Urban Form and the Embodied Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Water, Wastewater, and Stormwater Infrastructure
Year: 2026
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Cities generate climate-warming greenhouse gases (GHG) from materials and construction, known as “embodied GHG”. I take four approaches to advance our understanding of links between neighbourhood-level urban form – including population density and housing types – and the embodied GHG of public and private water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructures. I relate urban form with the embodied GHG of 18 public municipal networks today; I examine urban form’s role in added embodied GHG from public networks over a 20-year period; I consider the impact of allocating public pipes’ embodied GHG by use; and I inspect urban form’s impact on embodied GHG from private in-building pipes. Neighbourhoods with triple the density incur half the per capita embodied GHG from water, and doubling the densification rate halves added per capita GHG over time. Considering GHG of private pipes and allocating pipes’ impacts based on utilization reduces, but does not eliminate, the assessed benefits of density.
Source: TSpace (University of Toronto)
Author: Ahuja, Chaitanya
Institution: University of Toronto
Language: English
Subfield: Environmental Engineering
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7203963082