Survey of Transport-related Energy Sustainability of Major Canadian Urban Areas

The rapid development of urban ‘sprawl’ surrounding many North American cities has many potentially detrimental effects including enhanced energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from increasing private vehicle use. Over the past 5 years in Canada a number of studies have been undertaken to address transportation-related energy consumption with the view to formulating relevant policies with regards to sustainability. These studies have led to the recommendation of a suite of indicators both to characterize the sustainability of past urban growth as well as to monitor future sustainability trends. A number of the proposed indicators are based on land-use and urban form, quantities that can be extracted from the analysis of satellite imagery. In 2003, a project was initiated at the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing to support departmental energy policy-makers by (a) developing numerical methods to quantify their recommended indicators and (b) to assess these indicators through a national sustainability survey of major Canadian urban areas. This paper presents results of the survey based on land-cover / land-use (LCLU) information derived from circa 2000 Landsat Thematic Mapper data as well as extensive ancillary information such as road networks and the national census. Four indicators (urban land use per capita, urban compactness, transport mode index and street network connectivity) are quantified for all Canadian cities with populations in excess of 200,000 as well as a selected subset of smaller communities.