Abstract
Cities feature prominently in debates over the existential threat of climate change. Research on urban sustainability, however, has too long been based on national studies from data-rich regions of the world. Fortunately, that is changing as globally harmonized datasets enable new comparative analysis of urban areas. This paper uses new data to address the question - how does urban land policy relate to urban form and greenhouse gas emissions? We use the administration of property registration as a proxy for regulation and test the connection for 431 urban areas in nearly 40 countries. Our findings confirm that dense, compact urban areas, with built-up downtowns and shorter roadway segments have lower per capita carbon emissions. Places with more time-consuming property bureaucracy are denser and have lower emissions. This finding deviates from the common association between regulations and sprawl in part because it does not measure restrictions on density, thus highlights the need for a more nuanced understanding of the role of regulations in urban form and sustainability and better global data on different types of regulation.