • Types 3 to 6: these are cities in countries going through an industrialisation process. For Type 3, the first 5 components are low, but an increase in construction minerals and biomass (low/medium), water (medium or more), and TMC reaches On the horizontal axis (types 1 to 15): • Types 1 and 2: cities in low to lower-

• Total energy consumed per capita (all sources of energy)

• Total electricity consumed per capita measured in kWh

• A ll fossil fuels consumed per capita measured in tons

• Industrial minerals and ores per capita measured in tons

• Construction materials meansured in tons

• Biomass per capita in tons

• Water per capita measured in cubic metres

• Total material consumption (TMC) associated with domestic production and consumption activities, including indirect flows that are imported but less exports and associated indirect flows and exports.

• Carbon dioxide emissions per capita.

This study used as its point of departure the country-level MFA data for 175 countries available from the Institute for Social Ecology in Vienna. The city-level material flow analyses of the above factors, excluding water, were then derived from the country-level data using a formula developed by Bettencourt and colleagues. 64 Water data for the 155 cities was obtained from the International Benchmarking Network for Water and Sanitation Utilities (IBNET) and overlaid with population, population density, GDP, HDI and climate data. The cities were then ranked as a Low, Medium or High per capita consumer of energy, electricity, fossil fuels, industrial minerals and ores, construction minerals, biomass, water, TMC, and total CO 2 , and as a Low, Medium and High per capita emitter of CO 2 . With some exceptions, these two more or less coincide, i.e. cities with a low level of Total

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