rigid4life

Well, there's sprawl like suburban North American sprawl, and then there's sprawl like reasonable population density recommended by planners like Christopher Alexander (as a matter of fact I think he commended Dublin in several of the patterns in A Pattern Language, but that was written in the early 70s, things might have changed significantly since then - I don't know, never been there). Intelligent building practices like grass roofs, well-placed vegetation, and proper heat sink design when thinking about buildings and materials (you want them to store energy on the inside, not outside, generally) go a long way towards lowering temperature in the cities. Also note that the article only talks about average temperatures, which is only a measure of energy, so Dublin produces and traps less "excess" energy than other cities per square meter, but how much excess energy per capita is there compared to other cities? That's the real factor contributing to global warming.