INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY

Int. J. Climatol. 27: 18491857 (2007)

Published online 22 August 2007 in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/joc.1604
Cities as agents of global change
Gerald Mills*
School of Geography, Planning & Environmental Policy, Newman Building, UCD, Dublin 4, Ireland
Abstract:
Cities, as places where human activities are concentrated, are frequently cited as the chief causes of, and solutions to,
anthropogenic global change. In this article, I review the climatology literature that examines the relationship between cities
and atmospheric changes at all scales. Despite the volume of literature on this theme, there is little overall coherence. In part,
this is a result of the varying operational denitions of the city and the difculty in obtaining pertinent information. Rather
than attempt to provide a comprehensive review of the literature that focuses on cities and global change, this article
categorises published research on the relationship between urban areas and climate changes at all scales into common
themes. Copyright 2007 Royal Meteorological Society
KEY WORDS urban climate; global change; cities
Received 26 September 2006; Revised 19 June 2007; Accepted 22 June 2007
INTRODUCTION
We are at an important juncture of human relationship
with the earth. Approximately half the worlds population
(3.2 billion) now lives in urban areas, and this proportion
will grow substantially in the near future. By 2030, it
is expected that 5 billion will live in urban areas and
account for 60% of the global population. The greater
proportion of this growth is expected to occur in the
less developed world, particularly in Asia, where 71%
of the global rural population currently resides. Although
some of this growth is predicted to occur in very large
cities, most is expected to occur in smaller cities with
populations less than one million. In 2005, cities with
populations under 500 000 accounted for 51% of urban
dwellers (UN, 2006). While we know something of the
larger cities and the problems they experience, little is
known of the smaller cities where most will reside.
Urbanization is used to refer both to the movement of
people into cities and to the transformation of natural
into urban land-cover. An urban land-cover consists of
closely spaced buildings, impervious surfaces and man-
aged outdoor spaces. Currently, just 23% of the earths
ice-free land area corresponds to this denition yet half
of humanity resides in these areas, and it is here that
human activity is concentrated. Currently, cities are the
foci for the planetary ows of energy and materials,
which are used to construct the physical city and sustain
its functions (Decker et al., 2000). As a consequence,
cities are directly and indirectly responsible for global
changes in the atmosphere, hydrosphere, geosphere and
* Correspondence to: Gerald Mills, School of Geography, Planning &
Environmental Policy, Newman Building, UCD, Dublin 4, Ireland.
E-mail: gerald.mills@ucd.ie
biosphere. The direct global impact of urban characteris-
tics is best illustrated with two examples.
The rst example illustrates that the anthropogenic
emissions of carbon dioxide are highly concentrated
in and near urban centres. Figure 1 illustrates global
emissions of carbon dioxide due to fossil fuel use
calculated for 1 1

latitudelongitude grid (Andres

et al., 1997). One is struck by the concentration of
these emissions in the Northern hemisphere, and at
readily identiable centres. The geography of emissions
corresponds closely to the locations of wealthy cities. For
example, note the distribution of carbon injections into
the atmosphere in western Europe, the tall spikes in Japan
and the lower peaks in eastern China. By contrast, much
of Africa and India is characterized by the absence of
these carbon peaks, despite the enormity of some cities
(e.g. New Delhi and Lagos) located in these regions. The
global economic disparity is revealed here as a disparity
in urban-sourced emissions.
The second example shows that, despite their lim-
ited physical imprint, cities can have a direct global
impact. While urban settings may provide extraordi-
narily diverse environments, the urban environment is
designed primarily to service human needs exclusively.
Thus, cities are biologically homogenizing environments
to which only certain species can adapt in fact, urban-
ization is one of the leading causes of species extinction
(McKinney, 2006). While individual cities may appear
to be oases of biodiversity, much of this biodiversity
is exotic in nature and exists at the expense of local
species. Moreover, because cities produce similar urban
environments, this urban diversity is common to many
cities such that overall, cities serve to diminish global
biodiversity.
Copyright 2007 Royal Meteorological Society
1850 G. MILLS
Figure 1. Estimated carbon dioxide emissions in 1995 in 000

s of metric tons (t) of carbon per 1

latitude/longitude grid cell. These values

are the summed emissions from fossil-fuel burning, hydraulic cement production and gas aring. The highest value recorded is approximately
70 000 Mt. (See Andres et al., 1997).
In this paper, I review current published research that
links cities (and urbanization) to atmospheric changes at
all scales. Initially, I will examine the denition of the
city and stress the distinction between two related aspects
of the urban effect:
1. Urban stock effect, which is created by the physical
presence of the city and,
2. Urban ux effect, which is created by the activities
associated with cities.
I will use this distinction throughout this paper to iden-
tify themes that have emerged in the recent literature on
urbanglobal climate links and explore gaps that remain.
Over the last four decades, urban environmental stud-
ies have evolved from considerations of processes and
impacts associated with individual urban areas (e.g. Wol-
man, 1965) towards more comprehensive assessments of
the totality of the urban effect on global ows of materi-
als and energy (e.g. Decker et al., 2000). This evolution
reects both improved scientic capabilities for observ-
ing and detecting anthropogenic effects and the increasing
dominance of cities as focussed areas of anthropogenic
activities. This review stresses the need to dene what
is meant by urban terms (such as city and urbaniza-
tion) as this affects the structure of the study, the results
acquired, the policy implications that arise and our ability
to communicate.
DEFINING AND MEASURING THE CITY
Much of the climate literature assumes that terms like
city and urban are universal. However, establishing
a clear denition is critical to how one measures and
manages the urban effect. Leaving aside the question
of how to demarcate the boundary of a city, we may
rst of all distinguish between a denition based on the
urbanized land-cover and one based on the urban system.
The former identies the extent of contiguous urban land-
cover, which normally consists of impermeable materials
and closely spaced buildings. It also includes green
areas (isolated trees, managed parks and derelict land)
embedded within the fabric. In many western cities,
the intensity of urban cover decreases from the centre,
and the edge becomes difcult to identify as tracts of
non-urban cover (e.g. green parks, forested areas and
agricultural land) are interwoven with the urban cover.
This built-up area is three-dimensional in form and
often displays a consistent topography with the tallest
structures to be found in the city centre and smaller and
widely spaced buildings toward the urban edge. In the
poorer cities of the world, the city may be surrounded by
informal settlements that may have little infrastructure
(e.g. paved roads) and few urban services (e.g. waste
collection).
Examining the city as an urban system will describe
a different place. A systemic approach would link the
built-up area to its economic hinterland, the area from
which it routinely draws its working population and
with which it functions as an economic entity. This
city region may consist of a variety of settlements of
varying size and extent that are connected via transport
and information corridors along which people, goods
and information ow. These cities are themselves
components in wider national and international networks
of ows. Thus, for example, a citizen living in a
rural setting may be as integrated into the urban
Copyright 2007 Royal Meteorological Society Int. J. Climatol. 27: 18491857 (2007)
DOI: 10.1002/joc
CITIES AS AGENTS OF GLOBAL CHANGE 1851
economy as her urban counterpart. For example, consider
the implications inherent in Figure 2, which shows the
distribution of commuters in Ireland and the urban land-
cover. The impervious urban surfaces appear as the
darkest areas on this map. Recent economic growth in
Ireland has resulted in rapid population growth. However,
while employment has remained concentrated in urban
areas, much of the working population resides outside
the physical limits of the urbanized area. This effect is
demonstrated by the halo present around each major
urban centre as citizens seek inexpensive homes and
a more rural lifestyle. Despite their location, this
population clearly belongs to the city at the centre.
Practically, it is difcult to gather information using
either denition. The most commonly employed methods
for gathering data are either based on national censuses or
on information obtained from remote sensing. The advan-
tages of the former are that they provide authoritative data
on administrative areas, which may be used to establish
trends in population, economy and the built environment.
This information can often be supplemented by other
data on lifestyle, water use, etc. to provide a comprehen-
sive picture of the urban citizen. However, administrative
units rarely match the physical dimensions of the city
and there is no international consistency. In addition,
much basic information is unavailable for many parts of
the world. Remote sensing, using satellite technology,
offers the potential to provide a standard approach to
the routine gathering of limited types of urban informa-
tion such as urbanized landscape on a global basis
(Miller and Small, 2003). However, it can provide lit-
tle information on the three-dimensional character of the
city or the nature of its occupation. There are other forms
of remote sensing (e.g. LIDAR) that can ll in some of
these gaps, however, these are not widely available. It
remains the case that our information on cities generally
is inconsistent and incomplete and that no single source
of information is adequate.
These difculties are well illustrated in a study on the
role of urban areas in the natural global carbon cycle
(Svirejeva-Hopkins et al., 2004). The researchers exam-
ined the extent of urbanized territories (that is, the
suite of land-cover changes associated with urbaniza-
tion) across different economies. For each, the authors
estimated the changes to the natural carbon ux that
ensue as soil is covered and vegetation is removed dur-
ing urban development, often followed by extensive re-
vegetation as cities mature. With respect to the nat-
ural exchanges of carbon, mature cities (such as those
in the developed world) are net removers, while rapidly
Figure 2. Distance to work in Ireland, 2002. The black areas represent the impervious urban cover based on the CORINE land-cover dataset.
The shaded areas are those places where between one-fth and one-half of the population travel more than 30 km to work.
Copyright 2007 Royal Meteorological Society Int. J. Climatol. 27: 18491857 (2007)
DOI: 10.1002/joc
1852 G. MILLS
growing/expanding cities are net producers, of carbon via
natural pathways.
THE URBAN CLIMATE EFFECT
One might expect that the eld of urban climatology,
which is focussed on observing and understanding the
urban effect on climate has broached the denitional
problem alluded to above. However, this effect is typ-
ically measured as the difference between observations
at self-described urban and proximate rural stations.
The assumption is that the latter represents the consistent,
pre-urban, background climate against which change can
be measured. However, Lowry (1977) has shown that, in
the absence of in situ observations that pre-date urban-
ization, one may only estimate the urban effect. More
recently, Oke (2004) has argued for detailed metadata
to accompany observations so that one does not pre-judge
the nature of the site from the terms urban and rural,
each of which describe environments that are both diverse
and dynamic (Stewart, 2006).
Given the dual denitions of the city (as physical
imprint and as system), we can divide the urban cli-
mate effect into that associated with its physical presence
(stock) and that associated with its activities (ux). This
is not to suggest that they are separate or exclusive. For
example, a component of the activities is precisely asso-
ciated with adding to the physical stock. In a rapidly
growing urban area this may form a very signicant part
of the waste energy and materials emitted to the atmo-
sphere. Figure 3 shows cement production for the ve
largest cement producing nations. In 1994, rapid devel-
opment (and urbanization) in China required in 423 mt
of cement and resulted in 101.4 mt of carbon emissions,
or one-third of the global emissions, from this activity
(Worrell et al., 2001). Similarly, the concentration of air
pollutants in the urban canopy layer (UCL) is strongly
regulated by the three-dimensional urban form, which
may act to ventilate or recirculate emissions into this
layer.
Urban stock effect
The physical effect of the city is due to its transformation
of the land surface, which alters the surface energy
and water budgets most directly. For the most part, the
materials employed to construct cities are impermeable,
so that rainwater is quickly removed from the surface and
little is available for evaporation. The result is a change
in the local hydrology wherein river systems experience
large uctuations in discharge as its ow regime becomes
more closely coupled with individual rainfall events. In
addition, the sealed surface shifts the emphasis in the
energy budget toward sensible heat exchange (rather
than evaporation), both with the substrate and with the
atmosphere.
In addition to its material composition, the urban
surface is highly convoluted in terms of geometry. A
consequence of this is the creation of a distinguishable
UCL, comprised of the airspace below building rooftops.
In the open UCL, a myriad of climates are produced
by complex ow patterns that interact with surfaces that
have different orientations, materials and exposures. In
the closed UCL (that is, building interiors), climates are
controlled by regulating energy and mass ows across the
material envelope that separates them from the outdoors.
Thus, within the UCL the three-dimensional form of
the city exerts a profound impact on the micro-scale
climate. Above the UCL, separated by a transition layer,
lies the urban boundary layer (UBL). The distinctive
properties of the UBL are fundamentally derived from
the underlying dry, warm, rough and polluting urban
surface. As airow crosses the upwind edge of the urban
area the overlying air responds and grows in depth as the
effects of the urban surface below are mixed with non-
urban air entrained from above. Once formed, the UBL
Figure 3. 19701995 cement production trends in the ve largest cement-producing countries. The scale on the left is for China only. Redrawn
from Worrell et al., 2001.
Copyright 2007 Royal Meteorological Society Int. J. Climatol. 27: 18491857 (2007)
DOI: 10.1002/joc
CITIES AS AGENTS OF GLOBAL CHANGE 1853
may undergo signicant changes as the accumulated mass
of pollutants emitted directly into the atmosphere begin to
interact to generate secondary pollutants. Many of these
pollutants have distinctive radiative effects so that the
thermal properties of the UBL and radiative exchanges
with the surface beneath are modied.
The relationship between the UBL and UCL is com-
plex as exchanges of heat, momentum and materials are
regulated by urban form (and associated activities) and
local meteorology. For example, heating by the urban
surface overnight is often sufcient to maintain a lapse
rate in the UBL temperature prole, thus preventing the
development of a nocturnal inversion and maintaining an
upward ux of heat and materials. In rare circumstances,
the relative warmth of the city surface can generate a local
wind system as cooler air is drawn from the surrounding
non-urban areas into the city.
The distinctive features of the UBL are transferred
downwind, beyond the city boundaries. The horizontal
extent of the urban effect is regulated both by the
nature of the urban surface and the natural background
climate. However, the distinctive climatic parameters of
turbulence and warming dissipate quickly, particularly
when the background climate encourages mixing.
Urban ux effect
This is the result of the operation of the city and
accounts for the waste heat, materials and gases that
are emitted into the urban atmosphere. The generation
of this ux varies with the temporal pattern and nature of
activity and of the energy that underpins it. The climatic
signicance of the anthropogenic ux that results depends
upon the magnitude of the natural uxes. There have
been few attempts to directly measure the anthropogenic
heat ux in urban areas an assessment for Toulouse,
France suggests an annual average value of 40 Wm
2
,
with a winter time maximum of 150 Wm
2
(Pigeon
et al., 2006). At high-latitudes (or in very dense, lower
latitude cities where the anthropogenic ux is highly
concentrated) this additional heat ux is signicant for the
formation of the urban heat island and to the buoyancy
of the urban plume, which carries the atmospheric by-
products of the city downwind.
The regional and global impact of cities is most
directly associated with their individual urban plumes,
whose persistence depends on both the residence times
of its constituents and the degree of mixing that the
plume experiences (e.g. Molina and Molina, 2004). For
example, Stohl et al. (2003) managed to identify the
emissions from New York City in a pollution plume over
Europe. However, its distinctiveness was partly related
to the particular weather conditions that allowed this
urban plume to develop and then transport it, with little
dilution, into the middle and upper troposphere. More
generally, air pollution which is advected to an area may
contain contributions from many individual urban areas.
In Figure 4, the averaged contribution of major urban
centres in Asia to sulphur deposition is shown. Although
the highest contributions are to be found in relative
proximity to cities, the urban contribution is detectable
at a continental scale. Such ndings have erased the
distinction between air quality and global atmospheric
chemistry (Molina and Molina, 2004, p. 652).
The extent and magnitude of the combined urban effect
depends both on the city and the background climate,
which can regulate the dilution of the urban plume. Many
cities occupy distinctive topographic settings such as river
valleys and basins, which may, under certain circum-
stances, limit dilution, restrict the extent of the plume
and increase its effect. Conversely, in turbulent condi-
tions the plume may be widely dispersed and diluted,
which will both broaden and lessen the magnitude of the
urban impact.
Traditionally, the eld of urban climatology has con-
cerned itself with the combined effect of both urban ux
and stock within the limits of the city. At a larger scale,
an increasing body of literature on meso-scale modelling
is concerned with the regional air quality effects of urban
areas with a view to ascribing individual city responsi-
bility. At the global level there has been no published
research that has attempted to identify the contributions
of individual cities to the global concentration of anthro-
pogenic pollutants. However, it is clear that, as observa-
tion and modelling methods improve, this is a direction
for future research.
Global change and cities
A perusal of the current literature on global climate
change and cities does not convey a comprehensive or
coherent body of work. Rather, it is characterized by
themes, some of which overlap. Presented below, is my
categorization of this work, which I substantiate using
examples selected from this literature.
City as cause of global climate change
The spatial correspondence between the global emissions
of CO
2
and the major urban economies of Asia, Europe
Figure 4. Percentage contribution to total sulphur deposition due to SO
2
emissions from major urban centres in Asia averaged over the 25 years
between 1975 and 2000. The shaded areas represent 5, 30 and 50% of
the deposition, respectively. Redrawn from Guttikunda et al., 2003.
Copyright 2007 Royal Meteorological Society Int. J. Climatol. 27: 18491857 (2007)
DOI: 10.1002/joc
1854 G. MILLS
and North America illustrated in Figure 1 is unequivocal.
However, while the annual uxes shown in this diagram
are estimated from inventories of fuel use, the specically
urban atmospheric ux has not been measured until very
recently. Figure 5 shows the ux and concentration of
CO
2
in Mexico Citys UBL and incorporates natural and
anthropogenic sources and sinks (Velasco et al., 2005).
While the ux varies through the day, the economic pulse
of the city is visible in the plateau of high values in the
middle of the day, which correspond to emissions from
the transport eet. During the early morning commute
when the mixing layer is shallow, the emissions result
in a peak of concentration. Throughout the daytime, the
emission rate is nearly constant, however, as surface heat-
ing generates turbulence and expands the mixing layer,
concentrations fall. After sunset, concentrations rise once
again although the emission rate declines. Overall, this
research suggests an annual CO
2
ux of 12.8 kg m
2
,
substantially in line with existing measurements made in
other developed world cities. However, such observations
remain few and far between and expanding this type of
measurement program to other urban environments is an
imperative, if focussed urban mitigation strategies are to
be employed.
Global climate change and city impact
Table I presents the state of current knowledge on
the impact that global climate changes may have on
human settlements based on the IPCCs Third Assess-
ment Report (McCarthy et al., 2001). What is noticeable
is that there are few specically urban issues that arise.
To a considerable extent, this is partly due to the rel-
ative coarseness of climate modelling at this scale that
cannot explicitly include urbanized areas. Consequently,
the main issues that arise from this table reect on their
changed background climates or their location in coastal
zones, which place them at risk of ooding due to sea-
level rise. Much of the literature in global climate change
policy, as it relates to urban areas, focuses on the adap-
tation to change (e.g. LCCP, 2002) to protect valuable
infrastructure and water resources. The exception to this
Figure 5. Average diurnal pattern of CO
2
ux (dotted line) and concentration (solid line) measured over an urban neighbourhood in Mexico City
during April 2003. Redrawn from Velasco et al., 2005.
Table I. Human settlements impacts, categorized by state of scientic knowledge. This Table is from Chapter 7 in McCarthy
et al. (2001).
Established but incomplete Well established
Increased vulnerability of infrastructure to urban ooding and
landslides
Tropical cyclones more destructive
Fire danger to urban wildland fringe infrastructure increased
Sea-level rise increases cost/vulnerability of resource based
industry
Water supplies more vulnerable
Sea-level increases cost/vulnerability of coastal
infrastructure
Energy demand sensitive; parts of energy supply
vulnerable
Local capacity critical to successful adaptation
Infrastructure in permafrost regions vulnerable
Speculative Competing explanations
L
O
W
L
e
v
e
l
o
f
A
g
r
e
e
m
e
n
t
H
I
G
H
Fire damage to key resources increased
More hail and windstorm damage
Heat waves more serious for human health, resources
Non-climate effects more important than climate
Heat island effects increase summer energy demand
Increased air and water quality problems
LOW Amount of Evidence HIGH
Copyright 2007 Royal Meteorological Society Int. J. Climatol. 27: 18491857 (2007)
DOI: 10.1002/joc
CITIES AS AGENTS OF GLOBAL CHANGE 1855
is a concern for how predicted global warming will inter-
act with the urban heat island. Global warming will result
in more frequent heat waves, periods of high tempera-
tures that overload the human bodys thermoregulation
system. The warmer air temperatures and lower wind
speeds in urban areas will accentuate the associated ther-
mal strain. In addition, ones capacity to cope with these
conditions may be diminished when, as is often the case,
high temperatures are combined with poor air quality.
But, global warming will also raise wintertime tempera-
tures, thereby reducing the thermal strain caused by low
winter-time temperatures.
The relationship between mortality and air tempera-
ture, particularly as it relates to cities, is still under study
and is likely to be very complex. For example, when
detailed studies of urban heat waves are undertaken it
is clear that, notwithstanding the thermal environment,
heat-related deaths are unevenly spread through the pop-
ulation, a feature that may only be explained by invoking
socio-demographic, rather than weather, factors (Klinen-
berg, 2003). Moreover, estimates of heat-related deaths
under global warming scenarios do not generally account
for adaptation. Keatinge et al. (2000) examined heat-and
cold-related mortality in people aged 6574 living in cold
and warm regions across Europe. The results show that
the temperature of minimum mortality is higher in those
places with warmer summers. Moreover, the impact on
mortality of temperatures lower or higher than this value
differs for different climates. The results of this study sug-
gest that populations occupying different climates have
adjusted to these thermal regimes. Thus, estimates of
changes in mortality that are based on changes in the
average temperature over a 50-year period and existing
temperature-mortality relationships may be less than has
been assumed.
City as contaminant
A consistent theme of global climate change studies is
that urban areas contaminate meteorological records and
obscure the global climate signal. The chief purpose of
standard meteorological stations is to be representative of
a wide area that remains ostensibly unchanged, so that a
consistent set of records from a geographically dispersed
network can be employed to examine trends. However,
the effect of cities is to alter the climate in their vicin-
ity in the case of the near-surface air temperature this
effect is in one direction, that of warming. Thus, a station
that is within the zone of urban inuence will store its
effect in its measurements. The methodological difculty
in extracting this urban bias has been to establish the
extent and the intensity of the urban effect, which varies
with changes in weather/climate and with changes in city
form and functions (Lowry, 1977). Despite these difcul-
ties, various simple procedures have been developed to
estimate the urban effect and remove it from the observa-
tional record. For air temperature, a common method has
been to substitute urban population size as a surrogate
for the magnitude of the urban effect. Gallo and Owen
(1999) argue that satellite-based estimates of urbanized
areas can provide comparable results and would provide
a consistent means of addressing this problem globally.
This approach has the merit of employing physically
based measures of the urban setting, but is likely to be
equally imprecise. The urban temperature effect is the
result of a number of processes, many of which (such as
street geometry) are not amenable to satellite measure-
ment. An important rst step for the removal of urban,
among other, effects is a site-specic description of the
measurement site, something that is generally unavailable
(Oke, 2004).
City as model
Changnon (1992) suggested that urban climate change
could serve as a useful analogue for global climate
change. In common with global climate change predic-
tions, the urban atmosphere is both warmer and car-
bon enriched, when compared to the background climate
(Figure 5). However, few have employed the urban cli-
mate as a realistic current model for the future climate.
Figure 6 shows the results of an experiment carried out
in the Baltimore region, using four outdoor enclosures in
which ragweed was grown. The experiment was designed
to assess the impact of climate change on ragweed biol-
ogy and allergic rhinitis to which a substantial portion of
the US population is sensitive. The four sites lie along a
transect from rural to urban locations and correspond with
consistent changes in ambient air temperature and CO
2
concentration. The results show that the pollen season
occurs earlier and greater pollen numbers are increased
with urbanization. Although rural pollen contained more
allergens, the greater urban production meant more aller-
gens were present in the urban setting. The results indi-
cate that climate change on a very small scale (that is, an
urban area) can alter plant physiology and reproductive
behaviours in ways that are already likely to be affecting
human health (Ziska et al., 2003, p295).
City as solution
As urban areas are major contributors to global climate
change, there is a large amount of literature on how cities
can be managed to moderate and reduce this contribu-
tion. For example, there is an increasing literature on the
potential of urban vegetation in reducing net urban carbon
emissions (e.g. Nowak and Crane, 2002). This research is
often placed within a broader sustainable city context,
which (from an environmental perspective) seeks to make
cities more efcient in their use of resources, and reduce
the magnitude of ows focussed on cities (e.g. Rees and
Wackernagel, 1997; Newman, 1999). As cities often have
strong management and planning systems (particularly
in the energy-intensive, economically developed world)
they can be restructured and reorganized over time (e.g.
Rogers, 1997). This eld is extraordinarily broad, so I
will select one theme here that links urban form and
function.
Figure 7 shows the travel time budget for a variety of
places that represent an income spectrum (Schafer and
Copyright 2007 Royal Meteorological Society Int. J. Climatol. 27: 18491857 (2007)
DOI: 10.1002/joc
1856 G. MILLS
Victor, 1999). The average is 1.1 h per person per day,
and the data shows little variation. Although the frac-
tion of travel time devoted to motorized transport rises
with income, there is no corresponding increase in the
time devoted to travel. If the time budget is xed, the
ability to traverse distances is largely regulated by the
transport available. The implication of this graph is that
the size of settlement and the distribution of functions
within is strongly linked to its transportation network.
This is one strand of an argument that proposes com-
pact cities well designed, densely occupied areas of
limited extent are intrinsically more efcient than low-
density cities, which are costly to service and traverse.
Similarly, Lyons et al. (2003), using worldwide city-level
data, found that the observed variations in total vehi-
cle kilometers travelled, which is indicative of pollutant
emission, could be statistically explained by a single
variable, urbanized land area. The implication of this
work is that the anthropogenic emissions of cities can
be modulated by managing its physical size.
CONCLUSIONS
While the study of the climates of urban areas has
traditionally been the realm of urban climatologists, it
is clear from the literature that the broader urban effect
is now a focus of attention for regional and, increasingly
global, climate science. This work is largely concerned
with the ux of pollutants, which are emitted largely
as a consequence of urban-related activities that may
or may not occur within the dened urban area. A
comprehensive urban climate science will require that our
understanding of the urban effect can be communicated to
researchers operating at different scales. It is clear from
the literature that much research in this area employs
(either explicitly or implicitly) denitions for urban
that differ substantially from one another. Consequently,
it is often difcult to see where the science at one
scale ts with that at another scale. For example, urban
climatologists have long recognized that air temperatures
in an urban area are measured within the UCL in
Figure 6. Time course of ragweed pollen production for four sites along an urban transect for 2001 as a function of day of year. Over the period
the average CO
2
concentration was 389, 399, 501 and 511 ppm for the rural, semi-rural, suburb and urban sites respectively. Compared to the
rural site, the average air temperatures at the other sites (in order of urbanization) were 0.6, 1.1 and 1.9

C warmer.
Figure 7. Average per-capita travel time budget from surveys in African villages, 44 cities and 20 nations. (Redrawn from Schafer and
Victor, 1999).
Copyright 2007 Royal Meteorological Society Int. J. Climatol. 27: 18491857 (2007)
DOI: 10.1002/joc
CITIES AS AGENTS OF GLOBAL CHANGE 1857
which the three-dimensional building geometry exerts a
considerable inuence on observations. However, global
analyses continue to treat the urban landscape as a at,
articial surface and implicitly place the air temperature
observations above this surface. An important starting
point in any research should be to clearly identify the
operational denition for urban used in the study and
to identify its limitations. It is only recently that urban
climtologists have themselves recognized the need to be
more explicit in their use of urban and to identify
different types of urban landscapes that give rise to
different urban effects (Oke, 2004).
One area where there is considerable scope for interac-
tion across the scales of enquiry is that of climate change
mitigation. At the global scale, the anthropogenic CO
2
ux arises from relatively small areas: for example in
Figure 1, 50% of the total CO
2
emission arises from 3%
of land area; 10% arises from approximately 1846 km
2
.
Undoubtedly, if greater geographic detail were obtain-
able, the bulk of this emission would be shown to arise
from within urban administrative boundaries where there
are existing planning systems of varying sophistication.
It is eminently possible to modify both form (e.g. vege-
tation and material properties) and activities at this scale
to regulate the magnitude of material and energy ows
and their attendant wastes (Mills, 2006). There is already
a substantial body of urban climate literature that links
elements of urban design to climatic outcomes. Unfortu-
nately, much of this research is based on case studies that
do not yield general relationships that have widespread
applicability. Nevertheless, there is an appreciation in
urban climatology for the nature of the urban effect and
its measurement that is currently absent in the discus-
sions of the urban effect at the global scale. A desirable
research strategy would focus on design at the scale of
building groups (components of cities) where urban mea-
sures (e.g. building design and vegetative cover) could be
linked to discernible climatic effects (e.g. CO
2
uxes).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am very appreciative of the comments made by three
anonymous referees and those of the editor. I hope that
the article has been improved by my efforts to incorporate
their viewpoints. In addition, I am grateful to Stephen
Hannon who assisted in the graphics accompanying the
article.
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