Energy and the city: density, buildings and transport
Koen Steemers*
Department of Architecture, The Martin Centre for Architectural and Urban Studies,
University of Cambridge, 6 Chaucer Road, Cambridge CB2 2EB, UK
Abstract
Cities by definition are a focal point of energy consumption. Their forms have a significant bearing on the balance of building and transport
energy use, which are the two sectors that are directly affected by urban planning (the third being industrial). This paper establishes the relative
magnitudes of building energy use in comparison to transport, and points out the interrelationships between the two in the context of the cities
and of a temperate climate. The main part of the paper assesses the building energy trends and implications of urban form, with a particular
reference to the effect of varying density, and presents strategic findings. It calls for continued research and development, particularly in the
field of modelling the urban microclimate as a function of design, as well as comfort research with an emphasis on outdoor comfort. Urban
microclimate and comfort are the themes of this journal, and this paper aims to set the scene.
# 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Urban planning; Urban form; Density; Microclimate; Transport
1. Urban density—transport versus building energy
The relative low cost of energy during the last century has
allowed for the increasing dispersal of activities and decreas-
ing densities of many of our cities. These lower densities
have resulted in greater physical separation and diffuse
dispersal of activities, making mass transport increasingly
difficult. In combination with increasing wealth, this has
resulted in increased private vehicular traffic (currently
accounting for about 70% of Europe’s passenger transport).
As the private vehicle typically consumes more than twice
the energy per passenger per kilometer than a train, and
almost four times that of a bus, the energy (and pollution)
implications of an urban layout that does not maximise
public transport are likely to be very significant [1]. This
implies that it is essential to plan cities for efficient transport
use. Although this is undoubtedly true, it is important to
consider building energy use, which in UK accounts for over
half of the total energy consumed (in the European Union
this figure is 41%, and in US 36%) and an equivalent
proportion of pollution generated. This compares with less
than a quarter each for transport and industry.
Although these figure are notional figures and not specific
to urban areas, the 2:1 ratio of building:transport energy use
(for UK) is likely to be a conservative estimate for cities.
This is partly because of the availability of urban public
transport systems, the shorter distances for walking, the
increased traffic congestion and limited parking, which
suggest that there is likely to be proportionally less transport
energy use. For example, in central London only 10% of
commuters arrive by car compared to a national average of
40%. On the other hand, there is a concentration of office,
retail and other commercial building types in cities, which
have a greater level of energy consumption per square meter
than housing. An air-conditioned office building to current
building regulations consumes approximately six times the
energy per square meter of a house. So, it would be fair to
say that the energy and environmental implications of
buildings are at least twice as significant as those for
transport. For example, for London the ratio of energy used
in buildings to transport is approximately 2.2:1 (including
goods, taxis and air transport!) (Fig. 1) [2].
Despite the fact that building energy use is much greater
than transport energy, there are a number of factors that have
given the transport debate more urgency.
(i) First, the very local pollution—both atmospheric and
noise—are more immediately perceptible than those
associated with buildings (power stations being gen-
erally located on the edge of or outside urban areas).
(ii) Second, the rate of replacement of old vehicles with
new ones (increasingly more efficient) is rapid
compared to buildings (typically buildings may have
a design life about 10 times longer than that of cars).
Energy and Buildings 35 (2003) 3–14
* Tel: þ44-1223-331712.
E-mail address: [email protected] (K. Steemers).
0378-7788/03/$ – see front matter # 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
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This means that transport policies will have a much
greater chance of having a short-term benefit com-
pared to building-related proposals, as the replacement
rate of cars is well within the time scale of targets such
as those set by the Kyoto agreement.
(iii) Third and finally, cars are not only associated with
environmental issues, but also with accidents, fatalities
and social erosion [3], bringing transport still higher
up the political agenda.
It has been shown that cities of a high density, such as, for
example Hong Kong, have a far lower transport energy
demand per capita than low density cities such as Houston,
by a factor of 18. On average, when comparing 10 major
cities in the US with 12 European cities, European cities are
five times as dense but the US cities consume 3.6 times as
much transport energy per capita [4]. The conclusion often
drawn from such data is that dense cities are low energy
cities. However, it is not clear to what extent density is the
cause, and increased energy use is the effect. For instance, it
can be argued that where private car use is less—due to, for
example economic conditions—cities are denser. Interest-
ingly, historic European cities, such as Paris, lie at a national
‘optimum’—achieving moderate energy use for modest
densities—whilst sustaining a rich urban life (Fig. 2). It is
not evident that moving towards increasing urban density
will lead to reduced car traffic—in fact, in the short-term the
opposite is likely to be the case. In the absence of extra
capacity in the form of effective integrated public transport,
increasing the density will inevitably increase traffic and
Fig. 1. Energy use breakdown for London [9].
Fig. 2. Transport energy vs. urban density for 32 cities [11].
4 K. Steemers / Energy and Buildings 35 (2003) 3–14
pollution. The challenge is, thus, to anticipate and imple-
ment public transport systems before increasing densities to
ensure that more existing and future inhabitants use public
transport instead of private cars and, thus, to shift the balance
away from the cars.
However, the long-term perspective of global environ-
mental concerns (climate change, ozone depletion, acid rain,
reducing fossil fuels, etc.) clearly means that building
energy use needs to be addressed, particularly in relation
to urban areas. This is combined with increasing urbanisa-
tion resulting in a predominantly urban global population. It
is, thus, essential to minimise the deleterious global and
local effects of urbanisation to ensure that the life nurturing
qualities of the city can be restored and maintained. Building
energy use is a predominant factor in this context.
2. Density and building energy
The concentration of activities and people in cities is often
perceived to be the main source of environmental problems.
However, such concentration can have environmental advan-
tages achieved, for example through the sharing of resources.
Most obviously, more intense use of land and sharing of
infrastructure—energy and water supply, drainage, roads,
buildings and public transport—reduces the energy per capita
associated with its construction (and possibly maintenance)
and benefits from an economy of scale by comparison to a
more dispersed urban configuration.
An example of this is the use of combined heat and power
(CHP) and district heating (DH) energy provision. Micro-
CHP has the potential to deliver thermal (55%) and electrical
(30%) energy locally to a neighbourhood at a high effi-
ciency—typically 85% or more overall—and reduces the
transmission and distribution losses of more centralised
power stations. This compares with an efficiency of approxi-
mately 30% for an average UK power plant to deliver
electricity. However, for the balance of heat and power to
be used optimally the energy demand should not only be
localised but also mixed, combining housing with other
commercial activities. Mixed use, high density neighbour-
hoods have the further potential advantage of local employ-
ment, commerce, retail, leisure, etc. which in turn may
reduce the distances that people need to travel to access
such facilities. The notion of ‘‘decentralised concentration
and high density mixed land-use’’, thus, seems to be rein-
forced by energy considerations [5].
However, when one considers the implications of high
density on the demand side of building energy use and on
building integrated renewable energy production (such as
photo-voltaics), does the balance begins to tip in favour of
lower densities? This balance is likely to depend on building
type, and for the purposes of this paper, we will consider
domestic and office use as the predominant types, in the
context of UK.
2.1. Domestic buildings
Taking UK as an example to demonstrate the point, the
energy demand in housing is dominated by space heating,
which on average accounts for 60% of the total energy
(Fig. 3) [6]. It is the space heating that will be most affected
by design, the remaining consumption being largely deter-
mined by occupant needs and not strongly dependent on
climate. In dispersed developments with the possibility of
greater solar access, passive solar design will have greater
potential to reduce space heating demands and, thus, overall
energy use in housing. In order to explore the effect of
increasing density on energy, we need to consider what
parameters can be altered to change the density of housing.
There are a number of ways in which the urban form of a
city can change to increase density:
(i) by increasing building depth;
(ii) by increasing building height or reducing spacing (i.e.
changing height:width ratios between buildings);
(iii) by increasing ‘compactness’ (e.g. apartments instead of
detached housing, where the building depth and height
characteristics may theoretically remain unaffected).
The first—increasing building depth—is perhaps particu-
larly common in terraced housing in UK cities, where
extensions to the rear in the form of conservatories, living
rooms, kitchens and bathrooms are commonplace. As a
result, the building envelope:floor areas ratio is usually
(though not necessarily) increased, and the availability of
daylight and sunlight to the interior is reduced. The energy
implications of conventional extensions (as opposed to a
passive solar extension) are an increase in both the heating
Fig. 3. Energy use breakdown for UK housing [13].
K. Steemers / Energy and Buildings 35 (2003) 3–14 5
and lighting loads. Overall, these increases are very small—
in the order of 5–10% for a two storey addition to a three
storey terraced house.
Housing densities can also be increased, by increasing the
average building heights (or reducing the spacing between
them), which can be defined by the obstruction angles to the
facades. An obstruction of 308 to the south facade of a
passive solar house1 can increase heating energy by 22%
compared to an unobstructed facade (Fig. 4). However,
conventional, non-solar housing will also require between
6 and 15% more energy for heating compared to a passive
solar house [7]. In an urban context, the solar potential for
housing is reduced, largely due to the presence of obstruc-
tions but also because of planning constraints on orientation
(Fig. 5). For the average UK dwelling, the heating contribu-
tion of solar energy is small, 10–15%, compared to a passive
solar house—in the order of 40%—thus, the energy con-
sequences of obstructions for a non-solar urban dwelling is
small.
Thus, there is in the above example, about a one-third
increase in heating energy for an urban house as compared to
a green field passive solar house. However, it should be
noted that there will be a significantly wider range of energy
use in an urban environment as some dwellings will be more
obstructed and facing north whilst others may benefit from
unobstructed solar gains.
The average one-third increase compares to a heat saving
of 40% while comparing detached housing with apartments
(Fig. 6) [7]. Thus, the way to increase density and energy
efficiency simultaneously is to increase ‘compactness’ of the
urban fabric whilst maintaining a limited building depth (in
the order of 10–12 m), and where an appropriate solar
orientation is ensured to access light, sun and air.
The conclusion would seem to be that for energy use in
UK housing the arguments for and against densification are
finely balanced and will probably depend on the infrastruc-
ture issues mentioned earlier. However, as the average
obstruction angles increase above about 308, the balance
will begin to swing against densification. An average
obstruction angle of 308 equates to a theoretical plot ratio
of up to 2.5 (assuming the terrace or courtyard form with a
plan depth of 10 m). Such a figure results in densities in the
order of 200 dwellings per hectare (DPH) (assuming 125 m2
per dwelling)—well above the 50 and 75 DPH discussed by
the Urban Task Force [8]. This compares with the current
density of new housing in UK of an average of 25 DPH [9],
Ebenezer Howard’s 45 DPH for the Garden City [10], the
new PPG3 guidance of up to 50 DPH [9], and Kowloon’s
1000 DPH in Hong Kong [10] (Fig. 7). The conclusion is that
relatively high housing densities can be achieved before a
negative impact on the energy demand becomes significant.
2.2. Non-domestic buildings
The non-domestic sector is very diverse, so for the
purposes of this paper, the focus is on UK office build-
ings—the predominant non-domestic building type. Unlike
housing, space heating for offices in UK is not the pre-
dominant issue in terms of primary energy use and energy
cost. Typically, the artificial lighting demand, and in the case
of an air-conditioned office, the fan power and refrigeration
loads, are often equally significant (dependent on the type of
office building).
If one excludes office equipment, as a non-design related
energy demand, the energy breakdown for a typical air
conditioned office in UK is: 44% for air conditioning,
34% lighting and 22% heating (Fig. 8) [11]. It is, therefore,
clear that avoiding, or at least reducing air conditioning, is a
primary objective to reduce energy demand. The secondary
approach is to reduce reliance on artificial lighting by
increasing and exploiting daylight availability. Finally, redu-
cing heat losses is likely to be the least significant energy
efficiency strategy and, therefore, should not be used as a
determinant for building form, except where it compliments
the previous two aspects (i.e. excessively compact and deep
plan forms may reduce heat loss but will dramatically
increase both mechanical ventilation and artificial lighting).
The first two aspects—avoiding air conditioning and
increasing daylight availability—are broadly complimen-
tary in terms of building form implications. They both point
Fig. 4. Effect of obstruction on space heating for housing [14].
1 A ‘passive solar’ house here is defined as a house with 75% of its
glazing to the south and 25% to the north, compared to a ‘non-solar’ house
which here is taken to be a house with west and east facing facades each
with 50% of the glazing. In both the cases, the assumption is that the
houses are designed according to, in 1990, Building Regulations (see [7]
for further details).
6 K. Steemers / Energy and Buildings 35 (2003) 3–14
towards shallow plan building forms in order to enable
natural ventilation and daylight penetration. Typical plan
depths for naturally ventilated and day-lit office buildings
are 12–15 m. The implication of limiting the plan depths of
buildings might suggest that densities would decrease for
low energy offices, compared to more conventional deep
plan buildings. However, this is not necessarily the case. The
avoidance of air conditioning may save up to 1 m depth of
services zone per floor (i.e. 25% of the building volume
assuming an initial 4 m floor-to-floor height) and a further 3–
5% of the volume for reduced plant size [12]. Therefore,
avoiding air conditioning can save a maximum of approxi-
mately 30% of the building volume. This may more than
compensate for the reduced plan depths resulting in, for
example, courtyard or finger-plan forms.
The benefits of avoiding air conditioning through adopt-
ing shallow plan depths are typically that naturally venti-
lated offices use <40% of the primary energy. This is an
enormous potential advantage. However, there are limita-
tions in adopting natural ventilation in the urban context.
Apart from internal gains levels (which are independent of
context), the most often quoted constraints in cities are noise
Fig. 5. Effect of orientation on space heating for housing [14].
Fig. 6. Relationship between building form and heat loss [14].
K. Steemers / Energy and Buildings 35 (2003) 3–14 7
and air pollution. Both these factors frequently result in the
adoption of air conditioning. The main cause of noise and
pollution is traffic and, thus, as mentioned before, this issue
needs to be addressed in advance of expecting a significant
reduction in energy consumption for office buildings. In the
meantime, there are building design strategies that can be
implemented which limit the need for air conditioning. The
most obvious is that it may only be necessary to mechani-
cally ventilate the street facing zone (and/or to locate less
noise sensitive accommodation there), allowing the rest of
the building to be naturally ventilated from a more quiet and
cleaner courtyard, garden or atrium. Such a ‘mixed-mode’
strategy to the servicing of offices will go some way towards
limiting energy use whilst maintaining the potential for
future adaptation to full natural ventilation.
Having established that it is in principle possible to
maintain a given density of development and significantly
reduced energy use by limiting air conditioning, it would
seem appropriate to investigate the energy impact of increas-
ing the density on office buildings. The primary energy
consumption of an average naturally ventilated office build-
ing in UK is dominated by artificial lighting and heating
Fig. 7. Dwellings and people per hectare for housing [3,15,16].
Fig. 8. Average energy use breakdown for air-conditioned offices [17].
8 K. Steemers / Energy and Buildings 35 (2003) 3–14
loads (Fig. 9). As the level of obstruction to buildings will
affect daylight and sunlight availability, both the lighting
and thermal loads will be affected by increasing urban
densities.
If again we consider two possible strategies for increasing
density as being increasing building depths and heights,
some initial analysis can be carried out.
By increasing the building depth of offices the availability
of natural ventilation and daylight reduces, resulting in an
anticipated increase in mechanical ventilation and artificial
lighting. However, heat losses are likely to diminish because
the surface:volume ratio reduces with increasing plan
depths.
Using the LT method [11] to determine the energy use
implications, it can be seen that for a low energy naturally
ventilated office (with mechanical fresh air supply for deep
plan areas) the energy use doubles when the plan depth is
doubled from 12 to 24 m. However, for an efficient air-
conditioned building the energy use increase is only 20%,
although the total energy is almost three times larger than the
naturally ventilated option at a depth of 12 m (Fig. 10).2
Thus, increasing density by increasing building depths
will inevitably result in increased energy use for office
buildings, although the relative increase is less for air-
conditioned buildings. Nevertheless, on average deep plan,
Fig. 9. Average energy use breakdown for naturally ventilated offices [17].
Fig. 10. Effect of increasing the building depth on energy use for a mixed mode office.
2 Assumptions regarding the office buildings modelled include low
energy, optimised control systems, a 50% facade glazing ratio, with a
lighting datum of 300 lx and 30 W/m2 of internal gains, located in southern
UK (see the LT method for more details [11]).
K. Steemers / Energy and Buildings 35 (2003) 3–14 9
air-conditioned buildings still consume typically twice as
much energy as equivalent mixed-mode buildings (naturally
ventilated and mechanical fresh air supply), suggesting that
the avoidance of air conditioning by improving the urban
microclimate is a key factor.
The alternative strategy for increasing density is to
increase the average building height (or reduce the spacing,
which will have the same consequence for sunlight and
daylight availability). Using the same assumptions as in the
example given previous, it is possible to predict the energy
consequences of increasing obstructions. From LT energy
analysis, it can be seen that the total energy use would be
expected to increase by 23% for air conditioned and 45% for
non-air conditioned offices for an obstruction of 308 com-
pared to an unobstructed situation (Fig. 11).
3. City texture
Despite the clarity and insights gained from looking at
urban density in terms of simple parameters, such as obstruc-
tion angles or plan depth, it is important to move from the
theoretical description to study the formal complexity of a
real bit of city. The study of urban form has been an ongoing
pre-occupation at the Martin Centre for Architectural and
Urban Studies for over 30 years—starting with the seminal
work of Leslie Martin and Lionel March [13,14]. The
current research builds on this work and focuses on the
relationship between urban ‘texture’ and environmental
characteristics. It has already been pointed out that the
energy performance of buildings is linked to the quality
of the urban environment, and although not the specific
focus of this paper, research into the solar, wind, pollution
and acoustic effects of urban texture is going on. A number
of recent research projects have developed analytical tech-
niques, which categorise the physical urban geometry and
assess the consequence of this on environmental perfor-
mance [15–17].
One of the techniques developed by the Martin Centre’s
urban environmental research team assesses energy demand
in terms of urban form. This technique, referred to as ‘LT
urban’, combines the LT energy analysis tool mentioned
previously with computer-based image processing [18] to
extract data related to building form for large urban areas
(typically 400m� 400 m). To demonstrate the technique
and its application to establishing the relationship between
urban density and building energy use, a 400m� 400 m part
of London is used (Fig. 12). As we are primarily interested in
built form, numerous assumptions have to be made about the
detailed characteristics of individual buildings, such as
glazing ratio, U-values, systems, etc. These have been
standardised, based on a detailed survey of the area and
making informed estimates where necessary. The base-case
urban form is altered by adjusting the building heights so
as to produce a range of urban densities from half to double
the existing. The energy consequences of increasing the
average obstruction angles are significant—for example, 108increase in obstruction results in approximately 10%
increase in energy (Fig. 13). For a density range of plot
ratios from 1.25:1 to 5:1 the results show that doubling the
Fig. 11. Effect of obstruction angle on energy use for offices [17].
10 K. Steemers / Energy and Buildings 35 (2003) 3–14
Fig.12.A
digital
elevationmodel
(DEM)isusedto
determineandmap
energyuse
fortheLondonarea
under
investigation(left,aerial
view
ofLondonsite;middle,DEM
ofthesite;right,energydem
and
(kW
h/{
m}2per
year)).
K. Steemers / Energy and Buildings 35 (2003) 3–14 11
density typically increases energy consumption by in the
order of 25% for this whole section of the city (Fig. 14).
It is interesting to note that optimising the glazing ratios in
response to the level of obstruction reduces the effect, so that
doubling the density now results in a 21% increase in energy.
This highlights that other parameters, at the level of indi-
vidual buildings, will change the relationship of energy to
urban density, and that they should respond to the specific
urban context. Glazing ratios in particular—as they repre-
sent the main interaction between building and climate—
Fig. 13. Effect of obstruction angle on energy use for naturally ventilated offices on the London site.
Fig. 14. Effect of density on energy use for naturally ventilated offices on the London site.
12 K. Steemers / Energy and Buildings 35 (2003) 3–14
affect the energy performance and can be ‘optimised’ to
minimise energy demand. This is demonstrated by deter-
mining the optimum glazing ratio for the London site, which
for all orientations show that glazing should reduce as you
go up a building’s facade (Fig. 15). Optimum glazing ratios
vary less in response to orientation compared to green field
sites, as in an urban context the obstructions reduce the
differences in terms of daylight and particularly sunlight
availability.
4. Conclusions
The order of magnitude of energy implications in relation
to urban density has been demonstrated for domestic and
office buildings in UK’s temperate climate. For dwellings,
the energy implications of compact densification are
balanced between the benefits from reduced heat losses
and the non-benefits of reduced solar and daylight avail-
ability. For office buildings, increasing urban density
increases energy use because of the reduced availability
of daylight in particular. However, this increase is signifi-
cantly less than the energy increase of changing from a
naturally ventilated office to an air-conditioned office. This
change is only possible to prevent if the urban environment
is less polluted and noisy. This is where the link between
transport and building energy becomes evident, as cars are
the major cause of urban pollution. Although overall urban
transport consumes less than half the energy of urban
buildings, the implications of reducing private car use in
favour of clean and efficient public transport can be sig-
nificant for building energy use. Thus, the move should
initially be towards improving the urban environment, so
that the energy benefits will outweigh the non-benefits.
Increasing the urban population is not likely in the first
instance to improve the urban environment, and the worst
will be the increase in noise and pollution in the short-term
before the necessary level of investment in transport infra-
structure is made. The result may thus be increased non-
domestic building energy use due to the adoption of air-
conditioning. Combined with climate change, the same
effect may also occur in the domestic sector.
It is clear that the political will is to a large extent and
needs to be in place to encourage sustainable development.
However, there is a need for an analytical approach to
provide information on which the decisions will be based.
The potential role for research is evident.
‘‘Towns and cities should be well designed, be more
compact and connected, support a range of diverse uses
within a sustainable environment which is well integrated
with public transport and adaptable to change’’ [8].
It is not difficult to agree with this statement and its vision.
What is important is to develop the necessary techniques to
inform the balance, sequence and implementation of deci-
sions to achieve the desired results.
This issue of Energy and Buildings begins to provide the
required knowledge, with a particular reference to urban
environmental and related comfort issues. It is by making
our environments more comfortable that we can increase the
use of outdoor space for energy efficient movement (i.e.
walking and cycling) and exploit these beneficial urban micro-
climates to improve the energy performance of buildings.
Acknowledgements
Koen Steemers is joint Director of the Martin Centre
where he heads the urban environmental research team—he
particularly wishes to thank Nick Baker, Sam Lawton, Carlo
Ratti and Dana Raydan for their support. Dr. Steemers is co-
ordinator of EU research projects such as ‘‘Assessing the
Potential for Renewable Energy in Cities (PRECis)’’ and
‘‘Project Towards Zero Emission (ZED) Urban Develop-
ment’’, as well as ‘‘Sustainable Building Form’’ funded by
the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, on these
aspects this paper is based.
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