Effects of Income and Urban Form on Urban NO2: Global Evidence from Satellites

Urban air pollution is among the top 15 causes of death and disease worldwide, and a problem of growing importance with a majority of the global population living in cities. A important question for sustainable development is to what extent urban design can improve or degrade the environment and public health. We investigate relationships between satellite-derived estimates of nitrogen dioxide concentration (NO2, a key component of urban air pollution) and urban form for 83 cities globally. We find a parsimonious yet powerful relationship (model R-2 = 0.63), using as predictors population, income, urban contiguity, and meteorology. Cities with highly contiguous built-up areas have, on average, lower urban NO2 concentrations (a one standard deviation increase in contiguity is associated with a 24% decrease in average NO2 concentration). More-populous cities tend to have worse air quality, but the increase in NO2 associated with a population increase of 10% may be offset by a moderate increase (4%) in urban contiguity. Urban circularity ("compactness") is not a statistically significant predictor of NO2 concentration. Although many factors contribute to urban air pollution, our findings suggest that antileapfrogging policies may improve air quality. We find that urban NO2 levels vary nonlinearly with income (Gross Domestic Product), following an "environmental Kuznets curve"; we estimate that if high-income countries followed urban pollution-per-income trends observed for low-income countries, NO2 concentrations in high-income cities would be similar to 10 x larger than observed levels.