Among analysts of urban resource use, energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, one rather perplexing and tantalizing phenomenon has been widely recognized. Across the globe, there is an enormous variation in the per-capita rates of consumption, but often without corresponding variations in income, standard of living, or other metrics of “quality of life.” For example, the World Resources Institute (2009) reports a roughly six-fold increase in rates of CO2 emissions per capita, comparing residents of Stockholm, Sweden, to residents of the United States as a whole (including many suburban and rural communities). (FIGURE ONE.) Both populations enjoy a comparably high standard of living that is, if anything, higher in Stockholm by most measurements.
<ref>https://onresilientsettlement.wordpress.com/2011/10/15/the-jacobs-spillover-as-a-model-of-urban-dyna/ </ref>