https://www.livescience.com/13772-city-slicker-country-bumpkin-smaller-carbon-footprint.html
The IIED report, which was published in 2009, spawned 20 or 30 follow-up studies, all of which told a similarly positive story about urbanization. "[All of the] studies have shown that urbanization can have benefits in terms of lowering greenhouse gas emissions," Dodman told Life's Little Mysteries.
I'll take a look. I hope it looked at suburbs carefully.
Of course what I really want is Amsterdam transplanted to North America - I have been watching too much
Not Just Bikes.
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Update
I looked, it was old (2009), very general, and used New York as the city, and New York is well known to be very low carbon compared to a lot of cities. It also doesn't talk about all the activities happening else where that support the city.
But as I said, very general. No in depth analysis, no urban/inner suburbs/outer suburbs/rural comparison. No data.
So, just thoughts off the top of my head:
When we talk "rural", are we including all the small towns? Because the existence of small towns means people living in them are walking, cycling, short drive distance to everything. And they provide resources so that people living on country roads don't have to drive far to get to those resources. Remove the small towns and people in the country now have to drive longer distances. Believe me, I have seen this where I used to live - when a bank or a grocery store pulled out of a small town it had huge effects on people's resource base. But of course small towns need roads to link one to another and to larger population centres.
All those country roads that need plowing and power lines that need to be strung? In agricultural areas they would be there anyway, because the roads to the farms still need to be plowed, and the power still needs to go to the farms. Anyone who knows anyone with a dairy farm knows that power outages are disasters for them. The cows need their water (no water if no power for the well pump, no municipal water, remember) and they need to be milked. Same with keeping the roads clear, supplies need to get to the farms, and the milk trucks have to get to the farms. Same for any other livestock, minus the milking. If you want the feed for livestock to get to the farms you need roads, and how are the chickens and eggs and beef and hogs going to get to the abattoir and then to the butcher and grocery store without roads that can carry trucks? Not just cars, trucks. And big tractors. And combines. Do you realize how big a combine is? It is 2 lanes wide. I saw all of those on my quiet country road. Between farm methane for power generation and solar and small wind turbines I expect more farms will become self-sufficient for electricity, but they are not there now. And is it better for every rural house to be generating its own electricity? Truly rural houses are already handling their own water supply (wells) and waste water disposal (septic systems) which is why large lots (acre plus) are required - you need space for a septic tank and leach field, and a minimum distance between that and the well. All those "wasteful lawns" are probably over leach fields, where you do not want anything with deep roots (like trees and bushes). In terms of precipitation management rural areas are better, the rain and snow sink into the ground more, less runoff. Lots of gravel driveways instead of pavement. In urban areas runoff after storms can be a big issue, raw sewage in the Ottawa River is a regular story around Ottawa after big storms. And lucky everyone downriver.
From a municipality perspective it is financially better to have more than just farms. If farmers sell off acre or 2 acre lots on roads, they have not lost a lot of field area, but the municipality will have a stronger tax base, the utilities will have more customers per km of road, and there will be more people to keep the banks and the grocery stores and the local schools going.
You could argue more against cottage country, especially if it is only cottages. Second residences so not essential, all the roads and power lines needed. Especially all the plowing for winter cottages. Of course they are now essential for the economies of the local towns.
I am guessing outer suburbs with nothing but houses, no shopping, few local jobs, are probably the worst. They are totally car centric.
I am not going to even discuss subsidies, becasue that is not a balanced discussion when we look at all the other subsidies. And part of a government's job is to make the basics available to everyone and at this point electricity and internet and driveable roads (except in really remote locations) are essential. And for longer travel, please remember that a lot of rural areas used to have good train service to larger cities, and that is gone. Public transit is becoming more and more an urban perk, those in rural areas get left out.
Anyway, just my viewpoint from having lived in rural areas as a non-farmer for decades.