Urban Planning Tools for Climate Change Mitigation (Policy Focus Reports)

Land use patterns and urban form can strongly impact an urban community’s contribution to global climate change through the production of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Key contributors to a city’s climate footprint include the physical arrangement of streets and public transportation infrastructure, building types, and land uses that influence both vehicle use and energy consumption in buildings.

City and regional officials now facing new greenhouse gas emissions reduction requirements are increasingly turning to urban design as a key component of climate change mitigation. But implementing an urban planning strategy that includes effective climate change mitigation techniques requires decision support tools that illustrate the GHG implications of land use and transportation options. While a wide spectrum of environmental urban planning tools currently exists, few have the capacity to work simultaneously at both the regional and local scale, or to capture both building performance and transportation demand analysis.

This report reviews existing tools that help urban planners address climate change mitigation, analyzing the tools’ scope, scale, methodology, and policy support, and presents four case studies illustrating how existing tools at various stages of development have been used.