URBAN TRANSFORMATION AND CARBON FOOTPRINT OF MEGA-CITIES IN JAPAN AND CHINA
Shinji Kaneko
Graduate School for International Development and Cooperation, Hiroshima University
kshinji@hiroshima-u.ac.jp
Abstract:
Cities are the engine of economic development of a nation and this is particularly true for
the mega-cities of Asia where rapid economic growth has been taking place. To maintain the
momentum of sustained economic growth, cities are transforming its structure of economic
activities, the efficiency of production and the patterns of consumption. As a consequence of
this economic transformation, the structure of energy and material supply and demand has
been changing over time with dramatic increase in the external dependency of supply. Being
frontrunners, this phenomenon takes place in a greater intensity in mega-cities compared to
smaller cities, although cities are too diversified to generalize such transformation process.
To explain and analyze this transformation process and the carbon footprint implications,
this study focuses on two cases; it looks into Tokyo in 1990s as a case of city with matured
economy and that of Beijing and Shanghai in late 1990s and early 2000s as cases of the
cities with rapid economic development. This study utilizes regional input-output analysis
techniques to estimate embodied energy and carbon emissions in material goods and
services in these three mega-cities that elucidates the relation between indirect and direct
energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions in different stages of economic
development. Our results show that the responsibility of a city for energy use and carbon
emissions is greatly underestimated if only direct energy use or direct carbon emission are
considered. The results also show that the increase in the extent of economic dependency on
outside economy leads to decrease in direct energy consumption and direct carbon emissions
but this results into an increase in the indirect energy consumption and indirect carbon
emissions. This transformation is closely associated with the industrial structure changes
from manufacturing to service sector and the pattern of consumption in a city. Furthermore,
in the city with matured economy such as Tokyo, a city looks much more efficient when
viewed in terms of per capita direct carbon emissions compared to the national average due
to dense and well established infrastructures in the city, however if we consider both direct
and indirect carbon emission per capita, this is not the case. Based on these sample
empirical evidences, the paper tries to derive common patterns of cities regarding the
relationship between urban transformation and the carbon footprint.