Low Carbon Suburban Living in 2021 in our "Post-COVID19" World

A growing group of urban scholars are now considering the long run effects of COVID-19 on optimal urban density patterns.  Will the population spread out into more suburban living to reduce future contagion risk?  If high density (apartment and public transit intensive) living becomes less attractive, will greenhouse gas emissions rise as more of the population suburbanizes?  Will there be greater opposition to carbon pricing because suburbanites consume more fossil fuels and thus will be more likely to oppose such carbon pricing?

In a series of past papers, I have explored these themes;

1.  Ed Glaeser and I wrote a well known JUE paper on the Greenness of Cities and the role of density in reducing GHG emissions production.  Matt Holian and I published a 2015 sequel to this paper.

2.  In the past, people who lived at lower density opposed greenhouse gas pricing. I explored this theme in this 2013 paper and this 2015 paper.

3.  In April 2020, the question is whether we can build a low carbon suburban lifestyle.  Nils Kok and I have studied green real estate in California.   

In a 2017 paper, Magali Delmas and Stephen Locke and I studied a related issue.   We are interested in the complementarity between suburban households installing solar panels and buying electric vehicles.  Such suburban households have a zero carbon footprint.

If the population spreads out in response to lingering contagion fears, then the growing suburban economy can lower its greenhouse gas emissions from the transport and power sector from transitioning to the joint purchasing of renewable power and electric vehicles.  In fact, the rising demand for such a bundle of products increases the aggregate demand for such products and raises the likelihood that more firms will seek to supply such products. That was the theme of my 2018 paper with Zhao.