JID: EOR

ARTICLE IN PRESS [m5G;January 10, 2020;16:2]

European Journal of Operational Research xxx (xxxx) xxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

European Journal of Operational Research

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ejor

Decision Support

Urban land use and transportation planning for climate change

mitigation: A theoretical framework
Benjamin D. Leibowicz
Operations Research and Industrial Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, ETC 5.128D, 204 E. Dean Keeton St., C2200, Austin, TX 78712, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Cities account for 75% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from energy use, and their share is
Received 22 February 2019 increasing due to rapid urbanization. While compact urban forms with public transit are viewed as im-
Accepted 24 December 2019
portant strategies for reducing emissions, environmental benefits must be weighed against the costs of
Available online xxx
public transit infrastructure, road improvements to alleviate congestion in dense urban space, and more
Keywords: expensive housing resulting from land use restrictions. The literature largely lacks a theoretical frame-
OR in environment and climate change work for assessing these tradeoffs. This paper derives analytical insights into urban land use and trans-
Urban planning portation planning for climate change mitigation by formulating a social planner’s utility maximization
Land use problem. The planner chooses the residential densities of urban zones as well as investments in road and
Transportation public transit infrastructures that link these zones to the city center. Road travel is subject to conges-
Policy analysis tion. Any feasible solution must accommodate a fixed total population and ensure that residents of all
zones have the same maximum utility. GHG emissions associated with housing, road travel, and public
transit generate damages. Analytical results show that incorporating GHG damages into urban planning
always leads to an optimal solution with a more compact urban form, and reduces automobile travel in
each zone if a specific condition involving the marginal congestion cost and the marginal effectiveness
of road investment is satisfied. Numerical examples demonstrate that near-optimal emissions reductions
and utility improvements can be achieved via public transit investment and mode shifting even if the
planner inherits and cannot modify a suboptimal land use and road configuration.
© 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The global urban population surpassed the number of rural
dwellers for the first time in human history in 2008, and we are
now a majority urban civilization (Marshall, 2008). The United
Nations (2018) projects that rapid and persistent urbanization will
result in 68% of the global population residing in urban areas in
2050. Between now and then, cities around the world will gain 2.5
billion net inhabitants. While urbanization is occurring in all re-
gions of the world, 90% of these new urban residents will live in
Asia and Africa (United Nations, 2018).
Cities already account for 75% of all global carbon dioxide (CO2 )
emissions from energy use, and their share of greenhouse gas
(GHG) emissions will continue to rise along with urbanization (Bai
et al., 2018). There is growing recognition that climate change miti-
gation must increasingly take place in urban contexts. For instance,
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) hosted its
first Cities and Climate Change Science Conference in 2018 (Prieur-
Richard et al., 2018), and researchers have called for demand-side
E-mail address: bleibowicz@utexas.edu
climate solutions at the urban scale that could collectively add up
to an urban mitigation wedge (Creutzig, Baiocchi, Bierkandt, Pich-
ler, & Seto, 2015; Creutzig et al., 2018; Marshall, 2008). City gov-
ernments around the world are heeding the call to action, and are
becoming more prominent climate policy players in the midst of
uncertainty about the Paris Climate Agreement (Deetjen, Conger,
Leibowicz, & Webber, 2018; Solecki et al., 2018). In fact, the C40
Cities Climate Leadership Group committed to achieving the 1.5◦ C
goal of the Paris Agreement has expanded to include over 90 cities
around the world that represent more than 700 million people and
a quarter of the global economy (C40 Cities, 2019).
Decades of empirical research have confirmed that urban form
– which essentially encompasses land use patterns and the lay-
outs of transportation infrastructures (Marshall, 2008) – is a major
driver of urban GHG emissions, especially in the residential and
transportation sectors. In the residential sector, Ewing and Rong
(2008) find that residents of more sprawling U.S. counties are more
likely to live in larger homes and more likely to live in detached
houses, both of which increase energy use and emissions. Glaeser
and Kahn (2010) discover that more geographically concentrated
urban areas in the U.S. consume less electricity per capita, and
that central city residents tend to consume less electricity than

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2019.12.034
0377-2217/© 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: B.D. Leibowicz, Urban land use and transportation planning for climate change mitigation: A theoretical frame-
work, European Journal of Operational Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2019.12.034
JID: EOR
ARTICLE IN PRESS
2 B.D. Leibowicz / European Journal of Operational Research xxx (xxxx) xxx
suburban residents within the same metropolitan area. Similarly,
Navamuel, Rubiera Morollón, and Moreno Cuartas (2018) find that
urban households consume significantly less electricity than small
municipality and rural households in Spain, and Belaïd (2016) con-
cludes that residential energy consumption in France increases
moving from urban to suburban to rural settings. In the trans-
portation sector, Newman and Kenworthy (1989) show in their
landmark paper that per-capita gasoline consumption is negatively
related to urban core population density and the proportion of
jobs in the city center. The close relationship between compact
urban form and low gasoline consumption holds across a sam-
ple of U.S. cities as well as a sample of global cities. This find-
ing is corroborated by many more recent studies (Karathodorou,
Graham, & Noland, 2010), including analyses that use personal ve-
hicle travel (Marshall, 2008) or transportation GHG emissions per
capita (Kennedy et al., 2009; Ma, Liu, & Chai, 2015; VandeWeghe &
Kennedy, 2007) as the dependent variable. The latter specification
captures another mechanism by which compact urban form low-
ers GHG emissions: in addition to reducing trip distances, it makes
public transit (which tends to be less GHG-intensive than personal
vehicle travel) more viable (Lohrey & Creutzig, 2016; Pan, Shen, &
Zhang, 2009).
While the empirical literature shows that more compact urban
forms with public transit reduce GHG emissions, these benefits
must be weighed against a variety of costs in order to make sound
urban planning decisions. Public transit infrastructure is costly
to provide, especially in low-density settings (Lohrey & Creutzig,
2016). To cope with traffic congestion in a denser urban space, road
infrastructure might need to be improved (Çolak, Lima, & González,
2016). In addition, realizing a more compact urban form via land
use restrictions can come at a cost to residents due to higher hous-
ing prices (Grout, Jaeger, & Plantinga, 2011; Leibowicz, 2017). Urban
space is a complex system that involves tradeoffs among myriad
conflicting objectives, and the literature largely lacks a theoretical
framework for guiding urban land use and transportation planning
strategies to reduce GHG emissions while limiting adverse impacts.
The research community studying cities and climate change
has increasingly called attention to this research gap. According
to Acuto, Parnell, and Seto (2018), urban science “remains trapped
in the twentieth-century tradition of the systematic study of indi-
vidual cities.” The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report attests that “the
literature on urban form and infrastructure drivers of GHG emis-
sions... is dominated by case studies of cities in developed coun-
tries” (Seto et al., 2014). As a result, urban planners seeking to re-
duce emissions through land use and transportation planning are
often forced to extrapolate lessons gleaned from limited case study
experiences from specific places and times, which can lead to inap-
propriate policy prescriptions. This issue is particularly problematic
given that case studies have overwhelmingly taken place in devel-
oped country cities, but the greatest potential for urban climate
change mitigation exists in developing countries where urbaniza-
tion is in its early stages (Seto et al., 2014). Bai et al. (2016) con-
clude that “a systems approach is urgently needed in urban re-
search and policy analysis,” one that captures “tradeoffs between
the positive and negative consequences of policy actions.” The
present study addresses this gap in the literature.
This paper derives analytical insights into urban land use
and transportation planning for climate change mitigation by
formulating a social planner’s utility maximization problem. The
planner chooses the residential densities of urban zones as well
as investments in road and public transit infrastructures that link
these zones to the city center. Road travel is subject to congestion.
Any feasible solution must accommodate a fixed total population,
ensure that residents of all zones have the same maximum utility
level, and remain within a total resource budget. GHG emissions
associated with housing, road travel, and public transit travel
Please cite this article as: B.D. Leibowicz, Urban land use and transportation planning for climate change mitigation: A theoretical frame-
work, European Journal of Operational Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2019.12.034
[m5G;January 10, 2020;16:2]
generate damages that reduce utility, and thus factor into the
planner’s problem.
Based on this model formulation, several important properties
of the optimal urban land use and transportation plan are de-
rived analytically. These analytical findings constitute generalizable
insights in that they do not stem from any particular functional
forms or numerical parameterization of the model, but rather are
guaranteed to hold under a fairly standard and minimal set of
structural assumptions. The main analytical results of this paper
are asserted in four propositions that characterize the optimal ur-
ban planning response to climate change. A key element of the
optimal strategy is to pursue a more compact urban form with
more residents living in central locations. Even as the planner
spatially reallocates households across zones to reduce emissions
(with some central zones absorbing additional residents), the ab-
solute level of personal automobile travel should decline in each
zone if a specific analytical condition involving the marginal cost
of congestion and the marginal effectiveness of road capacity in-
vestment is satisfied.
Following the theoretical analysis, the model is fully specified
with functional forms and parameter values, and solved numeri-
cally for four scenarios. The scenarios differ in terms of whether
the planner accounts for GHG damages and the degree of flexibil-
ity the planner has to optimize various aspects of the urban form.
Results show that even if the planner inherits and cannot mod-
ify a land use plan and road infrastructure that are suboptimal
under climate change, the planner can achieve most of the GHG
emissions reduction and utility improvement that are achieved in
the unrestricted optimum. This demonstrates how effective public
transit investment and transportation mode shifting can be as mit-
igation measures, and is encouraging from a practical standpoint.
The remainder of this article is structured as follows. The lit-
erature review in Section 2 summarizes the most relevant urban
planning models from the urban economics and operations re-
search literatures. The model developed for the present study is
presented in Section 3. In Section 4, theoretical results are ob-
tained by analyzing the optimality conditions of the model in a
highly general setting. Numerical examples are solved and visual-
ized in Section 5 to illustrate the theoretical results from the pre-
vious section and explore the implications of different decision-
making scenarios. Section 6 clarifies limitations of the methodol-
ogy. Section 7 concludes with a summary of the most important
findings and possible directions for future research.
2. Literature review
2.1. Urban economics literature
In terms of its simplifying assumptions and emphasis on
analytical tractability, the methodology of this study builds upon
spatial equilibrium models developed in the urban economics lit-
erature. This modeling tradition was pioneered by Alonso (1964),
Mills (1967), and Muth (1969), who developed the original mono-
centric city model. This framework depicts utility-maximizing
households interacting with profit-maximizing housing producers,
and generates an urban spatial structure by enforcing supply-
demand equilibrium in the housing market and spatial equilibrium
in utility. Its significant impact on urban economic modeling en-
dures because it yields analytical results that constitute theoretical
explanations for patterns usually observed in the urban forms
of most cities, such as housing and population densities that fall
with distance from the city center (Brueckner, 1987). While the
monocentric city model is highly stylized and static, Anas, Arnott,
and Small (1998) confirm that its predictions are reasonably
close to empirically observed urban population density gradients.
Nevertheless, some researchers question the applicability of the
JID: EOR
ARTICLE IN PRESS
B.D. Leibowicz / European Journal of Operational Research xxx (xxxx) xxx
monocentric model to modern cities whose urban forms are
polycentric (Kloosterman & Musterd, 2001).
To preserve analytical tractability, the model in this paper
adopts several simplifying assumptions made in the monocen-
tric city model. Specifically, it assumes that households are
homogeneous, utility is constant across space, and travel demand
is a function of distance from the city center. However, the model
formulated for the present study departs from the monocentric
framework by representing urban space discretely rather than con-
tinuously, omitting housing production, and seeking to optimize
urban form rather than characterize its equilibrium.
This analysis contributes to an emerging literature that extends
urban spatial equilibrium models to investigate energy and envi-
ronmental issues in cities. These studies essentially attribute en-
ergy consumption and/or GHG emissions to housing and trans-
portation, and explore how various parameter changes or policies
influence these outcomes via their effect on urban form. Gaigné,
Riou, and Thisse (2012) and Hirte and Tscharaktschiew (2013) for-
mulate analytically tractable frameworks that are necessarily based
on drastic simplifying assumptions. Gaigné et al. (2012) construct a
two-city model and demonstrate that a more compact urban form
can actually increase transportation GHG emissions if emissions
from the inter-city shipping of goods increase more than emissions
from local commuting decrease. The former mechanism arises be-
cause compactness induces higher land rents that incentivize firms
to relocate. However, their model assumes that population den-
sity is uniform within each urban area. Hirte and Tscharaktschiew
(2013) conduct a general equilibrium analysis using a spatial model
of a city with two zones that includes commuting, endogenous
labor supply, carbon emissions, and fuel and power taxes. Their
simpler two-zone representation of space allows them to analyti-
cally derive the optimal power tax rate for electric vehicles. Larson,
Liu, and Yezer (2012) and Leibowicz (2017) construct more spa-
tially detailed extensions of the classic monocentric city model,
but the tradeoff is that they must be solved numerically with spe-
cific functional forms and parameter values, which limits their gen-
erality. Larson et al. (2012) simulate how a variety of housing,
land use, and transportation policies influence urban energy use
through their effects on urban form. Their model includes traffic
congestion, multiple dwelling types, and detailed calculations of
energy consumption associated with commuting and residences.
Leibowicz (2017) assesses the GHG emissions and welfare impacts
of urban land-use regulations. He demonstrates that urban growth
boundaries can reduce emissions by increasing urban densities, but
this comes at a cost to residents because they restrict land supply
and raise housing prices.
Borck and Brueckner (2018) present what is perhaps the most
similar analysis in the existing literature to the one described in
this paper. They formulate a social planner’s problem based on
a monocentric city model where housing and commuting gener-
ate GHG emissions, which diminish utility. This study similarly
adopts a social planner perspective that seeks to optimize urban
form rather than merely determine equilibrium, and incorporates
GHG damages into utility in much the same manner. However,
Borck and Brueckner (2018) assume that the social planner’s ob-
jective is to minimize total resource consumption, subject to the
requirement that all households achieve a common, minimum util-
ity level. This setup would be difficult to apply in practice because
the minimum utility constraint does not correspond to any real-
world limitation. The model developed in this study assumes that
the planner’s objective is to maximize the common utility level,
subject to a budget constraint. This is more consistent with the
usual situation where a policymaker attempts to achieve the most
desirable results given available resources. This analysis also builds
upon Borck and Brueckner (2018) by incorporating two transporta-
tion modes instead of only one. The social planner can therefore
Please cite this article as: B.D. Leibowicz, Urban land use and transportation planning for climate change mitigation: A theoretical frame-
work, European Journal of Operational Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2019.12.034
[m5G;January 10, 2020;16:2]
3
leverage transportation mode shifting to reduce emissions, in ad-
dition to modifying urban land use.
2.2. Operations research literature
There is an extensive operations research literature on urban
planning that dates back at least to the 1960s (Harris, 1961). Con-
siderable work has focused on optimally allocating urban land to
various uses. These operations research approaches are similar to
Borck and Brueckner (2018) in that they view urban land use
through the lens of a social planner seeking to optimize it. In con-
trast to most models in urban economics, they do not treat the ur-
ban form as arising from the strategic interactions of households,
housing producers, and other agents. Benefits and costs must be
exogenously specified by the modeler. Operations research mod-
els represent land in terms of discrete zones rather than a con-
tinuous space, essentially a generalization of approaches in ur-
ban economics based on two distinct zones (Brueckner & Franco,
2018; Hirte & Tscharaktschiew, 2013). The model developed in
Section 3 adopts this optimization structure and discrete represen-
tation of space, but incorporates household utility, spatial equilib-
rium, and transportation requirements into its objective and con-
straints. Optimal land use allocation models correspond closely to
real-world planning decisions and have been applied in practice to
provide decision support (Bammi & Bammi, 1979; Brill, Chang, &
Hopkins, 1982). However, the fact that they must be solved numer-
ically limits their ability to provide insights that can be generalized
beyond a particular setting and parameterization.
Brotchie (1969) formulates a quadratic programming model
for optimally allocating urban zones to different land uses (e.g.,
high-density residential, city park, heavy industry). Land uses have
zone-specific costs and benefits, and the costs and benefits of
land uses in different zones can interact depending on how far
apart the zones are. Brotchie (1978) extends his earlier model to
incorporate diversity of benefits within a zone as well as between
zones. This extension tends to disperse land uses more evenly
throughout the city. Bammi and Bammi (1979) build upon these
foundations by representing the allocation of zones across a plan-
ning region to various land uses as a multi-objective optimization
problem. The five objectives they include are: minimize conflict
between different land uses, minimize travel distance of new
trips to the existing transportation network, minimize tax costs,
minimize adverse environmental impact, and minimize capital
costs of community facilities. The model is actually used by the
regional planning commission in DuPage County, Illinois, outside
Chicago, to develop a comprehensive land use plan in the face of
rapid suburban growth. Brill et al. (1982) use this DuPage County
application to demonstrate the Hop, Skip, and Jump (HSJ) method
to generate attractive, feasible solutions to an optimization prob-
lem that are significantly different from one another. They show
that the HSJ method produces multiple “good” land use plans that
differ significantly with respect to the distributions of land uses
across the county, even if tight restrictions are placed on indi-
vidual objectives. Gilbert, Holmes, and Rosenthal (1985) construct
a multi-objective integer programming model to determine the
optimal location and shape of a land development. They test their
model on the example of a proposed residential development
in Tennessee, and experiment with solving the integer program
subproblems using alternative enumeration methods.
More recent contributions represent the built environment and
transportation infrastructures in impressive detail, but this in-
creases computational and data intensities, makes results even
more parameterization-specific, and limits the comprehensiveness
of the model scope. Ying (2015) formulates a mathematical pro-
gram with equilibrium constraints to maximize social surplus by
simultaneously optimizing the locations of housing supply and
JID: EOR
ARTICLE IN PRESS
4 B.D. Leibowicz / European Journal of Operational Research xxx (xxxx) xxx
congestion prices in the (existing and fixed) road network. Sim-
ilar to the present analysis, Ying’s model features a discrete set
of zones that the planner develops with housing. The model is
computationally intensive, and whether the global optimum can
be found depends on the initial setting of variables. Hammad,
Akbarnezhad, and Rey (2017) formulate a multi-objective facility
location problem to balance concerns about noise pollution with
travel times on the underlying road network. Their model is a
bilevel problem with facility location decisions in the upper level
and route choices in the lower level. They apply this framework to
a district of Sydney, Australia and use Benders decomposition to fa-
cilitate solutions. Hua, Hovestadt, Tang, and Li (2019) create a very
detailed integer program that optimizes the built environment of
an urban district including the layouts, geometries, and positions of
individual structures. Constraints relate to minimum sunlight ex-
posure and other high-spatial-resolution issues. The authors apply
their model using data from Shanghai, but due to the computa-
tional complexity, they are only able to develop optimal plans for
parcels that are less than 50,0 0 0 meter2 (roughly 12 acres) in area.
It is worth briefly noting that there is a growing literature
on sustainable urban design and operations enabled by increasing
computational power and real-time data availability. Some exam-
ples in the literature focus on urban land use planning (Caparros-
Midwood, Barr, & Dawson, 2015; Li & Parrott, 2016; Stewart &
Janssen, 2014), energy systems (Cajot et al., 2017a; Cajot, Schüler,
Peter, Koch, & Maréchal, 2017b), transportation networks and logis-
tics (Savelsbergh & Van Woensel, 2016; Taniguchi, Thompson, & Ya-
mada, 2016), and sustainability indicators (Attardi, Cerreta, Sanni-
candro, & Torre, 2018). Compared to the present paper, these stud-
ies employ approaches that are far more spatially detailed, compu-
tationally demanding, and data-intensive. They are well suited to
addressing operational problems requiring fine temporal and spa-
tial resolution, but they are not analytically tractable, must often
be solved using heuristics, and make it difficult to generalize in-
sights to different contexts. Therefore, this paper complements the
literature on data-driven urban modeling by developing an analyt-
ically tractable framework that yields theoretical insights for incor-
porating climate change mitigation into urban planning.
3. Model formulation
The optimization model formulated here adopts the perspective
of a social planner whose objective is to maximize the common
utility level U of all households in a city, subject to a total budget
b. To accomplish this objective, the planner must choose how to
distribute the population across the urban space, the numbers of
residents who travel by car and by public transit, investments in
road and public transit infrastructures, and consumption bundles
for all residents. The social planner accounts for GHG emissions
from residences and transportation, which generate damages and
diminish utility.
Adopting a social planner perspective allows for consideration
of a wide range of factors that reflect on the desirability of an
urban land use and transportation plan for the city as a whole, in-
cluding those which are not fully internalized by individual house-
holds. This inclusive framing is important for addressing negative
externalities such as GHG emissions and traffic congestion, since
the social planner faces the full costs they impose on the city.
Practically, the social planner perspective is popular in the liter-
ature since it is required to determine socially optimal strategies
in complex environments (Borck & Brueckner, 2018; Gaigné et al.,
2012; Hammad et al., 2017). By incorporating GHG emissions as a
damage term in the utility maximization objective, the model cap-
tures the benefits of reducing emissions in addition to the costs.
Optimal solutions will thus balance climate change mitigation with
the more traditional consumption inputs to the household utility
Please cite this article as: B.D. Leibowicz, Urban land use and transportation planning for climate change mitigation: A theoretical frame-
work, European Journal of Operational Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2019.12.034
[m5G;January 10, 2020;16:2]
function. Considering possible alternatives, focusing on a miti-
gation objective in isolation would neglect tradeoffs with other
urban priorities such as consumption. Maximizing utility subject
to a maximum emissions constraint would require this limit to
be specified exogenously, and fail to incentivize further emissions
reductions.
Several basic assumptions from the classic spatial equilibrium
formulations (Alonso, 1964; Mills, 1967; Muth, 1969) underlie the
model. The city is assumed to be monocentric, in that all resi-
dents commute to and from the city center, and thus a household’s
transportation costs are proportional to the distance between its
location and the center. All households are taken to be homoge-
neous, with the same preferences. The requirement of spatial equi-
librium in utility is a key underlying assumption of the model. Ac-
cording to this assumption, the utility levels of households at all
locations in the city should be equal; otherwise, some households
would be incentivized to move to different locations, and the spa-
tial distribution of the population would not be in equilibrium.
The city contains a discrete set of residential zones, denoted I.
Each zone i ∈ I is parameterized by its area ai and distance from
the city center xi . The planner must determine how many house-
holds will reside in each zone, as well as the numbers of them
who travel via car or via public transit. Let Nir and Nit denote the
numbers of households in zone i who travel by road and by public
transit, respectively.1 The combined sum of Nir and Nit over I must
equal the total, fixed urban population n.
The residential density Di within a zone is assumed to
be uniform, so that each household in zone i consumes Qi =
ai (Nir + Nit )−1 units of land for housing. The utility of a household
in this zone is given by the quasilinear function Wi = V (Qi ) + Ci −
γ E. Quasilinear preferences are a common and analytically con-
venient assumption in the literature (Brueckner & Franco, 2018;
Gaigné et al., 2012). The function V satisfies V > 0 and V < 0, so
that it is increasing and concave. Ci represents all non-land con-
sumption, and is the numeraire good with a cost normalized to
unity. The final γ E term accounts for the damages associated with
total urban area GHG emissions E, which will be defined below.
Coefficient γ is thus the marginal damage associated with one unit
of emissions, assumed to be a constant. To ensure spatial equilib-
rium in utility across zones, it must be the case that Wi = U ∀i ∈ I.
Road transportation for a household in zone i incurs a cost
xi T(Nir , Ri ), where T is the per-unit-distance variable cost of road
travel. Road transportation is subject to congestion. The more
households there are commuting by road from zone i, the slower
the traffic moves, and the higher the variable cost of road travel
becomes. To capture congestion, the function T satisfies T1 > 0 and
T11 > 0, so that congestion effects grow in severity on the margin.2
The social planner must decide how much road capacity Ri to build
between zone i and the city center. Per unit distance, road infras-
tructure capacity has a constant marginal cost r, but increasing
road capacity alleviates congestion and thus reduces the variable
cost of road travel. Road capacity investment is assumed to have
1
Note that the formulation is flexible enough to represent the case where a
household can split its transportation usage between the two modes. In such a
case, Nir (Nit ) is interpreted as the total road (public transit) usage by households
in zone i, where each household’s total transportation usage is normalized to one.
The mode shares in zone i remain the same as in the case where each household is
assigned to a single mode: Nir /(Nir + Nit ) for road and Nit /(Nir + Nit ) for public tran-
sit. In other words, whether half the households use only road and the other half
use only public transit, or every household uses road and public transit equally, the
formulation is equally valid.
2
In this notation, a subscript k denotes a partial derivative of the function with
respect to its kth argument. For example, T1 = ∂∂NT , T11 = ∂∂NT2 , T2 = ∂∂RT , and T22 =
2
ir i
∂2T .
ir
∂ R2i
JID: EOR
ARTICLE IN PRESS [m5G;January 10, 2020;16:2]

B.D. Leibowicz / European Journal of Operational Research xxx (xxxx) xxx 5

declining marginal effectiveness. In mathematical terms, T2 < 0 and uses other than urban housing (e.g., agriculture). However, the land
T22 > 0. area used for urban housing is fixed in this model, so there is no
By contrast, public transportation for a household in zone i is need to account for it in the optimization problem. The total emis-
not subject to congestion, and it incurs a constant user cost pxi . In sions of the urban area are specified by Eq. (1e), which includes
the absence of congestion effects, the optimal public transit infras- terms for emissions from road usage, public transit usage, and res-
tructure capacity will simply be equal to Nit , the number of public idential energy. Lastly, Eq. (1f) imposes non-negativity constraints
transit users. Per unit distance, public transit infrastructure capac- on all variables except for total emissions E and utility U. Non-
ity has a constant marginal cost s. From the social planner’s per- negativity of E is guaranteed by the non-negativity constraints in
spective, then, each additional public transit user in zone i costs Eq. (1f) combined with Eq. (1e). The social planner maximizes U,
( p + s )xi in user and infrastructure expenditures. and as utility it has no direct physical interpretation, so there is no
Residences, road transportation, and public transportation all need to enforce non-negativity.
generate GHG emissions, which contribute to climate change
and reduce utility. Each road user and public transit user in 4. Theoretical analysis
zone i produces er xi and et xi units of emissions, respectively. The
marginal emissions factors er and et satisfy er > et , so that road In this section, analytical insights into urban land use and trans-
transportation is more emissions-intensive than public transit use. portation planning for climate change mitigation are obtained by
A household who consumes Qi units of land generates B(Qi ) units writing down the Lagrangian of the optimization problem and an-
of residential emissions, due to energy use for heating, cooling, alyzing the first-order optimality conditions. These optimality con-
appliances, and so on. It is assumed that B > 0 and B < 0. These ditions reveal important properties of the optimal land use and
properties indicate that larger homes on more land consume more transportation plan, and ensuing comparative statics show how
energy, but that increases in energy consumption are diminishing the optimal plan changes as key model inputs are varied. These
on the margin.3 Total urban area residential and transportation insights are highly general in that they are consequences of the
emissions over all zones are denoted E. fundamental structure of the problem. Only minimal assumptions
The mathematical formulation of the social planner’s utility about the functional forms contained in the model are required.
maximization problem is The Lagrangian of the social planner’s optimization problem
is
max
Nir ,Nit ,Ci ,Ri ,E,U
U (1a)  

L = U + λ1 n − (Nir + Nit )

s.t. (Nir + Nit )= n (1b) 
i
   

i + λ2i U − V ai (Nir + Nit )−1 + Ci − γ E
  i
 
V ai (Nir + Nit )−1 + Ci − γ E = U, i∈I (1c) 
+ λ3 b− {(Nir + Nit )Ci +xi [T (Nir , Ri )Nir + rRi + ( p + s )Nit ]}
i
  
{(Nir + Nit )Ci + xi [T (Nir , Ri )Nir + rRi + ( p + s )Nit ]}= b (1d)   
i + λ4 E − xi (er Nir + et Nit ) + eq (Nir + Nit )B ai (Nir + Nit )
−1
.
   i
xi (er Nir + et Nit ) + eq (Nir + Nit )B ai (Nir + Nit )−1 =E (1e) (2)
i
This Lagrangian yields the following first-order conditions by tak-
ing its partial derivatives with respect to all the decision vari-
Nir ≥ 0, Nit ≥ 0, Ci ≥ 0, Ri ≥ 0, i ∈ I. (1f) ables:
In this formulation, Eq. (1b) ensures that the total number of ∂L 
=1+ λ2 j = 0, (3a)
households in the city matches the exogenously fixed urban pop- ∂U j
ulation n. In other words, every household must be assigned to
a residential zone. It also guarantees that every household’s trans-
∂L
portation demand is satisfied by the road and public transit modes. = − λ1 + λ2i ai (Nir + Nit )−2V  − λ3 [Ci + xi (Nir T1 + T )]
Eq. (1c) specifies the utility function, and requires that households ∂ Nir

in all zones have the same utility level U. This is the spatial equi- − λ4 er xi + eq (B − ai (Nir + Nit )−1 B ) = 0, i ∈ I, (3b)
librium condition commonly assumed in the urban modeling liter-
ature (Brueckner, 1987; Larson et al., 2012; Leibowicz, 2017). If util-
ity were not the same in all zones, then some households would ∂L
= − λ1 + λ2i ai (Nir + Nit )−2V  − λ3 [Ci + xi ( p + s )]
be incentivized to move, and thus the spatial distribution would ∂ Nit

not be stable. The argument of the land component of utility V − λ4 et xi + eq (B − ai (Nir + Nit )−1 B ) = 0, i ∈ I, (3c)
is equivalent to Qi , the land consumption per household, equal to
the area of the zone divided by the number of households in it.
Eq. (1d) is the budget constraint. The social planner incurs costs ∂L
= − λ2i − λ3 (Nir + Nit ) = 0, i ∈ I, (3d)
for non-land consumption, road and public transit usage, and road ∂ Ci
and public transit infrastructure capacity investments. In princi-
ple, there is also a cost for land since it potentially has value for ∂L
= − λ3 xi [Nir T2 + r ] = 0, i ∈ I, (3e)
∂ Ri
3
Another way to see this is that as homes consume less and less land, there are
additional energy efficiency gains due to multi-story and multi-family structures. In
∂L 
addition, as the size of a home increases, the numbers of certain appliances (e.g., = λ4 + γ λ2 j = 0. (3f)
dishwashers, refrigerators) do not increase proportionally. ∂E j

Please cite this article as: B.D. Leibowicz, Urban land use and transportation planning for climate change mitigation: A theoretical frame-
work, European Journal of Operational Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2019.12.034
JID: EOR
ARTICLE IN PRESS [m5G;January 10, 2020;16:2]

6 B.D. Leibowicz / European Journal of Operational Research xxx (xxxx) xxx

Using Eq. (3a), (3d), and (3f) to solve for all but one of the
Lagrange multipliers, it is found that λ2i = −(Nir + Nit )n−1 ∀i ∈ I,
λ3 = n−1 , and λ4 = γ . By plugging these expressions back into the
first-order conditions, it is possible to obtain analytical insights
from the resulting system.
First, note that Eq. (3e) implies that
−Nir T2 = r ∀i ∈ I.
This rule determines the optimal road capacity investment Ri for
each zone. It intuitively states that the social planner should in-
vest in road capacity until the marginal benefit of adding capacity
becomes equal to the marginal cost. The marginal benefit is the
number of households in the zone who travel by road (Nir ) times
the negative change in their road travel cost with respect to road
capacity (T2 ). The marginal cost is simply r.
The optimal balance between road and public transit users can
be examined by setting Eq. (3b) and (3c) equal to one another,
then eliminating like terms, to yield the condition
∂ 2Wi
= V  (Qi ) − γ ∂ E2 = V  (Qi ) − γ eq (Nir + Nit )B (Qi ).
2
to find that
∂ Qi2 ∂ Qi
Therefore, in zone i, the utility function is concave iff V  (Qi ) <
γ e (N + N )B (Q ). Assumption 2 only holds if this condition is
q ir it i
satisfied in all zones and for any feasible spatial allocation of
the urban area population, which is equivalent to requiring that
V (Qi ) < γ eq nB (Qi ). Since it was assumed earlier that V < 0 and
(4) B < 0, the assumption essentially says that the indirect effect of
home size on utility via damages from residential emissions is too
weak to reverse the concavity of utility with respect to home size
stemming from its direct effect captured in V. This is almost surely
the case in practice, as the direct effect of home size on utility
likely dominates.
Proposition 1 (Home size and population density gradients). In
the optimal solution, home size increases monotonically, and popula-
tion density decreases monotonically, with distance from the city cen-
∂Q ∂D
ter. Mathematically, ∂ x i > 0 and ∂ x i < 0.
i i

(Nir T1 + T ) + nγ er = ( p + s ) + nγ et ∀i ∈ I.
The left-hand side is the marginal social cost (per unit distance) of
an additional household in zone i traveling by road. This household
directly incurs the road user cost T, and the Nir T1 term captures
the congestion externality that this household imposes on all other
(5) −1
Proof. With Qi = ai (Nir + Nit ) , and substituting U + γ E − V (Qi )
for Ci based on the definition of the utility function, Eq. (3c) can
be re-expressed as
i ≡ λ1 n + U + γ E + xi ( p + s + nγ et ) + V  (Qi )Qi − V (Qi )

road users in zone i. The nγ er term represents the social cost of + nγ e q B ( Q i ) − Q i B  ( Q i ) = 0 . (6)
the GHG emissions associated with road travel. The right-hand side
is analogously the marginal social cost of an additional household di
This condition must hold at any distance xi , meaning that dxi
= 0.
in zone i traveling by public transit. At the optimum, the marginal
Taking this total derivative,
social costs of road and public transit households in each zone
must be in equilibrium. Note that the derivative of the left-hand di ∂ Qi 

side of Eq. (5) with respect to Nir is Nir T11 + 2T1 > 0, based on the = p + s + nγ et + Q V (Qi ) − nγ eq B (Qi ) = 0. (7)
dxi ∂ xi i
previously stated assumptions about T. Therefore, if Eq. (5) yields
an interior solution for Nir as a function of Ri , then this solution is ∂Q
Rearranging to isolate ∂ x i yields
i
unique.

Assumption 1. Every zone in the city has some households who

travel by road and some households who travel by public transit.
Mathematically, Eq. (5) yields an interior solution for Nir .
This assumption is required to facilitate the theoretical analysis.
In the context of the present model, this assumption would not
hold if, for instance, public transit were very expensive, leading to
a corner solution where everyone travels by road. In the less an-
alytically tractable but perhaps more realistic setting where pub-
lic transit provision entails economies of scale, the possibility of a
corner solution dissipates. In any case, Assumption 1 is assumed to
hold throughout this analysis.4
Proposition 1 confirms that the optimal spatial allocation of the
urban area population exhibits some intuitive properties. Before
establishing them, one additional assumption is made about the
utility function, as its implications will be invoked in the proof of
Proposition 1.
Assumption 2. The full utility function Wi = V (Qi ) + Ci − γ E is
concave with respect to Qi in all zones and for any feasible
spatial allocation of the urban area population. Mathematically,
∂ Qi −( p + s + nγ et )
= . (8)
∂ xi Qi [V  (Qi ) − nγ eq B (Qi )]
The numerator is clearly negative, and Qi is positive, so the sign of
∂ Qi
∂ xi hinges on the sign of the bracketed term in the denominator.
Invoking Assumption 2’s implication that V (Q ) < γ e nB (Q ), the
i q i
∂Q
bracketed term is negative, and therefore ∂ x i > 0. Since Di = Qi−1 ,
i
∂D
it immediately follows that ∂ x i < 0. 
i
The structural properties asserted in Proposition 1 are rather in-
tuitive. Home size and population density gradients that are posi-
tive and negative, respectively, moving outward from the city cen-
ter are typical patterns observed in most urban areas, and these
same results are found using the standard monocentric city model
(Brueckner, 1987). Nevertheless, it is reassuring that these prop-
erties also emerge from the present framework, with its discrete
representation of space, multiple transportation modes, and incor-
poration of damages associated with GHG emissions.
Proposition 2 affirms some of the major theoretical results of
  this paper, describing how the optimal degree of residential cen-
∂ 2Wi tralization responds to several key model parameters.
< 0 ∀ i ∈ I, Nir , Nit | 0 ≤ Nir + Nit ≤ n .
∂ Qi2
Proposition 2 (Residential centralization response). The optimal
To establish the implication of this assumption that will be used home size and population density gradients become steeper if GHG
in the proof of Proposition 1, differentiate the utility function twice damages are more severe, public transit is more costly, public transit is
more emissions-intensive, or residences are more emissions-intensive.
∂2Q ∂2Q ∂2Q ∂2Q
4
Note that Assumption 1 is not required to solve the model numerically, as the Mathematically, ∂ x ∂ γi > 0, ∂ x ∂ ( p+
i
s)
> 0, ∂ x ∂ ei > 0, and ∂ x ∂ ei > 0
i i i t i q
optimal solution to a particular problem instance could include zero road or public
(the opposite results for Di immediately follow).
transit investment. However, it greatly facilitates the theoretical analysis, and is not
practically limiting because the modeler could choose the function T(Nir , Ri ) so that
Eq. (5) yields an interior solution with positive but negligible investment in one of Proof. Taking cross-partial derivatives of the expression for the
the transportation options. home size gradient in Eq. (8) yields

Please cite this article as: B.D. Leibowicz, Urban land use and transportation planning for climate change mitigation: A theoretical frame-
work, European Journal of Operational Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2019.12.034
JID: EOR
ARTICLE IN PRESS
B.D. Leibowicz / European Journal of Operational Research xxx (xxxx) xxx
∂ 2 Qi
∂ xi ∂ γ


net V  (Qi ) −nγ eq B (Qi ) +neq B (Qi )( p+s+nγ et )
= − Qi−1
[V  (Qi ) −nγ eq B (Qi )]
2
∂ 2 Qi
−1
= −Qi−1 V  (Qi ) − nγ eq B (Qi ) > 0,
∂ xi ∂ ( p + s )
∂ 2 Qi
−1
= −nγ Qi−1 V  (Qi ) − nγ eq B (Qi ) > 0,
∂ xi ∂ et
∂ 2 Qi
∂ xi ∂ eq
−2 neat intuition about the properties of the road user cost function
= −nγ B (Qi )( p + s + nγ et )Qi−1 V  (Qi ) − nγ eq B (Qi )
 tor of Eq. (12a) is positive, the squared term in the denominator is
These findings provide theoretical support for urban land use
policies that view environmental sustainability as at least a par-
tial justification for pursuing a more compact urban form (Creutzig
et al., 2018; Deetjen et al., 2018). If urban activities are more
emissions-intensive, or GHG damages are more severe, then the
social planner should shift households’ residential locations toward
the city center. As the cost of public transit rises, the optimal res-
idential centralization response becomes stronger. Increasing the
cost of public transit makes shifting transportation modes from
road to public transit a less attractive option for reducing GHG
emissions. As a result, the residential centralization strategy is now
less costly in relative terms, so the planner should pursue it more
intensively.
Now that Propositions 1 and 2 have established some proper-
ties of the optimal land use plan, Proposition 3 states important
results about the effects of GHG emissions on the optimal use of
the transportation modes.
Proposition 3 (Transportation mode use). If GHG damages become
more severe, then the number of households in each zone who travel
∂N
by road in the optimal solution declines (i.e., ∂γir < 0) if and only
if Nir T22 (2T1 + Nir T11 ) > (T2 + Nir T12 )2 . Intuitively, this condition in-
volving the properties of the road user cost function T is favored to
hold when the marginal cost of traffic congestion is high (T1 is large),
when the marginal cost of traffic congestion is steeply increasing (T11
is large), when the marginal effectiveness of road capacity investment
is low (|T2 | is small), or when the marginal effectiveness of road ca-
pacity investment is steeply diminishing (T22 is large). The same con-
dition is necessary and sufficient for the result that the number of
households who travel by road in the optimal solution declines with
the difference between road and public transit emissions intensities
∂ Nir
(i.e., for ∂ (e −e
r ) < 0).
t
Proof. Eq. (4) can be expressed as Nir T2 + r = 0. This optimality
condition must continue to hold under a change in γ , even as the
planner’s optimal decisions adjust in response to the parameter.
This requirement that the optimal values of the variables change in
such a way that the condition remains valid is equivalent to stipu-
lating that its total derivative must equal zero,
∂ Nir ∂ Ri
(T2 + Nir T12 ) + Nir T22 = 0.
∂γ ∂γ
Similarly, Eq. (5) can be expressed as (Nir T1 + T ) − ( p + s ) +
nγ (er − et ) = 0. This optimality condition must also continue to
Please cite this article as: B.D. Leibowicz, Urban land use and transportation planning for climate change mitigation: A theoretical frame-
work, European Journal of Operational Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2019.12.034
[m5G;January 10, 2020;16:2]
7
hold under a change in γ , so by taking the total derivative while
holding all other parameters constant,
∂ Nir ∂ Ri
>0 , (2T1 + Nir T11 ) + (T2 + Nir T12 ) = −n(er − et ). (11)
∂γ ∂γ
(9a) Eqs. (10) and (11) comprise a system of two linear equations for
∂N ∂R
the partial derivatives ∂γir and ∂γi . Solving this system yields the
results
(9b) ∂ Nir n(er − et )Nir T22
= , (12a)
∂γ (T2 + Nir T12 )2 − Nir T22 (2T1 + Nir T11 )
(9c) ∂ Ri −n(er − et )(T2 + Nir T12 )
= . (12b)
∂γ (T2 + Nir T12 )2 − Nir T22 (2T1 + Nir T11 )
The number of road users decreases in each zone as GHG dam-
∂N
ages become more severe when ∂γir < 0, and Eq. (12a) offers some
> 0. T that make this condition hold. Recall that the standard assump-
(9d) tions about the derivatives of T introduced in Section 3 are T1 > 0,
T11 > 0, T2 < 0, and T22 > 0, and that er > et . Therefore, the numera-
positive, and the second term in the denominator is negative. As a
∂N
result, the sign of ∂γir depends on the relative magnitudes of the
two terms in the denominator.
∂N
Specifically, ∂γir < 0 if and only if Nir T22 (2T1 + Nir T11 ) >
(T2 + Nir T12 )2 . This condition intuitively says that the number of
road users in each zone is favored to decrease as GHG damages
become more severe when the marginal cost of traffic congestion
is high (T1 is large), when the marginal cost of traffic congestion
is steeply increasing (T11 is large), when the marginal effective-
ness of road capacity investment is low (|T2 | is small), or when
the marginal effectiveness of road capacity investment is steeply
diminishing (T22 is large). If the condition holds in every zone and
∂ Nir
∂γ < 0 ∀i ∈ I, then total public transit usage in the urban area is
∂(
Nit )
i∈I
guaranteed to increase, ∂γ > 0.
The proof to show that the same condition is necessary and suf-
∂ Nir
ficient for the result ∂ (e −e < 0 proceeds exactly the same way,
r t)
since γ and (er − et ) only appear in Eq. (5) as a product term. 
The aforementioned properties of the road user cost function
T that cause the optimal number of road users to decline in
each zone as GHG damages become more severe, or as the dif-
ference in road and public transit emissions intensities increases,
share similar intuition. The residential centralization response from
Proposition 2 means that these changes in parameter values will
result in more households residing in central zones close to the
city center. The properties of T mentioned in Proposition 3 all cor-
respond to a setting where continuing to add road users to these
zones would increase road user costs significantly, and where ad-
ditional road capacity investment is not a very effective solution.
As a result, in such a setting, the benefit of reducing emissions by
shifting households from road to public transit (which tends to re-
duce Nir ) outweighs the increase in the total number of households
in the zone (which tends to raise Nir ), leading to a net decrease in
the number of households who travel by road there. If the condi-
tion Nir T22 (2T1 + Nir T11 ) > (T2 + Nir T12 )2 fails to hold, then the op-
posite is true and the latter effect outweighs the former. However,
the properties of T that support the condition being true seem rea-
sonably likely to hold in most real-world settings. The literature
consistently suggests that the cost of traffic congestion is high, that
(10) small increases in traffic volume often have significant effects on
travel time, and that the effectiveness of expanding road capacity
diminishes rapidly on the margin (Arnott & Small, 1994; Mogridge,
1997; Piyapong, Noland, & Graham, 2012).
JID: EOR
ARTICLE IN PRESS
8 B.D. Leibowicz / European Journal of Operational Research xxx (xxxx) xxx
Though less important, Eq. (12b) implies that the direction of
the road infrastructure capacity response to γ depends not only on
the sign of its denominator – which is the same as the denomina-
tor of Eq. (12a) and whose sign thus depends on the same condi-
tion – but also on the sign of (T2 + Nir T12 ) in the numerator, which
is ambiguous in general. This term is actually the derivative of the
marginal benefit of road capacity investment on the left-hand side
∂R
of Eq. (4) with respect to Nir . Therefore, the sign of ∂γi depends on
whether the marginal benefits of expanding road capacity increase
or decrease as more travelers use the road.
The final proposition of this section confirms that all of the
theoretical results derived above continue to hold when one
of the more restrictive assumptions of the model is relaxed.
Assumption 3 describes this generalization, and Proposition 4 for-
malizes the outcome.
Assumption 3. Instead of household travel demand being propor-
tional to the distance from the city center, as has been the case
up to this point, household travel demand is now allowed to be
any monotonically increasing function of distance. Mathematically,
each household in zone i has a travel demand f(xi ), where f > 0.
Proposition 4 (Travel demand relaxation). All of the theoretical re-
sults derived above remain valid under the relaxation in Assumption
3. That is, Eqs. (4) and (5), as well as Propositions 1–3, continue to
hold as long as household travel demand increases monotonically with
distance from the city center.
Proof. Under Assumption 3, the first-order conditions become
∂L  sion to the evidence supporting the use of compact urban form
=1+ λ2 j = 0,
∂U j et al. (2012) and Leibowicz (2017) provide support for these urban
∂L
= − λ1 + λ2i ai (Nir + Nit )−2V  − λ3 [Ci + f (xi )(Nir T1 + T )]
∂ Nir
− λ4 er f (xi ) + eq (B − ai (Nir + Nit )−1 B ) = 0, i ∈ I,
∂L
= − λ1 + λ2i ai (Nir + Nit )−2V  − λ3 [Ci + f (xi )( p + s )]
∂ Nit
portation modes. Therefore, the propositions above shed new light
− λ4 et f (xi ) + eq (B − ai (Nir + Nit )−1 B ) = 0, i ∈ I,
∂L
= −λ2i − λ3 (Nir + Nit ) = 0, i ∈ I,
∂ Ci
∂L
= −λ3 f (xi )[Nir T2 + r ] = 0, i ∈ I,
∂ Ri
∂L  urban climate change mitigation strategies in the residential and
= λ4 + γ λ2 j = 0.
∂E j
Eq. (13a), (13d), and (13f) are the same as Eq. (3a), (3d), and
(3f) from the original problem, because they do not depend on xi .
Therefore, λ2i ∀i ∈ I, λ3 , and λ4 , whose values are determined by
these three first-order conditions, retain their same expressions.
Replacing the original Eq. (3e) with Eq. (13e) still yields Eq. (4) as
the rule for optimal road capacity investment. Similarly, setting
Eq. (13b) equal to Eq. (13c) and eliminating like terms still yields
Eq. (5) as the rule for balancing road and public transit users, since
all the f(xi ) coefficients will cancel just as the xi coefficients did in
the original analysis. Since all transportation capacity investment
and user costs are specified in per-unit-distance terms, it is unsur-
prising that Eqs. (4) and (5) continue to hold.
Please cite this article as: B.D. Leibowicz, Urban land use and transportation planning for climate change mitigation: A theoretical frame-
work, European Journal of Operational Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2019.12.034
[m5G;January 10, 2020;16:2]
Repeating the proof of Proposition 1 using Eq. (13c) instead of
Eq. (3c) results in the expression
∂ Qi − f  (xi )( p + s + nγ et )
= . (14)
∂ xi Qi [V  (Qi ) − nγ eq B (Qi )]
The presence of f (xi ) > 0 in the numerator does not change the fact
∂Q
that ∂ x i > 0, by the same reasoning as in the original proof. There-
i
fore, Proposition 1 continues to hold.
Using Eq. (14) instead of Eq. (8) to prove Proposition 2 yields
the same expressions for the four cross-partial derivatives in
Eq. (9a)–(9d), except all of them are multiplied by f(xi ) > 0. Incor-
porating this positive coefficient does not change the signs of the
cross-partial derivatives, so Proposition 2 continues to hold.
The proof of Proposition 3 leverages Eqs. (4) and (5), which
remain valid as argued above. Therefore, its proof under the
relaxation in Assumption 3 is identical to the original, and
Proposition 3 continues to hold. 
While the model remains necessarily stylized and features some
simplifying assumptions, Proposition 4 is encouraging. It demon-
strates that none of the theoretical results derived in this section
relies on the rather rigid assumption that household travel demand
is proportional to distance from the city center, which is inherited
from classic monocentric city model formulations. Assuming more
generally that travel demand increases the further away from the
center a household resides likely encompasses the vast majority of
all real-world urban travel demand patterns.
The four propositions proven above add a theoretical dimen-
(13a) and public transit investment for climate change mitigation. Larson
land use and transportation approaches based on numerical sim-
ulations, but the propositions in this section are far more general
in that they are derived analytically, and are not conditional on
specific functional forms and parameter values. Borck and Brueck-
ner (2018) analytically derive optimal energy taxation rates in an
(13b) urban setting with GHG damages, but they turn to numerical sim-
ulations to explore the implications for urban form. Unlike these
previous model-based studies on urban planning and climate mit-
igation, the model developed in this paper incorporates two trans-
on transportation mode shifting as a component of urban miti-
(13c) gation strategies by elucidating the conditions under which auto-
mobile usage should decrease. These analytical results also reflect
greater coverage of urban GHG emissions than those obtained by
Gaigné et al. (2012), who focus only on transportation emissions.
(13d)
In the broadest sense, the analysis in this section has provided
general theoretical support for urban policy approaches that view
environmental sustainability as a motivation to encourage compact
(13e)
urban forms, and clarified the settings in which automobile travel
should be reduced in absolute terms. It has also demonstrated how
(13f)
transportation sectors are closely intertwined, thereby offering a
strong argument in favor of integrated land use and transportation
planning.
5. Numerical examples
In this section, the model is fully specified with functional
forms and parameter values, then solved numerically. These nu-
merical examples are designed to visualize the behaviors of the
model, illustrate the theoretical insights derived in the previous
section, and explore the implications of varying degrees of flex-
ibility to determine the urban land use and transportation plan.
It is important to clarify up front that the parameter values are
essentially arbitrary and unitless, and they do not represent any
JID: EOR
ARTICLE IN PRESS [m5G;January 10, 2020;16:2]

B.D. Leibowicz / European Journal of Operational Research xxx (xxxx) xxx 9

Table 1
Model parameterization for the numerical examples.

Parameter Description Value

n Total urban area population 100

b Budget 2000
x1 Distance from inner zone to city center 2
x2 Distance from outer zone to city center 3
a1 Area of inner zone 4
a2 Area of outer zone 4
r Road capacity investment cost 1
s Public transit capacity investment cost 2
p Public transit user cost per unit distance 0.001
er Emissions intensity of road travel 0.01
et Emissions intensity of public transit travel 0.002
eq Emissions intensity of residences 0.001
γ Damage coefficient for emissions 2
ρ1 Road user cost function coefficient 0.003
ρ2 Road user cost function exponent on Nir 1.8
ρ3 Road user cost function exponent on Ri -0.2
1 Land utility function coefficient 3
β1 Residential energy use function coefficient 2
β2 Residential energy use function exponent 0.5
Fig. 1. Optimal spatial allocations of the population between the inner and outer
zones in the four scenarios. Since the inner and outer zones are assumed to have
the same area, the population densities are proportional to the heights of these
particular real-world setting. Application of the model to a real- bars. Home sizes are inversely proportional to their heights. (For interpretation of
world sustainable urban planning problem is left for future work. the references to color in this figure, the reader is referred to the web version of
this article.)
5.1. Parameterization and scenarios

Fully specifying the model requires functional forms for the
land component of utility V(Qi ), road user cost T(Nir , Ri ), and
residential energy use B(Qi ). Parameter values must be restricted
to ensure that these functions conform to the desired properties
stated in Section 3. The land component of utility is assumed to
ρ ρ
have the form V (Qi ) = 1 log Qi , where 1 > 0. T (Nir , Ri ) = ρ1 Nir 2 Ri 3
is the chosen form for road user cost, where ρ 1 > 0, ρ 2 > 1, and
ρ 3 < 0. Residential energy use is assumed to follow the form
β vestment and transportation mode share decisions with re-
B(Qi ) = β1 Qi 2 , where β 1 > 0 and 0 < β 2 < 1. The form of the road
user cost is adopted from Brueckner and Franco (2018), whereas
the land component of utility and residential energy use func-
tions are merely simple forms chosen to fit the previously stated
assumptions.
The numerical examples presented here all represent an urban
area with two zones, an inner zone and an outer zone. Table 1
lists the parameter values assumed and includes descriptions of all
model parameters. The model is implemented in the General Alge-
braic Modeling System (GAMS)5 and solved using the IPOPT solver.
Optimal urban land use and transportation plans are deter-
mined for four scenarios. They differ in terms of whether GHG
damages are considered in the planning process and the degree
of flexibility the planner has to optimize the urban form. The four
scenarios are defined as follows:
Scenario (a): The planner sets γ = 0, and therefore does not ac-
count for damages caused by GHG emissions. The land use
and transportation plan that is optimal for γ = 0 will not be
optimal under the true damage coefficient value γ = 2.
Scenario (b): The planner sets γ = 2 and determines the optimal
land use and transportation plan in the presence of climate
damages.
Scenario (c): The planner sets γ = 2 and optimizes transporta-
tion infrastructure investments and mode shares, but the
number of households in each zone is fixed to its value
from the optimal solution to scenario (a). In other words,
the planner can make optimal transportation decisions with
5
The GAMS model code is available on GitHub under an open source license. The
GitHub repository can be found at https://github.com/bleibowicz/urban_climate_
mitigation.
respect to climate change, but cannot modify the underlying
land use pattern.
Scenario (d): The planner sets γ = 2 and optimizes public
transit infrastructure investments and transportation mode
shares, but the number of households in each zone and the
road capacity from each zone to the city center are fixed
to their values from the optimal solution to scenario (a). In
other words, the planner can make optimal public transit in-
spect to climate change, but cannot modify the underlying
land use pattern or road infrastructure.
The solution to scenario (b) is the optimal land use and trans-
portation plan under the true climate damage coefficient γ = 2.
Scenario (a) is included to assess how poorly a plan developed
without considering the effects of climate change would perform
due to the excessive GHG emissions it generates relative to the true
optimum. Whereas scenarios (a) and (b) are greenfield situations
where the planner has the freedom to design the urban form from
scratch, scenarios (c) and (d) are brownfield situations where cer-
tain aspects of the urban form already exist and cannot be altered
to address climate change. Scenarios (c) and (d) both assume that
the spatial allocation of the population is locked in to the optimal
spatial allocation from scenario (a), and scenario (d) also inherits
the road infrastructure from scenario (a). The results of scenarios
(c) and (d) thus demonstrate how much of the gap in performance
between the scenario (a) and (b) plans can be reduced by optimiz-
ing certain elements of the urban form for climate change, but not
others.
5.2. Scenario results
Fig. 1 shows how the population is optimally allocated between
the inner and outer zones in each scenario. It also indicates the
numbers of households in each zone who travel by road and by
public transit. Since the inner and outer zones are assumed to have
the same area, their population densities are proportional to the
heights of the bars, while the amounts of land that each house-
hold consumes are inversely proportional to the bar heights. In
line with Proposition 1, the inner zone always features a higher

Please cite this article as: B.D. Leibowicz, Urban land use and transportation planning for climate change mitigation: A theoretical frame-
work, European Journal of Operational Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2019.12.034
JID: EOR
ARTICLE IN PRESS [m5G;January 10, 2020;16:2]

10 B.D. Leibowicz / European Journal of Operational Research xxx (xxxx) xxx

Table 2 than the difference in emissions for two reasons. First, GHG dam-
Utility and GHG emissions results.
ages are only one component of utility, which also depends on
Scenario (a) (b) (c) (d) land and non-land consumption. Second, the more compact ur-
Utility (Objective Value) 21.027 21.681 21.657 21.530 ban form and additional public transit investment required to re-
Total GHG Emissions 2.328 1.630 1.656 1.761 duce total GHG emissions in scenario (b) come at a cost, borne by
households through reductions in the other inputs to utility. Nev-
ertheless, the 3% lower utility in scenario (a) compared to scenario
(b) demonstrates the welfare losses that can arise due to failing to
population density than the outer zone. Moving from scenario (a)
account for climate change in urban planning.
where γ = 0 to scenario (b) where γ = 2, the optimal land use
In Table 2, it is very interesting that the planner can achieve
pattern shifts households from the outer zone to the inner zone.
outcomes fairly close to the optimum from scenario (b) even in
This is an illustration of the residential centralization response to
the brownfield scenarios (c) and (d) where significant elements of
more severe GHG damages from Proposition 2. Consistent with
the urban form cannot be modified from their scenario (a) con-
Proposition 3 and its case where the necessary and sufficient con-
figurations. In terms of reducing total GHG emissions from their
dition holds, the number of households traveling by road from
scenario (a) level, scenarios (c) and (d) respectively achieve 96%
each zone is lower in scenario (b), which accounts for GHG dam-
and 81% of the reduction that scenario (b) achieves. In terms of
ages, than in scenario (a), which does not consider them. This is
raising utility from its scenario (a) level, scenarios (c) and (d) re-
true in the inner zone even though it absorbs more households in
spectively achieve 96% and 77% of the improvement that scenario
scenario (b), as the increase in its population is more than offset
(b) achieves. From a practical standpoint, these results are very en-
by the increase in its public transit use.
couraging. They suggest that urban planners can effectively lever-
The spatial allocations of the population between the two zones
age transportation planning for climate change mitigation by in-
in scenarios (c) and (d) are constrained to be the same as that from
vesting in public transit to enable mode shift in this direction, even
scenario (a), so the heights of their bars are identical in Fig. 1. Rel-
if suboptimal land use patterns and road infrastructures are inher-
ative to the true greenfield optimum from scenario (b), the optimal
ited and cannot be modified.
solutions in scenarios (c) and (d) feature too many households in
The focus of this paper is undoubtedly on the analytical find-
the outer zone and too few in the inner zone because the plan-
ings and urban planning insights that can be derived from the
ner cannot leverage the residential centralization response. In sce-
model, rather than on data-intensive applications or computational
nario (c), the planner is able to optimize all transportation system
algorithms. Nevertheless, Appendix A examines the computational
variables with respect to the true GHG damage coefficient γ = 2.
scalability of the model as the number of zones increases.
Therefore, public transit mode shares are much higher in scenario
(c) than in scenario (a), and road mode shares are much lower. Sce-
6. Limitations
nario (d) exhibits a similar mode shift from road to public transit,
but the shift is slightly weaker in this case because the road infras-
Before summarizing the conclusions of this study, it is help-
tructure is fixed to its configuration from the scenario (a) solution.
ful to first clarify its primary limitations. The model formulation
The road infrastructure optimized for scenario (a) where γ = 0 is
is intentionally parsimonious in order to allow for analytical re-
oversized relative to the optimum under γ = 26 , but its fixed exis-
sults. These findings provide broad insights into urban land use
tence in scenario (d) reduces the variable cost of road travel and
and transportation planning for climate change mitigation that do
thereby weakens the optimal mode shift to public transit. This
not rely on specific functional forms and parameter settings. This
effect is visible in Fig. 1 as the bars for scenario (d) containing
style of modeling inevitably necessitates making simplifying as-
slightly more pink and less green than the bars for scenario (c).
sumptions and omitting many detailed factors which are important
Fig. 2 displays essentially the same information as Fig. 1, but
aspects of urban forms. As a result, the model must be viewed as
visualizes the optimal land use and transportation plans in each
a stylized representation of reality.
scenario via a two-dimensional representation of urban space. The
The social planner perspective brings all decision variables un-
colors of the zones indicate their population densities according to
der the control of a single optimizing agent. In reality, some of
the color scale appearing to the right of each subplot. The thick-
these decisions are made by individual households, such as trans-
nesses of the pink and green lines linking the zones to the city
portation mode choice. The model represents urban form only
center are proportional to the numbers of households traveling by
in terms of land used for housing and transportation infrastruc-
road and public transit, respectively. While Fig. 2 leads to the same
tures. It therefore does not include workplaces, schools, hospitals,
insights as Fig. 1, its spatial format is well suited to communicating
or other land uses that occupy space and could influence the ur-
results to urban policymakers and providing decision support.
ban form. The model only captures GHG emissions from the res-
Table 2 reports utility (objective value) and total GHG emis-
idential and passenger transportation sectors, thus omitting the
sions in each scenario. These are two important, high-level sum-
contributions of industrial, commercial, and other sectors to ur-
mary outcomes which were not depicted in the figures above. Util-
ban emissions. On the level of an individual household, residen-
ity is lowest in scenario (a) because the planner does not properly
tial and transportation emissions in the model depend only on
account for damages associated with GHG emissions when deter-
urban form variables, as in Gaigné et al. (2012), Larson et al.
mining the urban land use and transportation plan. The resulting
(2012), Leibowicz (2017), and Borck and Brueckner (2018). In re-
plan is optimal with respect to γ = 0, but not with respect to the
ality, household emissions are influenced by myriad other factors
true damage coefficient value γ = 2. Compared to the true opti-
that are not represented in the model, including income, technol-
mum from scenario (b), the scenario (a) plan generates 43% greater
ogy adoption, lifestyle, and behavioral choices.
GHG emissions, which yield a roughly 3% reduction in utility. Be-
The model inherently assumes a simple monocentric urban lay-
tween the two scenarios, the difference in utility is much smaller
out that is not reflective of the many real cities whose layouts are
polycentric or based on other geometries. Proposition 4 did show
6
that the key analytical results continue to hold when the classic
Specifically, total road infrastructure investment is only 0.411 in scenarios (b)
and (c) where it is optimized for γ = 2, compared to 6.857 in scenario (a) where
assumption that travel is strictly proportional to distance from the
it is optimized for γ = 0. Scenario (d) inherits the scenario (a) road infrastructure, center is relaxed. Furthermore, the formulation could accommo-
which is now oversized. date a polycentric layout simply by setting the value of each xi

Please cite this article as: B.D. Leibowicz, Urban land use and transportation planning for climate change mitigation: A theoretical frame-
work, European Journal of Operational Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2019.12.034
JID: EOR
ARTICLE IN PRESS [m5G;January 10, 2020;16:2]

B.D. Leibowicz / European Journal of Operational Research xxx (xxxx) xxx 11

Fig. 2. Optimal urban land use and transportation plans in the four scenarios. The colors of the two zones indicate their population densities. The widths of the pink
and green lines linking the zones to the city center are proportional to the numbers of households traveling by road and public transit, respectively. Note that the two-
dimensional positions of the zones and their rectangular shapes are arbitrarily chosen for the purpose of illustration, since only their distances from the city center and land
areas feature in the model. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

parameter to equal the distance from zone i to the nearest urban monotonically, with distance from the city center. These are rather
center. In reality, the desirability of an urban land use and trans- intuitive structural properties that can also be derived from the
portation plan depends on countless details that are not captured standard monocentric city model (Brueckner, 1987). Nevertheless,
in this analytical model designed to yield broad insights, such as it is reassuring that they also emerge from the present framework
sunlight gain, visual quality, noise, and so forth. with its discrete representation of space, multiple transportation
modes, and incorporation of damages caused by GHG emissions.
Proposition 2 asserted that the optimal home size and population
7. Conclusions
density gradients become steeper if GHG emissions produce more
severe damages, residential and public transit emissions intensities
This paper has developed and analyzed a theoretical model of
are higher, or public transit is more costly. Therefore, climate dam-
urban land use and transportation planning for climate change
ages justify a higher degree of residential centralization, especially
mitigation. The model adopts the perspective of a social planner
if public transit is costly and thus a relatively less attractive mit-
who aims to maximize the common utility level of households
igation strategy. Proposition 3 revealed that if GHG damages are
in a city by spatially allocating the population to a set of resi-
more severe, or the emissions intensity advantage of public tran-
dential zones, investing in road and public transit infrastructures,
sit is greater, then the optimal amount of automobile travel de-
and determining transportation mode shares. GHG emissions asso-
clines in each zone if and only if a specific condition involving
ciated with residences, road travel, and public transit travel gener-
the properties of the road user cost function is satisfied. It says
ate damages that reduce utility. The major advantage of this frame-
that this is likely to be the case if the marginal cost of conges-
work is that it permits theoretical analysis that yields analytical
tion is sufficiently high and rising, or the marginal effectiveness
insights for environmentally sustainable urban planning.
of road capacity investment is sufficiently low and diminishing.
The main theoretical results were summarized in four propo-
Proposition 4 confirmed that all of the preceding theoretical results
sitions. Proposition 1 showed that, in the optimal solution, home
continue to hold as long as household travel demand increases
size increases montonically, and population density decreases

Please cite this article as: B.D. Leibowicz, Urban land use and transportation planning for climate change mitigation: A theoretical frame-
work, European Journal of Operational Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2019.12.034
JID: EOR
ARTICLE IN PRESS
12 B.D. Leibowicz / European Journal of Operational Research xxx (xxxx) xxx
monotonically with distance from the city center. This is a gen-
eralization of the original formulation, where travel demand was
implicitly assumed to be proportional to distance.
Following the theoretical analysis, the model was fully specified
with functional forms and parameter values, and solved numeri-
cally for four scenarios. The scenarios differ in terms of whether
the planner accounts for GHG damages and the degree of flexibil-
ity the planner has to optimize various aspects of the urban form.
Results show that even if the planner inherits and cannot mod-
ify a land use plan and road infrastructure that are suboptimal
under climate change, the planner can achieve most of the GHG
emissions reduction and utility improvement that are achieved in
the unrestricted optimum. This demonstrates how effective public
transit investment and transportation mode shifting can be as mit-
igation measures, and is encouraging from a practical standpoint.
In the broadest sense, this paper has provided theoretical sup-
port for urban policy approaches that view environmental sustain-
ability as a motivation to encourage compact urban forms, and
clarified the conditions under which the absolute level of auto-
mobile usage should be reduced in each zone. It has also demon-
strated how urban climate change mitigation strategies in the res-
idential and transportation sectors are closely intertwined, thereby
offering a strong argument in favor of integrated land use and
transportation planning.
Future model extensions could enhance its capabilities and
open up new analysis possibilities. The framework could represent
transportation infrastructure networks that link zones to one an-
other in addition to the city center. Allowing the social planner to
affect building energy intensities would incorporate an additional
urban emissions reduction strategy. Investment in road and public
transit infrastructures might reflect fixed costs and economies of
scale rather than constant marginal costs. The current scope focus-
ing on energy demand could be expanded to incorporate decisions
related to urban energy supply. A dynamic version of the model
could be constructed in which the planner gradually evolves the
urban form from an initial state by making decisions over multi-
ple time periods. In each period, there would be a limit on how
many households the planner can relocate to different zones or
shift to the other transportation mode, or on how much the plan-
ner can incrementally invest in transportation infrastructure. This
dynamic extension would be well suited to explore the implica-
tions of behavioral rigidities and how they can be overcome. For
example, the constraints on the allowable household relocations or
transportation mode shifts in each period could be tightened to re-
flect households who resist these changes in lifestyle. Constraints
in later periods could depend endogenously on patterns realized
in earlier periods to incorporate peer effects that make transporta-
tion and lifestyle choices path-dependent (McCoy & Lyons, 2014;
Morrison & Lawell, 2016). These are all fruitful directions for fu-
ture research, but any model of such a multifaceted problem must
carefully balance complexity with the ability to obtain generaliz-
able insights.
Acknowledgments
While conducting this study, the author received funding from
the UT Energy Institute for its Energy Infrastructure of the Future
project. Its support was greatly appreciated. Three anonymous re-
viewers provided excellent comments and suggestions that helped
significantly improve this paper.
Appendix A. Computational scalability
The focus of this paper is undoubtedly on the analytical find-
ings and urban planning insights that can be derived from the
model, rather than on data-intensive applications or computational
Please cite this article as: B.D. Leibowicz, Urban land use and transportation planning for climate change mitigation: A theoretical frame-
work, European Journal of Operational Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2019.12.034
[m5G;January 10, 2020;16:2]
Table A.1
Scaling of the problem size and solution time as the number of zones increases.
Number of zones Number of Number of Solution time (s)
variables constraints
2 10 5 0.057
10 42 13 0.063
100 402 103 0.141
1000 4002 1003 0.929
10,000 40,002 1003 5.628
algorithms. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to briefly examine the
computational scalability of the model as the number of zones in-
creases. The scenarios in Section 5 feature only two zones for ease
of illustration and to elucidate the key insights, but in reality, an
urban area would likely be divided into many more zones for land
use and transportation planning purposes.
First, it is instructive to assess how the problem size increases
with η, chosen to denote the number of zones. The model incorpo-
rates 4η + 1 variables and η + 3 constraints. Therefore, the problem
size scales linearly with the number of zones and does not suffer
from the curse of dimensionality.
Some computational tests are conducted to confirm that the so-
lution time remains manageable as the number of zones increases
to reflect the degrees of spatial resolution likely to characterize
real-world applications. As previously mentioned, the model is im-
plemented in GAMS and solved using the IPOPT solver.7 The tests
are run on a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (6th Gen) laptop with an
Intel Core i5-8250U processor and 8 GB of RAM.
The computational test results are shown in Table A.1. Deter-
mining optimal solutions for small instances like the two-zone ex-
amples in Section 5 takes under one-tenth of a second. Even with
thousands of zones, optimal solutions are achieved in less than
ten seconds. Since each zone would correspond to a spatial unit
ranging from a city block up to a neighborhood in a real plan-
ning application, the number of zones is unlikely to be greater than
the larger instances considered in Table A.1. While this theoretical
model designed for analytical insight has limitations in terms of
practical application (covered in Section 6), its computational com-
plexity would not be a decisive problem.
References
Acuto, M., Parnell, S., & Seto, K. C. (2018). Building a global urban science. Nature
Sustainability, 1, 2–4.
Alonso, W. (1964). Location and land use. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Anas, A., Arnott, R., & Small, K. A. (1998). Urban spatial structure. Journal of Eco-
nomic Literature, 36(3), 1426–1464.
Arnott, R., & Small, K. (1994). The economics of traffic congestion. American Scientist,
82(5), 446–455.
Attardi, R., Cerreta, M., Sannicandro, V., & Torre, C. M. (2018). Non-compensatory
composite indicators for the evaluation of urban planning policy: The Land-Use
Policy Efficiency Index (LUPEI). European Journal of Operational Research, 264(2),
491–507.
Bai, X., Dawson, R. J., Ürge-Vorsatz, D., Delgado, G. C., Salisu Barau, A., Dhakal, S., . . .
Schultz, S. (2018). Six research priorities for cities and climate change. Nature,
555(7694), 23–25.
Bai, X., Surveyer, A., Elmqvist, T., Gatzweiler, F. W., Güneralp, B., Parnell, S., . . .
Webb, R. (2016). Defining and advancing a systems approach for sustainable
cities. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 23, 69–78.
Bammi, D., & Bammi, D. (1979). Development of a comprehensive land use plan
by means of a multiple objective mathematical programming model. Interfaces,
9(2), 50–63.
Belaïd, F. (2016). Understanding the spectrum of domestic energy consumption: Em-
pirical evidence from France. Energy Policy, 92, 220–233.
Borck, R., & Brueckner, J. K. (2018). Optimal energy taxation in cities. Journal of the
Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, 5(2), 481–516.
7
Note that the model was also solved successfully using other NLP solvers in-
cluding CONOPT and COUENNE to verify that they reach identical solutions. The
results in Table A.1 were obtained using IPOPT because its solution times were the
shortest.
JID: EOR
ARTICLE IN PRESS
B.D. Leibowicz / European Journal of Operational Research xxx (xxxx) xxx
Brill, E. D., Chang, S.-Y., & Hopkins, L. D. (1982). Modeling to generate alternatives:
The HSJ approach and an illustration using a problem in land use planning.
Management Science, 28(3), 221–235.
Brotchie, J. (1969). A general planning model. Management Science, 16(3), 265–266.
Brotchie, J. F. (1978). A new approach to urban modelling. Management Science,
24(16), 1753–1758.
Brueckner, J. K. (1987). The structure of urban equilibria: A unified treatment of the
muth-mills model. In E. Mills (Ed.), Handbook of regional and urban economics:
2 (pp. 821–845). Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Brueckner, J. K., & Franco, S. F. (2018). Employer-paid parking, mode choice, and
suburbanization. Journal of Urban Economics, 104(December 2017), 35–46.
C40 Cities (2019). C40 Cities. http://www.c40.org/.
Cajot, S., Peter, M., Bahu, J. M., Guignet, F., Koch, A., & Maréchal, F. (2017a). Ob-
stacles in energy planning at the urban scale. Sustainable Cities and Society, 30,
223–236.
Cajot, S., Schüler, N., Peter, M., Koch, A., & Maréchal, F. (2017b). Interactive optimiza-
tion for the planning of urban systems. Energy Procedia, 122, 445–450.
Caparros-Midwood, D., Barr, S., & Dawson, R. (2015). Optimised spatial planning to
meet long term urban sustainability objectives. Computers, Environment and Ur-
ban Systems, 54, 154–164.
Çolak, S., Lima, A., & González, M. C. (2016). Understanding congested travel in ur-
ban areas. Nature Communications, 7, 1–8.
Creutzig, F., Baiocchi, G., Bierkandt, R., Pichler, P.-P., & Seto, K. C. (2015). Global
typology of urban energy use and potentials for an urbanization mitigation
wedge. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(20), 6283–6288.
Creutzig, F., Roy, J., Lamb, W. F., Azevedo, I. M., de Bruin, W. B., Dalkmann, H., . . . We-
ber, E. U. (2018). Towards demand-side solutions for mitigating climate change.
Nature Climate Change, 8, 268–271.
Deetjen, T. A., Conger, J. P., Leibowicz, B. D., & Webber, M. E. (2018). Review of cli-
mate action plans in 29 major U.S. cities: Comparing current policies to research
recommendations. Sustainable Cities and Society, 41, 711–727.
Ewing, R., & Rong, F. (2008). The impact of urban form on US residential energy
use. Housing Policy Debate, 19(1), 1–30.
Gaigné, C., Riou, S., & Thisse, J.-F. (2012). Are compact cities environmentally
friendly? Journal of Urban Economics, 72(2–3), 123–136.
Gilbert, K. C., Holmes, D. D., & Rosenthal, R. E. (1985). A multiobjective discrete
optimization model for land allocation. Management Science, 31(12), 1509–1522.
Glaeser, E. L., & Kahn, M. E. (2010). The greenness of cities: Carbon dioxide emis-
sions and urban development. Journal of Urban Economics, 67(3), 404–418.
Grout, C. A., Jaeger, W. K., & Plantinga, A. J. (2011). Land-use regulations and prop-
erty values in Portland, Oregon: A regression discontinuity design approach. Re-
gional Science and Urban Economics, 41(2), 98–107.
Hammad, A. W., Akbarnezhad, A., & Rey, D. (2017). Sustainable urban facility lo-
cation: Minimising noise pollution and network congestion. Transportation Re-
search Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 107, 38–59.
Harris, B. (1961). Some Problems in the Theory of Intra-Urban Location. Operations
Research, 9(5), 695–721.
Hirte, G., & Tscharaktschiew, S. (2013). The optimal subsidy on electric vehicles in
German metropolitan areas: A spatial general equilibrium analysis. Energy Eco-
nomics, 40, 515–528.
Hua, H., Hovestadt, L., Tang, P., & Li, B. (2019). Integer programming for urban de-
sign. European Journal of Operational Research, 274(3), 1125–1137.
Karathodorou, N., Graham, D. J., & Noland, R. B. (2010). Estimating the effect of ur-
ban density on fuel demand. Energy Economics, 32(1), 86–92.
Kennedy, C., Steinberger, J., Gasson, B., Hansen, Y., Hillman, T., Havranek, M., . . .
Mendez, G. V. (2009). Greenhouse gas emissions from global cities. Environmen-
tal Science & Technology, 43(19), 7297–7302.
Kloosterman, R. C., & Musterd, S. (2001). The polycentric urban region: Towards a
research agenda. Urban Studies, 38(4), 623–633.
Larson, W., Liu, F., & Yezer, A. (2012). Energy footprint of the city: Effects of ur-
ban land use and transportation policies. Journal of Urban Economics, 72(2–3),
147–159.
Please cite this article as: B.D. Leibowicz, Urban land use and transportation planning for climate change mitigation: A theoretical frame-
work, European Journal of Operational Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2019.12.034
[m5G;January 10, 2020;16:2]
13
Leibowicz, B. D. (2017). Effects of urban land-use regulations on greenhouse gas
emissions. Cities, 70, 135–152.
Li, X., & Parrott, L. (2016). An improved genetic algorithm for spatial optimization of
multi-objective and multi-site land use allocation. Computers, Environment and
Urban Systems, 59, 184–194.
Lohrey, S., & Creutzig, F. (2016). A ‘sustainability window’ of urban form. Transporta-
tion Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 45, 96–111.
Ma, J., Liu, Z., & Chai, Y. (2015). The impact of urban form on CO2 emission from
work and non-work trips: The case of Beijing, China. Habitat International, 47,
1–10.
Marshall, J. D. (2008). Energy-efficient urban form. Environmental Science & Technol-
ogy, 42(9), 3133–3137.
McCoy, D., & Lyons, S. (2014). Consumer preferences and the influence of networks
in electric vehicle diffusion: An agent-based microsimulation in ireland. Energy
Research & Social Science, 3, 89–101.
Mills, E. S. (1967). An aggregative model of resource allocation in a metropolitan
area. American Economic Review, 57, 197–210.
Mogridge, M. J. H. (1997). The self-defeating nature of urban road capacity policy: A
review of theories, disputes and available evidence. Transport Policy, 4(1), 5–23.
Morrison, G. M., & Lawell, C. Y. C. L. (2016). Driving in force: The influence of work-
place peers on commuting decisions on U.S. Military bases. Journal of Economic
Behavior & Organization, 125, 22–40.
Muth, R. (1969). Cities and housing. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Navamuel, E. L., Rubiera Morollón, F., & Moreno Cuartas, B. (2018). Energy consump-
tion and urban sprawl: Evidence for the Spanish case. Journal of Cleaner Produc-
tion, 172, 3479–3486.
Newman, P. W., & Kenworthy, J. R. (1989). Gasoline consumption and cities: A com-
parison of U.S. cities with a global survey. Journal of the American Planning As-
sociation, 55(1), 24–37.
Pan, H., Shen, Q., & Zhang, M. (2009). Influence of urban form on travel behaviour
in four neighbourhoods of Shanghai. Urban Studies, 46(2), 275–294.
Piyapong, J., Noland, R. B., & Graham, D. J. (2012). Marginal productivity of expand-
ing highway capacity. Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, 46(3), 337–347.
Prieur-Richard, A.-H., Walsh, B., Craig, M., Melamed, M. L., Colbert, L., Pathak, M.,
Connors, S., Bai, X., Barau, A., Bulkeley, H., Cleugh, H., Cohen, M., Colenbrander,
S., Dodman, D., Dhakal, S., Dawson, R., Espey, J., Greenwalt, J., Kurian, P., Lee,
B., Leonardsen, L., Masson-Delmotte, V., Munshi, D., Okem, A., Delgado Ramos,
G. C., Sanchez Rodriguez, R., Roberts, D., Rosenzweig, C., Schultz, S., Seto, K.,
Solecki, W., van Staden, M., & Ürge-Vorsatz, D. (2018). Extended version: Global
Research and Action Agenda on Cities and Climate Change Science.
Savelsbergh, M., & Van Woensel, T. (2016). 50th anniversary invited article city lo-
gistics: Challenges and opportunities. Transportation Science, 50(2), 579–590.
Seto, K., Dhakal, S., Bigio, A., Blanco, H., Delgado, G., Dewar, D., . . . Ra-
maswami, A. (2014). Human Settlements, Infrastructure, and Spatial Planning. In
O. Edenhofer, R. Pichs-Madruga, Y. Sokona, E. Farahani, S. Kadner, K. Seyboth, . . .
J. C. Minx (Eds.), Climate change 2014: Mitigation of climate change. Contribution
of working group III to the Fifth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel
on climate change. Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University
Press.
Solecki, W., Rosenzweig, C., Dhakal, S., Roberts, D., Barau, A. S., Schultz, S., &
Ürge-Vorsatz, D. (2018). City transformations in a 1.5 C warmer world. Nature
Climate Change, 8(3), 177–181.
Stewart, T. J., & Janssen, R. (2014). A multiobjective GIS-based land use planning
algorithm. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 46, 25–34.
Taniguchi, E., Thompson, R. G., & Yamada, T. (2016). New opportunities and chal-
lenges for city logistics. Transportation Research Procedia, 12(June 2015), 5–13.
United Nations (2018). World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision.
VandeWeghe, J. R., & Kennedy, C. (2007). A spatial analysis of residential greenhouse
gas emissions in the Toronto census metropolitan area. Journal of Industrial Ecol-
ogy, 11(2), 133–144.
Ying, J. Q. (2015). Optimization for multiclass residential location models with con-
gestible transportation networks. Transportation Science, 49(3), 452–471.