New Study Challenges Conventional Wisdom on Suburban Sprawl, New Urbanism

High-rise residents consume approximately 27 percent more energy than their suburban counterparts, according to a new report. Researchers found that overall energy use can be more environmentally efficient in suburban housing.

Studies that have generally concluded that suburbs are less efficient “are not building studies, but urban scale studies,” said Antony Wood, the executive director of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat and research professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s College of Architecture. The Council's report surveyed households in downtown Chicago and nearby suburb, Oak Park, Illinois, per CityLab.

On a per-floor area basis, probably because of all the shared hallways, elevators, gymnasiums, and lobbies, the downtown towers still consumed about 5 percent more energy than the suburban homes. Comparing travel habits, Wood and Du also unexpectedly found that downtown households actually traveled more miles by car, total, every year. The high rises also had more parking spaces per capita than the suburban dwellings.

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