This paper offers insights into the dynamics of carbon emissions in metropolitan regions. These 
emerge from a system dynamics model of urban land-atmospheric interactions. The paper provides 
contextual background, outlines modeling methodology, inventories insights and documents policy 
implications. Section One considers climate change, worldwide urbanization, urban CO2 emissions and 
urban land-use/transportation dynamics. Section Two identifies the study area, the modeling tool, its 
dynamic organizing principle, its structure and the scenarios used to explore system behavior. Section 
Three considers urban CO2 emissions and the mitigating effects of land-use and transportation 
policies. It compares these to practicable improvements in fossil fuel combustion efficiencies and finds 
that modifying urban form compare favorably to improving combustion efficiencies. Section Four 
asserts that, given today’s global-scale inter-metropolitan economic competition, today’s urban 
challenge will be largely met by cooperation at the metro-regional scale to tame the dynamics of 
carbon-based metropoli.