Not only that. Suburban has more emissions per person but the city has far more emissions per square foot, meaning air quality is far worse and consequent health problems.
Do any such studies address sequestration (or other suitable term) of emissions? I may produce more emissions, but I also maintain near an acre (and aspiring to much more) of CO2/etc-absorbing forest & other foliage. Not sure how it all actually balances out, but I never see reported studies addressing suburban/rural foliage conservation impact vs urban bulldozing & paving every square foot for miles.
If more people lived in cities, a lot of the rural/suburban land they live on would revert to wilderness, which would turn into CO2-absorbing forest and other foliage anyway. So it's disingenuous to try and claim credit for personally having title to any of it.
But if you were living in the city, wouldn't that acre be a forest anyway? Actually, it would be a little bit bigger forest because the land under your house, driveway, the road leading to it, and lawn/garden/whatever would also be forest.
Unless you are actively turning some non-productive land into productive land (eg, greening a desert), you're probably a negative on sequestration no matter what. It's just a question of how negative, and living in the city is probably less negative.
If you have 1+ acres of forest on your property, you aren't living in the suburbs; that's exurban or rural.
If anything taking sequestration into account would make suburbs look worse. 100 acres of dense urban development plus 400 acres of untouched forest is going to sequester much more carbon than 500 acres of suburbs with a few trees sprinkled throughout, yet they would hold the same number of people.
