What is a green city What does it mean to say that San Francisco or Vancouver is more green than Houston or Beijing When does urban growth lower environmental quality and when does it yield environmental gains How can cities deal with the environmental challenges posed by growth These are the questions Matthew Kahn takes on in this smart and engaging book.Written in a lively accessible style Green Cities takes the reader on a tour of the extensive economic literature on the environmental consequences of urban growth. Kahn starts with an exploration of the Environmental Kuznets Curve EKCampamp151the hypothesis that the relationship between environmental quality and per capita income follows a bellshaped curve. He then analyzes several critiques of the EKC and discusses the implications of growth in urban population and surface area as well as income.