1. The literature landscape on 1.5 °C climate change and cities
- Author
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William F. Lamb, Radhika Khosla, Jan C. Minx, Felix Creutzig, and Max Callaghan
- Subjects
Urban form ,010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences ,020209 energy ,Political science ,0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering ,General Social Sciences ,Climate change ,02 engineering and technology ,01 natural sciences ,Environmental planning ,0105 earth and related environmental sciences ,General Environmental Science - Abstract
Cities are key for achieving the 1.5 °C warming limit of the Paris Agreement. However, synthesizing policy insights from the urban literature is a challenge, due to its rapid growth, breadth of topics and relative lack of assessments so far. Here we introduce methods from computational linguistics to build a systematic overview of research on transport, buildings, waste management and urban form. We find that the epistemic core of the mitigation-focused urban literature is currently centered on urban form and emissions accounting, while extensive research into demand-side options remain overlooked, including congestion and parking polices, active travel, and waste management. In the IPCC Special Report on 1.5 °C, and for meeting the target itself, all such city-scale opportunities need to be examined.
- Published
- 2018
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