EPILOGUE ■ 257dient. For example, in the paper “Energy Consumption and CO 2 Emissions
in Urban Counties in the United States,” Parshall, Hammer, and Gurney have
mapped direct fossil energy-use and GHG emissions associated with 157 urban
areas in the United States; their paper enables analysis of geospatial variations
in transportation-related GHG emissions with parameters such as population
density in a case study of the New York City metropolitan area. Because the
Vulcan data product used in the analysis does not track end use of electricity,
overall energy use in the building stock could not be compared geospatially.
However, the paper demonstrates the power of spatial visualization. Future
work in this area of spatial mapping of GHG emissions will require more
detailed utility-derived data on electricity use at higher resolutions, including
the neighborhood level.
Th e commissioned paper by Gupta and Chandiwala, “A Critical and Com-
parative Evaluation of CO 2 Emissions from National Building Stocks,” demon-
strates the importance of benchmarks for understanding and mitigating GHG
emissions from buildings. Th eir paper provides a comprehensive analysis of
energy-use benchmarks and GHG emissions from the building stocks in India,
the United Kingdom, and the United States as well as insightful comparisons
between the three nations. Th e paper examines end uses of energy and reviews
technology and policy strategies to reduce GHG emission from the urban
building stocks in the three countries. Changes in energy consumption profi les
are assessed from the 1990s into the 21st century, and quantitative metrics are
developed to represent energy-use intensities in the three nations. Design and
policy strategies applied in the three countries to reduce GHG emissions from
the urban building stock are surveyed and compared.
In the construction of new buildings and neighborhoods, a variety of
factors—including density and form of buildings, orientation, building materi-
als, and landscape characteristics—all play an important role both in reducing
energy use in buildings as well as mitigating the urban heat island eff ect. In
“Mitigating Urban Heat Island Eff ect by Urban Design,” Bouyer, Musy, Huang,
and Athamena provide a synthesis of some of the research streams addressing
how urban form (characterized by the spatial proportion and arrangement of
buildings in a neighborhood or block) along with the selection of rooft op mate-
rials determines surface albedo, which in turn aff ects energy use in buildings
and the urban heat island eff ect. Th e authors propose preliminary indicators
of urban form and eff ective albedo as design guides for designing blocks or
neighborhoods with reduced energy use and, hence, lower GHG emissions.
Th e utility of the method is demonstrated qualitatively using simulations of two
city blocks in France.
Th e same spatial scale issues that render GHG accounting in cities chal-
lenging also arise in assessments of climate-related vulnerabilities at the city