CLIMATE CHANGE AND URBAN LIVING: THE FUTURE

Austin Troy, The Very Hungry City: Urban Energy Efficiency and the Economics Fate of Cites (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2012) ("Global warming is another reason why the costs of climate control may tip in favor of the Frost Belt. If average temperatures continue to rise throughout the continental United States, the not-so-unexpected result would be that cooling burdens will become even higher in the Sun Belt, while northern areas would experience reduced heating loads. However, Frost Belt cities could also find themselves with significantly higher air-conditioning bills. For instance, it's been estimated that by 2080, New York City could have a climate like that of Raleigh, North Carolina, with far longer summers and many more heat waves. . . ." "The effect of global warming will likely be exacerbated by the so-called urban heat island effect: it has been shown that urban landscapes tend to be hotter than surrounding vegetated areas, which means that as urbanization increases, so too does the need for cooling relative to heating, an effect that also favors the Frost Belt over the Sun Belt. The difference between urban and rural landscapes has been documented to be between 2 [degrees] and 5 [degrees]F for daytime temperatures, depending on the location, size, and pattern of the urbanization. Nighttime differences (when conditions are calm and clear) can be as much as 22 [degrees]F. The larger the city, the greater the effect. The heat island effect stems from a number of physical factors. In vegetated landscapes, solar radiation is absorbed and water vapor is released, which results in evaporative cooling. In cities, impervious surfaces have little moisture to release and so there is less evaporative cooling; waste heat from buildings and transportation serves as a giant space heater; and highly absorptive surfaces like tar, asphalt, and roof shingles concentrate solar energy through conduction." Id. at 23-24). From the bookjacket: "As global demand for energy grows and prices rise, a city's energy consumption becomes increasingly tied to its economic viability . . . . A city with a high 'urban energy metabolism'--that is, a city that needs large amounts of energy in order to function--will be at a competitive disadvantage in the future. [Troy] explores why cities have different energy metabolism and discusses an array of innovative approaches to the problems of expensive energy consumption.").