Job Growth Location Key to Meeting Emissions Goals
climate change, community, environmental monitoring, planning, transportation March 2nd, 2009
According to a recent study by the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, the fact that a large portion of job growth has been in suburban areas, rather than the city core, means that it will be tough for the area to meet their greenhouse gas emissions goals. The reason is that jobs are away from the transit hub that is at the city center, and as a result area residents are driving nearly 50 million more miles each day since 1990.
“Downtown San Francisco is the only employment node in the region where most people travel to work without bringing their own car. This paper focuses on downtown San Francisco as the node with by far the greatest near-term potential to accommodate regional employment growth with a low carbon footprint. In fact, if reducing emissions and the amount of driving was our only criterion, we would advocate a region that adds as much of its incremental growth as possible into San Francisco. Even if San Francisco retains its share of regional jobs (16 percent), the increase in driving and emissions in the suburbs will prevent the region from attaining climate change goals.”
Read the research paper, “THE FUTURE OF DOWNTOWN: How can we bring more jobs into the region’s most transit-rich employment center?”, here.
Posts
