Social Actors and Key Policy Levers for Mitigating the Greenhouse Gas Footprint of U.S. Cities

Cities are hubs of human activity; the everyday actions of myriad households, businesses, and industries located within a city’s geopolitical boundary. Measuring greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with cities is confounded by the relatively small spatial scale of cities compared with the large-scale engineered infrastructures in which they are embedded; that is, the electricity grid, transportation networks, water-supply lines, and wastewater treatment networks that serve cities. As a result, human activities in cities are highly dependent on transboundary infrastructure provisions, defined formally as the provision of water, energy, food, shelter (building materials), sanitation/waste management, mobility, connectivity, and public spaces to homes, businesses, Abstract