Influence of urban spatial structure and land-use distribution on residential and transport emissions in European urban settlements

Abstract While urban spatial structure and land-use distribution play an important role in shaping greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, their sector-specific effects remain insufficiently understood in comparative urban studies. This study develops a scale-independent comparative framework to examine how functional land-use distribution, spatial configuration, alternative density representations, and broader economic and climatic context jointly shape per capita residential and transport emissions across 104 European cities. Using city-level GHG inventories reported to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and harmonized CORINE Land Cover (CLC) data, residential and transport emissions are analyzed separately through a grouped regression framework that systematically compares alternative variable combinations and identifies supported models using the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC). The results show that residential emissions are explained by multiple structural regimes, indicating that similar per capita outcomes can arise from different combinations of land-use distribution and urban spatial structure, whereas transport emissions converge on a single dominant regime reflecting a more stable configuration of land-use specialization, urban spatial structure, and population density. Across the supported models, 5 of the 21-landscape metrics evaluated were significant for residential emissions and 3 for transport emissions. The findings demonstrate that urban emissions emerge from integrated structural configurations rather than isolated spatial indicators, underscoring the need for multivariate and sector-sensitive approaches in comparative urban climate research.