Work

High average and linear scaling of Ecological Footprint in cities

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Cities are often assumed to be environmentally efficient in high-income countries, but their indirect impacts through consumption make this efficiency uncertain. Studies of agglomeration effects and urban scaling have reported contradictory results, with most analyses relying on consumption-based carbon footprints and rarely examining non-carbon impacts. Here we present spatially and sectorally detailed Ecological Footprint estimates covering all 83,603 populated US census tracts and disaggregating consumption into 52 categories in 2021. We found that per-capita Ecological Footprint was highest in cities, followed by suburbs and rural areas, with only small differences in effect size. Total urban Ecological Footprint scaled approximately linearly with population and remained robust across city delineations. These results indicate that cities do not exhibit clear footprint efficiency and that policies targeting settlement type or individual sectors alone are unlikely to deliver meaningful reductions. We suggest treating Ecological Footprint reduction as a wicked problem and reframing it toward actionability. Xu et al. show that US cities have high per-capita Ecological Footprints and that total urban Ecological Footprint scales linearly with population. The findings suggest that cities may not be inherently more footprint-efficient in high-income countries.

Source: Nature Communications

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-78515-8