An Empirical Study On The Influence Of China’s Urban Life Carbon Emissions On Urban Form

China has confronted two serious courses, which called "the development model transformation of urbanization" and "low carbon development". The first one appears in a variety of city problems which brought by the extensive urbanization mode, and the second one appears in the constantly rising of the urban residents’energy consumptions and carbon emissions. There are close relations between the two courses:As a space result of the urbanization, urban form is an important indicator of residential carbon emissions by affecting the residents’choices of buildings and traffics. By adjusting the urban form factors, such as urban density, compactness and land use structures, residential carbon emissions could be declined by governments and policy marker. Therefore, the induction of the types and features of the urban form and the analysis of the influencing mechanisms of the different urban form on residential carbon emissions have the vital practical significance for the policy settings. This paper study on the impact factors of residents’carbon emissions from urban form. Based on the empirical data of219prefecture-level cities in China, the present study quantified and classified the China’s urban form, and summarized the different influencing mechanisms between the urban form and residents’carbon emissions, to provide relevant policy implications for emission reduction and recommendation for evolution of China’s urban form. Hopefully, this article wants to explore the theory and practice in "Low-carbon City" and "New-type Urbanization".The main research contents of this paper included:1. Constructed the recognition model of China’s urban form (CUF for short). Firstly, this paper defined the urban from the perspective of the urban land use structure and functions, then distinguished the key factors of the China’s urban form through the review of urban economics’theory and practice, finally constructed the CUF model. CUF model is not only the basis of the paper to analysis the relationship between the urban form and carbon emissions, but also have a demonstration action on other researches of urban form or city problems.2. Quantified and classified the primary types and features of China’s urban form. Based on the CUF model, taking the empirical data of219prefecture-level cities in China, by using the method of Self-Organizing Feature Map (SOFM for short), this paper quantified and classified the China’s primary urban forms into5types, and summarized the different influencing mechanisms between the urban form and residents’ carbon emissions.3. Constructed the influence mechanism model of residents’ carbon emission from urban form. Based on the current theories, the paper constructed the analysis framework of residents’ carbon emission from urban form. The general influence mechanism was indicated in this paper:the urban form factors, such as urban density, compactness and land use structures, would affect the residential carbon emissions by affecting the residents’ choices of traffic. The paper also provided a mathematical model to analyze the "substitution effect" between the Housing costs and traffic costs, and then how the "substitution effect" determines the residents’choices of buildings.4. Empirical study of the influence of residents’ carbon emission from urban form. Based on the empirical data of219prefecture-level cities in China, by using the regression model, the paper analysis the diversity of different influence mechanism of carbon emission among5urban forms, and distinguish the key indicators of residents’ carbon emission from urban form, providing relevant policy implications for emission reduction and recommendation for evolution of China’s urban form.5. Strategic research of China’s urban form optimization which orient to low-carbon. This paper explored how to use the policy tools, such as "Compact and Multifunctional City","Transit Oriented Development","Urban Green Space System", to achieve the target of "source control, process control and result control". Based on the result, the paper finally recommends the evolutionary forms for present China’s5urban forms.