Editorial introduction: Special issue on "Low carbon city in Asian Cities"

In view of the close interrelationship among urban form, transportation and CO2 emissions and constrains toward compact city in Asia, the main focus of this special issue was placed on transportation sector, seekinginnovative solutions. Gao and her colleagues’ contribution in this special issue proposed a concept of Behavior Zone as a unit for spatial planning and showed that the estimation of CO2 emission based on Behavior Zones has several advantages as compared to estimation methods based on individual commuting behaviors in Beijing. Another contribution from Pai and Huang studied the travel behavior change of the residents under the influence of Transit Jointed Development (TJD) in Taipei. It concluded that TJD has significant positive effect on the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) application and helps a lot for driving reduction. Another case study from Shrestha, et al. included in this issue was directed at studying urban accessibility and evaluating different scenarios with regard to the potential towards low carbon transport development in Kathmandu Metropolitan City. This issue also includes a paper dealing with solar power generation in Chinese cities. Zhang et al studied the potential and variance in solar irradiance and PV power generation among Chinese cities and addressed the issue of suitability to develop distributed PV power system in the targeted cities.