DALLAS: About 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions are produced in cities. The assumption that follows is that municipal action can play a big role in reducing emissions. In fact, dramatic reductions in emissions require policies at the national level—carbon tax, efficiency standards, etc. Yet municipal policy does have a major role to play. One instructive example is Malmö, Sweden, which has been quite successful in achieving aggressive climate action goals. While there are many differences in in city powers and funding, planners in US cities can learn a lot from Malmö’s experience.
Malmö (population 300,000) is recognized as one of the world’s most sustainable cities—quite a transformation for a city that lost one third of its jobs in the late 1980s and early 1990s…..