This article discusses the importance of measuring the greenhouse gas (GHG) effects of urban and regional planning and policy in order to develop and implement policies to reduce GHG emissions. It argues that existing local government GHG measurement methods fail to support the local governments in their evaluation of policy design and the GHG reductions resulting from their policies. The article highlights the need for a large amount of observational data, from different locations and different times, as well as for control variables in order to disentangle local policy effects from nonpolicy and extra-local effects.
