Carbon reduction of urban form strategies: Regional heterogeneity in Yangtze River Delta, China

Urban land forms play a pivotal role in sustainable development. The ongoing theoretical debate between centralized and decentralized views of urban form strategies underscores the intricate impacts of urban forms on carbon reduction. These impacts are argued to be contingent upon diverse regional core and periphery contexts in this paper. In response to this debate, we have developed comprehensive measures of urban form attributes, encompassing compactness, size, complexity and contiguity. Both non-spatial and spatial models have been conducted to elucidate how these land use strategies affect carbon emissions, focusing on the county-level municipalities within the Yangtze River Delta in China. In general, compactness and complexity drive carbon emissions, while size and contiguity show carbon reduction effects. Our Geographically Weighted Regression model reveals spatially heterogeneous relationships between urban forms on carbon emissions. The kernel density analysis further sheds light on the ‘core-periphery’ distinctions related to regional economic, planning and administrative characteristics. These heterogeneous results suggest the importance of tailored urban form strategies for different regional contexts, adding nuanced insights into land-use efforts for carbon reductions and sustainable development.