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Improving the measurement of urban sprawl: Weighted Urban Proliferation (WUP) and its application to Switzerland
Abstract
Growing urban sprawl is a serious concern worldwide for a number of environmental and economic reasons and is a major challenge on the way to sustainable land use. To address this increasing problem, there is an urgent need for quantitative measurement. Every meaningful method to measure the degree of urban sprawl needs to be based on a clear definition of “urban sprawl” disentangling causes and consequences of urban sprawl from the phenomenon of urban sprawl itself, as urban sprawl has differing causes and consequences in different regions and regulatory contexts. Weighted Urban Proliferation (WUP) – the novel method presented in this paper – is based on the following definition of urban sprawl: the more area built over in a given landscape (amount of built-up area) and the more dispersed this built-up area in the landscape (spatial configuration), and the higher the uptake of built-up area per inhabitant or job (lower utilization intensity in the built-up area), the higher the degree of urban sprawl. However, there is a lack of reliable measures of urban sprawl that integrate these three dimensions in a single metric. Therefore, these three independent dimensions need to be combined according to the qualitative assessment of sprawl to create a suitable metric – which is exactly what the WUP metric does using two weighting functions.
... The importance of the land take issue has progressively been acknowledged by public actors and is explicitly mentioned in the international Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) which counts the stopping of habitat loss among its core objectives (UNEP-WCMC, 2015). The European Commission recommends halting net land take in the European Union by 2050 2 . ...
... We found several non-systematic reviews: two of them cover a larger topic and have only a limited section on the determinants (Reid H. Ewing, 2008;Reid Ewing et al., 2015), one focuses on factors linked to transportation and another reviews mainly German literature about housing sprawl (Iwanow et al., 2015). Finally, Kretschmer et al. (2015) review some key references and build a mind-map of influencing factors. These reviews contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the determinants of land take. ...
... Un angle alternatif : l'étalement urbain produit par le public design Buitelaar Si relativement peu de travaux adoptent une telle perspective, on trouve tout de même une série d'apports empiriques dans la littérature qui se placent dans le cadre analytique du « public design of urban sprawl », dont plusieurs sont relativement anciens. Certains se concentrent sur la régulation (land use planning), non pas pour expliquer que son absence conduit à un certain laisser-faire en matière d'étalement urbain, plutôt pour souligner que certaines réglementations encouragent les formes urbaines peu denses, voire les rendent obligatoires 2015). Enfin, certains travaux se focalisent sur les politiques qui ont pour effet secondaire d'encourager l'étalement urbain et sur les subventions favorables à la consommation d'espace, y compris par l'absence de taxation des externalités qu'elle génère (Sainteny et al., 2011;Litman, 2015). ...
L’artificialisation des sols est la transformation d’espaces auparavant naturels, agricoles ou forestiers (NAF) pour un autre usage (habitat, activités, transports, loisirs). Elle est alimentée par l’étalement urbain et constitue une pression écologique majeure. Réduisant le stock d’espaces NAF disponible dans le futur, elle contribue à la perte de biodiversité en détruisant et en fragmentant les habitats naturels. En France métropolitaine, on estime que 10% du territoire est déjà artificialisé et que ce chiffre augmente d’un point à chaque décennie environ.Le gouvernement français a récemment formulé un objectif ambitieux de « zéro artificialisation nette ». Pourtant les politiques de lutte contre l’étalement urbain déjà mises en place n’ont, jusqu'à maintenant, pas réussi à le limiter significativement. Afin d'en comprendre les raisons, cette thèse cherche à analyser les processus de décision qui conduisent à l’artificialisation des sols et leurs déterminants socio-économiques et institutionnels, en prenant pour exemple le développement des zones d’activités économiques dans deux cas d’étude en France et en Allemagne. Nous développons l’hypothèse que l’action publique joue un rôle majeur dans les processus décisionnels, et porte en partie la responsabilité de l’artificialisation.La première partie de la thèse discute le concept d’artificialisation et rend compte des débats portant sur la définition du phénomène. Nous analysons les données existantes sur l’évolution de l’artificialisation en France et en Allemagne afin de documenter solidement l’état de notre objet de recherche.La seconde partie aborde notre problématique en se basant sur des travaux existants. Nous avons réalisé une revue systématique des articles scientifiques traitant des déterminants de l’artificialisation, qui synthétise les relations de cause à effet abordées dans la littérature. Si certains déterminants font consensus, d’autres sont mal connus ; en parculier, le rôle des politiques publiques est souvent mentionné et pressenti comme important mais plus rarement analysé en détail. Cela nous conduit à proposer une combinaison d’outils théoriques à mobiliser pour mieux prendre en compte le rôle de l’action publique dans l’économie de l’aménagement et les processus d’artificialisation.Enfin, la troisième partie est centrée sur l’analyse fine des processus d’artificialisation dans les intercommunalités de Roissy et Carnelle (France) et l’agglomération de Leipzig (Allemagne) en se concentrant sur les zones d’activités économiques (ZAE). Nous avons choisi de nous focaliser sur cette catégorie d’usage particulière afin de pouvoir étudier dans le détail les systèmes d’acteurs et les logiques économiques à l’œuvre, qui diffèrent selon les « filières » d’artificialisation. Les zones d’activités économiques représentent un cinquième des nouvelles surfaces artificialisées, avec une croissance particulièrement rapide et des formes urbaines particulièrement consommatrices d’espace.Nos études de cas montrent l’omniprésence de l’action publique à presque toutes les étapes de la chaîne de valeur des zones d’activités. Nous analysons les processus de décision, les compromis et les interactions entre acteurs publics et privés qui aboutissent à une forte consommation d’espace par les ZAE, et en quoi le cadre institutionnel influence ces décisions. Malgré les différences entre la France et l’Allemagne, les déterminants de l’artificialisation et les freins rencontrés pour la limiter sont très similaires. En conclusion de cette thèse, nous identifions trois freins majeurs liés au cadre institutionnel : les différentiels de coûts entre l’artificialisation et le renouvellement urbain, la compétition entre collectivités, et l’efficacité procédurale de la régulation.
... Although there is no widely accepted rigorous definition for the term "urban sprawl" [2, 3], it generally means disorderly and excessive urban expansion. Owing to the variation in the definition of urban sprawl [1,2,4], its measurement has been diversely developed and applied depending on the research purposes [1, [5][6][7]. In this study, the definition of urban sprawl proposed by Jaeger and Schwick [5], "... a phenomenon that can be visually perceived in the landscape. ...
... Owing to the variation in the definition of urban sprawl [1,2,4], its measurement has been diversely developed and applied depending on the research purposes [1, [5][6][7]. In this study, the definition of urban sprawl proposed by Jaeger and Schwick [5], "... a phenomenon that can be visually perceived in the landscape. A landscape suffers from urban sprawl if it is permeated by urban development or solitary building..." was applied. ...
... Among various indices used for measuring urban sprawl [5,7], Shannon's entropy method is widely used to measure the degree or intensity of urban sprawl [8,[11][12][13][14][15]. Entropy is conceptually appropriate to measure the disorder of urban expansion. Urban sprawl's intensity increases as built-up areas disperse widely across an entire city rather than concentrated in a restricted area. ...
Entropy is widely used for measuring the degree of urban sprawl. However, despite the intense use of the entropy concept in urban sprawl, entropy’s spatial context has been largely ignored. In this study, we analyzed urban sprawl in Changwon and Gimhae cities, as they shared a common boundary but differed in their population growth and urban expansion. The land cover type, “urban and dry area,” was used to identify urban areas in the two cities, and a land cover map showed the areas of expansion in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. Different zoning schemes, namely concentric rings and regular partitioning, were applied. Shannon’s and Batty’s spatial entropy indices were used to measure urban sprawl. The results showed that concentric ring zoning was not suitable for measuring urban sprawl in a decentralized and polycentric city. Batty’s spatial entropy was less affected by the zoning scheme used and reflected the pattern of urban expansion more accurately. Urban sprawl, a phenomenon occurring within a spatial context, can be better understood by measuring spatial entropy with appropriate zoning schemes.
... Außerdem werden für jedes betrachtete Ausgangs-Patch i nur die Ziel-Patches j … n in der Analyse berücksichtigt, die in einer bestimmten Distanz (= Proximity-Buffer, "PB") um Patch i liegen (Lang & Blaschke 2007, S. 263 Lang & Blaschke 2007, S. 265) Landschaftsteile mit einer sehr hohen Ausnutzungsdichte (UD) sollen außerdem bei der Ermittlung der Zersiedelung mit einer geringen Gewichtung in die Berechnung einfließen. Die Idee dahinter ist, dass Gebiete mit einer sehr hohen Ausnutzungsdichte (wie Innenstädte) nicht als zersiedelt gelten sollen (Jaeger & Schwick 2014). Daher ist der Gewichtungsfaktor ab einer UD 100 Einwohner & Jobs pro Hektar beinahe 0 und die Flächen zählen als nicht zersiedelt (Jaeger & Schwick 2014). ...
... Die Idee dahinter ist, dass Gebiete mit einer sehr hohen Ausnutzungsdichte (wie Innenstädte) nicht als zersiedelt gelten sollen (Jaeger & Schwick 2014). Daher ist der Gewichtungsfaktor ab einer UD 100 Einwohner & Jobs pro Hektar beinahe 0 und die Flächen zählen als nicht zersiedelt (Jaeger & Schwick 2014). ...
... Das Maß "Weighted urban proliferation" (WUP) wird in der Einheit UPU/m² (= "urban permeation units per m² of land") angegeben. UD wird in Einwohner und Jobs pro km² oder pro Hektar ausgedrückt (Jaeger & Schwick 2014). ...
Dieser Beitrag stellt die Erweiterung der ArcGIS-Toolbox ZonalMetrics (Adamczyk & Tiede 2017) um vier neue Werkzeuge vor. Die neuen Tools berechnen Landschaftsstrukturmaße, mit deren Hilfe sich Rückschlüsse zur Zerschneidung, Lebensraum- Konnektivität und Zersiedelung einer Landschaft ziehen lassen. Dazu gehören die effektive Maschenweite (meff) nach Jaeger (2000) bzw. nach Moser et al. (2007), der Connectivity-Index (CBIIND2_impr) nach Deslauriers et al. (2018), der Proximity-Index (PXfg) nach Gustafson & Parker (1992) (modifiziert) sowie Zersiedelungsmetriken nach Jaeger & Schwick (2014). Da die Tools in der Programmiersprache Python entwickelt wurden und der Quellcode offen gelegt ist, können diese von jedem Nutzer1 leicht gelesen und weiter entwickelt bzw. modifiziert werden. Die Toolbox ist aus Gründen der Zukunftssicherheit für ArcGIS Pro angepasst worden. Die Eingangsdaten können im Shape-Format oder als Geodatabase vorliegen. Die Maße können für eine Vielzahl von Raumeinheiten gleichzeitig berechnet werden. Analysen für größere Räume mit einer Vielzahl von statistischen Einheiten (z. B. administrativen Einheiten) können auf diese Weise effizient durchgeführt werden, um aktuelle Fragen der Landschaftsökologie und des Umweltmonitorings zu untersuchen.
... Recent contributions, such as the one made by Jaeger and colleagues [11,12], have gone further in this respect, paying attention only to three dimensions: dispersion, the ratio of built-up area and the density of use. Urban sprawl is understood as a phenomenon that can be visually perceived in the landscape: "the more area that is built up and the more dispersed the buildings, the higher the degree of urban sprawl" [12]. ...
... Recent contributions, such as the one made by Jaeger and colleagues [11,12], have gone further in this respect, paying attention only to three dimensions: dispersion, the ratio of built-up area and the density of use. Urban sprawl is understood as a phenomenon that can be visually perceived in the landscape: "the more area that is built up and the more dispersed the buildings, the higher the degree of urban sprawl" [12]. Departing from this way of defining the sprawl, it is relatively easy to construct quantified measures of it. ...
... Departing from this way of defining the sprawl, it is relatively easy to construct quantified measures of it. Specifically, in Jaeger and Schwick [12] an indicator that considers the three dimensions mentioned above is proposed, although it still presents serious problems of subjectivity in the weightings applied and in the choice of the dimensions used. ...
The urban sprawl phenomenon has attracted the attention of social researchers since the mid-20th century. It seemed that all relevant aspects had been extensively studied and that it would be difficult to produce new studies with significant contributions. However, in the last decade, we have witnessed a revival of the literature on urban sprawl for three main reasons: (i) the existence of new methodologies to measure the phenomenon based on digital cartography and geo-referenced information, (ii) new hypotheses about the relevance of the formation of metropolitan areas not institutionally integrated into urban sprawl in many places and, mainly, (iii) the role of urban density in the environmental sustainability of cities. The recent literature on this third aspect has grown the most and around which it seems that new and interesting lines of future research will develop. The objective of this work is to present a synthetic review of the most recent literature on urban sprawl as of the end of the second decade of the XXI century. This review can serve to recapitulate the growing consensus that is being formed on the lower environmental sustainability of low-density cities and diffuse limits.
... As a consequence, suburbanisation has fundamentally changed the structure of cities, blurring the centre-periphery dichotomy and also changed the governance of land towards polycentricity (Keil, 2013). Due to the ecological and social impacts of suburbanisation and urban sprawl (Jaeger and Schwick, 2014;Oueslati et al., 2015), land policies are increasingly scrutinized regarding their role in facilitating or containing urban expansion Siedentop et al., 2016). There is no doubt that more research is needed on the double role of land policies to supply economic actors with sufficient land for development at the same time as to make efficient use of this scarce resource (Needham, 2007;Needham et al., 2013). ...
... The interest in intra-regional structures of commercial and industrial land comes from the need to better comprehend suburbanized, i.e. functionally highly interlinked, and polycentric city-regional structures and to analyse the effects of land policies in this context (Jehling et al., 2018;Jehling and Hecht, 2021). Here research on urban sprawl aimed at understanding city-regional structures and their "causes and consequences" from an environmental or social point of view can help describe such structures spatially and in the context of landscapes (Hwang and Woo, 2020;Jaeger and Schwick, 2014;Nazarnia et al., 2019). This interest is shared by research on the functional decomposition of urban regions. ...
A large share of urban land is dedicated to commercial and industrial activities. While this is considered key for economic development, the contribution of such areas to urban expansion has also been strongly criticised from environmental and societal perspectives. Clearly, the interrelations between economic activity and land use are highly relevant to planning and policy development. Yet relatively little is known about patterns of commercial and industrial land at the level of city regions and their effect on economic development.
The goal of this contribution is to present an empirical approach for analysing the development of commercial and industrial land within city regions and to place this in a socio-economic context. We argue that land provision at suitable (i.e. central) locations has a positive effect on employment. To test this hypothesis, we investigate relevant land use changes by analysing processed topographic land use data and location by centrality in regional road networks, using the example of city regions in southern Germany for the period 2006–2018.
Our results reveal regional patterns of distinct spatial and socio-economic trends that indicate suburbanisation processes and the emergence of polycentric patterns. While employed is closely correlated with absolute change in land in both large and small regions, the correlation between location and employment decreases with the size of regions. The results confirm the viability of the chosen approach to illuminate processes within functionally-interlinked city regions and promote a discussion of cause-effect relationships between the provision of commercial/industrial areas and employment.
... Furthermore, the increase in population and income, and the changes in social patterns such as single household and age resulted in creating sprawl [32]. In another study in Switzerland, the components of the urban sprawl metric developed by [22,23], were applied in the cross-sectional regression model to study urban sprawl, along with its sociodemographic factors such as population, income, commuting pattern, price of agricultural land, homeowner rate, age, and single household [47]. Urbanisation in the 20th century was associated with modernisation and industrialisation as two primary socio-economic trends [42]. ...
... The correlation of urban sprawl and 20 socioeconomics, travel patterns, and urban form variables were modelled by Weighted Least Squares (WLS) regression modelling method in IBM SPSS version 22. Urban sprawl was measured using Shannon entropy. By considering the definition of urban sprawl, there are a lot of challenges regarding the methods for measuring urban sprawl in the literature [1,13,22,23,33]. Bhatta et al. (2010) argued different methods for measuring urban sprawl and indicated that the Shannon entropy is the most reliable metric for measuring urban sprawl [1]. ...
Urban sprawl is considered as a western urban development pattern, which is common in different cities around the world. Although a large number of studies have focused on urban sprawl, modeling urban sprawl has been less emphasized, especially in various geographical contexts. The present study aimed to investigate urban sprawl and its determinants in a post-socialist country and model urban sprawl based on disaggregated data. In addition, the correlations of urban sprawl with travel patterns were examined, along with the socioeconomic characteristics of university students in Krakow, Poland by applying the Weighted Least Square (WLS) regression model. The WLS regression model was fitted based on the data from 1288 online questionnaires targeting university students. Also, urban sprawl around the home and the university for each student who indicated the nearest intersection to their home and university were separately estimated by employing Shannon entropy. Based on the findings, urban sprawl around homes was correlated with 14 transport patterns and socioeconomic features such as gender, age, driving license, financial dependency status, gross monthly income, number of commute trips, mode of transportation for commuting, number of trips for shopping or entertainment, daily shopping area, mode choice for shopping and entertainment trips inside and outside the neighborhoods, frequency of public transport use, attractiveness of shops inside the neighborhoods, and the length of time living in current home. Furthermore, urban sprawl around the university was significantly correlated with age, car ownership, number of commute trips, and sense of belonging to neighborhoods, entertainment place, and residential location choice. Finally, a positive correlation was reported between urban sprawl with higher income, elderly student, financial dependent students, and car dependency trips, while urban sprawl was negatively related to the use of public transit.
... Dispersion is weighted by the w 1 ( DIS ) function to make those parts of the landscape where built-up areas are more dispersed more clearly perceived ( w 1 ( DIS ) > 1), while compact settled areas are multiplied by a lower weighting (i.e., < 1) (and 1 when the dispersion equals the 1960 Swiss average). The values of w 1 ( DIS ) are between 0.5 and 1.5 [6] . The weighting factor w 2 ( LUP ) is always smaller than 1. ...
... When LUP < 150 m 2 per inhabitant or job (e.g., in downtown areas), the weighting factor is nearly 0 because such areas are not considered to be sprawled. The value of 222 m 2 per inhabitant of job corresponds to the limit of 400 m 2 of urban area per inhabitant (without taking jobs into consideration) suggested by the Swiss Federal Council in 2002 as a maximum acceptable average value [9] , and w 2 (222 m 2 per inhabitant of job) = 0.8 [6] . The two weighting functions are illustrated in Fig. 2 a. ...
The dataset presented here provides the degree of urban sprawl across 33 Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs) in Canada of 2011 together with the 469 Census Subdivisions (CSDs) located within the 2011 boundaries of the CMAs, for the years 1991, 2001, and 2011. The dataset contains the values of weighted urban proliferation (WUP) and weighted sprawl per capita (WSPC) and their components. The landscape-oriented value of WUP indicates how strongly the landscape within the boundaries of a reporting unit is sprawled per square meter, while WSPC is inhabitant-oriented and reveals how much on average an inhabitant or workplace is contributing to urban sprawl in the reporting unit. The values of the components of the WUP and WSPC metrics are provided as well: percentage of built-up area (PBA), urban dispersion (DIS), land uptake per person (LUP), and urban permeation (UP). The values of full-time equivalents for the numbers of jobs, which were considered in the calculation of LUP values (pertaining to the number of inhabitants and jobs) are also included in order to facilitate future research.
... The European Environment Agency together with the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) developed the Weighted Urban Proliferation (WUP) method (Jaeger and Schwick, 2014) to map, monitor and compare urban sprawl in Europe at high resolution (European Environment Agency (EEA) and Swiss Federal Office for the Environment FOEN, 2016). The WUP methodology (Jaeger and Schwick, 2014) measures urban sprawl by integrating three dimensions into a single metric: the size of the built-up area, dispersion and utilisation density (European Environment Agency (EEA) and Swiss Federal Office for the Environment FOEN, 2016). ...
... The European Environment Agency together with the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) developed the Weighted Urban Proliferation (WUP) method (Jaeger and Schwick, 2014) to map, monitor and compare urban sprawl in Europe at high resolution (European Environment Agency (EEA) and Swiss Federal Office for the Environment FOEN, 2016). The WUP methodology (Jaeger and Schwick, 2014) measures urban sprawl by integrating three dimensions into a single metric: the size of the built-up area, dispersion and utilisation density (European Environment Agency (EEA) and Swiss Federal Office for the Environment FOEN, 2016). Vermeiren et al. (2018) calculated WUP at 1 ha resolution for Flanders, making use of the following data layers of the Flemish land use database (Poelmans et al., 2016): ...
In scientific literature there is a wide agreement on the negative consequences of urban sprawl for some decades. Quantifying these negative consequences of urban sprawl can be extremely helpful for local and regional decision making. Numerous methods have been developed to quantify urban sprawl and its consequences and land use models have been used to study possible effects in the future. The results of these studies, however, do not always find their way to policy makers because they are often too abstract for them. In order to bridge this science-policy gap, this study proposes a participatory approach to make existing methods and models more fit for policy purposes. The study focuses on three policy questions: (1) how to quantify urban sprawl in a way that is more intuitive for policy makers to use in their communication, (2) how to quantify the costs of infrastructure and mobility related to urban sprawl and (3) how will these costs evolve towards the future? Three urban growth scenarios were simulated using a land use model and the outputs of the model were translated to an urban sprawl typology and corresponding costs for infrastructure and mobility. This allows to evaluate potential monetary savings of alternative urban development patterns. The results show that costs for infrastructure and mobility are much higher for patterns dominated by dispersed buildings and ribbon development than in more dense types of urban development in Flanders. The scenarios show that gradually bringing back urban growth could lead to annual savings of 246–383 million euros in terms of reduced investments and maintenance costs for infrastructure and annual savings of 1156–1965 million euros in terms of costs for mobility. Quantifying the potential savings of alternative scenarios of urban growth offers planners and policy makers insight into practical consequences of strategic decisions for development plans that are critical to implement sustainable urban development.
... The European Environment Agency (EEA) has described urban sprawl as the pattern of low-density expansion of large urban areas into surrounding areas which are mostly agricultural 2006). Increasing urban sprawl is the uptake of built-up areas, dispersed over a given landscape with low utilisation intensity in the built-up area (Jaeger and Schwick;. Urban sprawl has several negative effects such as loss of agricultural land, increasing fragmentation, destruction of ecosystems, higher transport costs and increases in greenhouse gas emissions (EEA; 2016). ...
Seen from a satellite, observing land use in the daytime or at night, most cities have circular shapes, organised around a city centre. A radial analysis of artificial land use growth is conducted in order to understand what the recent changes in urbanisation are across Europe and how it relates to city size. We focus on the most fundamental differentiation regarding urban land use: has it been artificialised for human uses (residence or roads for instance) or is it natural, or at least undeveloped? Using spatially detailed data from the EU Copernicus Urban Atlas, profiles of artificial land use (ALU) are calculated and compared between two years, 2006 and 2012. Based on the homothety of urban forms found by Lemoy and Caruso (2018), a simple scaling law is used to compare the internal structure of cities after controlling for population size. We firstly show that when using the FUA definition of cities, a kind of Gibrat's law for land use appears to hold. However, when we examine cities internally, this is no longer clear as there are differences on average between city size categories. We also look at further city groupings using regions and topography to show that artificial land use growth across European cities is not homogeneous. Our findings have important implications relative to the sustainability of cities as this evidence is pointing towards increasing urban sprawl and stagnant growth in urban centres across cities of all sizes. It also has theoretical implications on the nature of sprawl and its scaling with city size.
... Croissant dans plusieurs villes des pays en développement, il persiste préoccupant malgré les efforts déployés qui n'ont pas permis de l'enrayer [8]. En vue d'améliorer la qualité de vie urbaine, ce phénomène qui affecte la durabilité environnementale à l'intérieur et autour des espaces urbains, est une préoccupation majeure [9] à traiter et à surveiller. ...
The environment is related to urban sprawl; it’s considered as the main threat to the natural city and the destruction of rural area.The aim of this study is to analyse changes on land-cover (urban task and forest-cover) in Annaba, using digital image processing techniques and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). In order to analyse land-use change and natural resource degradation and subsequently understand the relationship between the two processes, we mapped the urban stain and the vegetation-cover using multi-temporal satellite images on the years of 2000 and 2017. In that case, the modeling of the urban sprawl effect on vegetation-cover is realised by the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). After, observing and characterising the areas altering by the urban expansion, the results displayed that on 17 years the urban growth of Annaba decreases the vegetation-cover by 28.50 %.
... Urbanization has caused an expansion of built-up areas in replacement of natural landscapes (Goldblatt, Deininger, & Hanson, 2018;Shen, Huang, Zhang, Wu, & Zeng, 2016). Based on the conducted studies, built-up areas cover approximately 400 thousand square kilometers of the lands worldwide (Jaeger & Schwick, 2014), and are expected to increase to nearly 1.2 million square kilometers by 2030 (Seto, Guneralp, & Hutyra, 2012). ...
Urban Heat Island (UHI) is a major challenge in urban environments that affects human activities. This phenomenon is caused and changed by various factors in urban environments, in which identification of such parameters requires fine-scale satellite images. This study, therefore, aimed at investigating spatiotemporal changes of UHIs as well as identification of important factors using remote sensing image fusion techniques in Rasht. The image dataset comprises of Landsat 5, 7, 8 and MODIS images from 2001 to 2018. After pre-processing, multi-temporal and multi-sensor image fusion techniques were used to retrieve Landsat 7 images as well as Landsat-like medium spatial resolution images. The effects of built-up areas and surface biophysical characteristics such as brightness, greenness and wetness were also examined on LST changes through time. The results showed that multi-temporal and multi-sensor image fusion methods provide appropriate accuracies and the multi-temporal fusion method performs better than the multi-sensor fusion method. The results also showed that retrieval of sensor products is of higher accuracy than that of the spectral bands. The spatiotemporal changes of UHIs were indicative of an increasing trend over time. Of the surface biophysical parameters, the normalized difference built-up index exhibited the highest correlation with changes of normalized LST.
... One of the most profound and long-lasting land change processes is the expansion of settlement areas, which is likely to continue since global forecasts show clear tendencies for population increase in the 21st century (Gerland et al. 2014, Jiang and O'Neill 2017, United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2019. Although settlement development and its footprint on the global environment is expected to be most prevalent in the hinterland of cities, it may be also visible in a form of urban sprawl (Jaeger and Schwick 2014) or sprinkling settlements (Romano et al. 2017). Settlement increase will contribute to the development of micro-urbanization (Chai and Seto 2019) and will significantly affect rural areas (G€ uneralp andSeto 2013, Mcdonald et al. 2009). ...
In recent years, new settlement mapping products have become available at the global and continental scale. Although accuracy assessments have indicated the high quality of these products, assessments were performed mainly on urban areas. However, there is also a need to monitor rural settlement development, as it is often located in proximity to biodiversity hotspots. In this paper, we verified the suitability of three settlement products (i.e., Global Urban Footprint – GUF, European Settlement Map – ESM and Open Street Map – OSM) to detect rural settlements in the Carpathian ecoregion. Two independent accuracy assessments indicated that the GUF captures rural settlements most effectively (overall accuracy – OA – 65.4% and 92.5% depending on the procedure). In contrast, the ESM overestimated settlements (OA – 49.5% and 90.8%), while the OSM (OA – 61.2% and 90.2%) was the most inconsistent source of settlement data. A regional comparison indicated some deviations from these accuracies, reflecting the variability of settlement structures within the study area. This study highlights that although the GUF was the best-performing product in mapping rural settlements across the whole study area, the settlement information it provided was rather conservative, and rural settlements are still insufficiently represented in all tested datasets.
... Several studies support the validity of the monocentric city model empirically (Brueckner & Fansler, 1983;Deng et al., 2008;Ke et al., 2009;McGrath, 2005;Oueslati et al., 2015;Paulsen, 2012;Spivey, 2008). Additionally, evidence suggests that specific factors including demographics, household preferences and emerging lifestyles contribute to more dispersed urban forms (Anas et al., 1998;Brueckner, 2000;Cirtautas, 2013;Jaeger & Schwick, 2014;Pisman et al., 2011). ...
The relationship between institutional fragmentation and the spatial extent of cities in Europe’s functional urban areas is examined. European Union planning regulations vary across member states, but in most cases local authorities determine land use within the more general regulatory frameworks set by national or subnational authorities. More decentralized and fragmented settings may favour urban sprawl, allowing developers to avoid land-use restrictions in one municipality by moving to adjacent ones and providing incentives for municipalities to adopt less strict land-conversion regulations to attract households and workers. The empirical results fully support this hypothesis and unveil significant differences between small and large cities, the effect of governance fragmentation being a substantial factor in the latter case.
... Various studies conducted in the past suggest that geospatial techniques are effective in studying urban dynamics (Xiao et al., 2006;Yuan, 2010;Fenta et al., 2017;Wang et al., 2017;Zhao et al., 2018). Urban growth creates different spatial patterns which cause different impacts on urban development (Bhatta et al., 2010;Wu et al., 2011;Jaeger and Schwick, 2014). Excessive urbanization leads to a series of issues such as extra infrastructure expenses, land fragmentation, improper use of land resources (Angel et al., 2005;Irwin and Bockstael, 2007;Siedentop and Fina, 2010). ...
Unplanned and rapid urbanization leads to land-use heterogeneity, which is difficult to be captured in detail through city-level panoramic studies and thus warrants sub-city level assessment. The current study quantifies and assesses district-level urbanization in the world's second largest megacity, Delhi (India). The study extends on temporal scale from year 1973–2016 and utilizes urban expansion intensity, gravity centre model and landscape expansion index and regional context of planning. The findings of the present research are aligned with Master Plan of Delhi. The spatial patterns and level of urbanization is different in districts, thus, zonation of 11 districts into four categories is done for both individual and conjoint planning. The urban expansion in Delhi is observed mainly due to edge-expansion followed by outlying and infill. A tremendous increase in the number of urban clusters at outskirts is observed during year 1999–2005 and in subsequent years, expansion is observed in the area of existing urban clusters. The regions expanded by infill have shown congested and compact urban form. Over the years, urban land gravity centres of districts are found to move outwards in four directions whereas that of the city is moving in north-west direction and is expected to move in north-west or south-west in future. The more developed satellite towns are found in close proximity of the more urbanized districts of Delhi, thus indicating spatially distorted planning in Delhi national capital region (NCR). The findings are in accordance to the census data which has been used for validation. With unprecedented increasing urbanization across the world, this research has wider scope with various global cities, analysed at sub-city level to examine their spatial planning disparities and promote equitable development.
... To measure American urbanisation, Mieszkowski and Mills (1993), Glaeser and Kahn (2004), and others have used estimates of the changing population density gradient. Various causes have been related to urban sprawl, including traffic congestion (Anas and Rhee 2006), quiet neighbourhoods in the suburbs (Couch and Karecha 2006), the availability of transport infrastructures (Anas and Pines 2008), the improvement of the economic base (Brueckner and Helsley 2011), and crime rates and changes in age and household structures (Jaeger and Schwick 2014). ...
While the outbreak of the COVID-19 disease has caused asset markets to experience an unprecedented spike of risk and uncertainty worldwide, the real estate market in many global cities appears to be immune to the adverse effects. How does COVID-19 affect urban housing markets? This study is a first attempt to identify the pandemic’s impact on house prices by applying a price gradient analysis to the COVID-19 epicentre in China. Considering microlevel housing transaction data in 62 areas from nine districts in Wuhan City from January 2019 to July 2020, the hedonic pricing and the price gradient models suggest that there was, respectively, a 4.8% and a 5.0–7.0% year-on-year fall in house prices immediately after the pandemic outbreak. Although house prices rebounded after the lockdown period, the gradient models show that the price gradients were flattened from the epicentre to the urban peripherals. The price premiums in high-density areas were also substantially discounted after the city’s lockdown. Our findings are robust to different model specifications. The implication is that the risk associated with the pandemic is localised and transitory in nature. People may be able to internalise the risk by residing in low-density residential areas.
... To monitor sprawling patterns, various indicators that rely on continuity, density, clustering and proximity have been proposed (e.g. Tsai, 2005;Jaeger and Schwick, 2014). One dimension of urban form that contributes to sprawl is dispersed fragmentary pattern. ...
Scattered urban development leads to non-compact urban form. In this paper, I demonstrate that Index of Moment of Inertia is a useful metric to measure compactness. However, elongated political boundaries and natural restrictions severely distort the metric, rendering it less useful for monitoring urban development. I propose a landscape shape adjustment of this metric that retains some of the useful properties of the Index.
... The term 'urban sprawl' can be used here to describe both a state (the degree of sprawl in a landscape) as well as a process (increasing sprawl in a landscape). (EEA-FOEN, 2016: 22, with reference to Jaeger and Schwick, 2014) Two aspects are notable in this definition: ...
A large proportion of European inhabitants live in dispersed urban settlements, much of which is labelled as sprawl, defined by monofunctional, low-density areas. However, there is increasing evidence that this may be an overly simplistic way of describing territories-in between (TiB). This paper defines and maps functional mix in six dispersed urban areas across Europe, applying a method that goes beyond existing land-use-based mixed-use indicators but considers functional mixing on the parcel level. The paper uses data on the location of economic activities and the residential population. It concludes that, in eight cases from four European countries, mixed-use is widespread and that more than 65% of inhabited areas are mixed. Moreover, the paper relates functional mixing to specific settlement characteristics: permeability, grain size, centrality and accessibility, and connectivity. This demonstrates that functional mixing is not the result of local urban morphology or planning instruments, but of the multi-scalar qualities of a location. Therefore, there is a requirement to coordinate planning and design through different scales if mixed use areas are to be seen as one strategy for achieving greater sustainability in the spatial development of dispersed areas.
Download the open access article here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2399808320987849
... Recession has further The present study provides an alternative reading of social dynamics using swimming pools as a landmark for urban sprawl and territorial divides. In these regards, there is a urgent need for reliable, homogeneous and low-cost quantitative measurements of social disparities (Jaeger and Schwick 2014). Indicators of density and spatial distribution of pools can be used as a proxy of class segregation and social inequalities in specific local contexts and may corroborate traditional indicators (e.g. ...
Initially considered a ‘luxury’ good and now becoming a more popular and diffused landmark, the spatial distribution of residential swimming pools reflects the socio-spatial structure in Mediterranean cities, offering a kaleidoscopic overview of class segregation and economic disparities. The present study hypothesizes that economic downturns, resulting in alternative phases of social polarization and mixing, affect the spatial distribution of pools. To verify this assumption, the spatial distribution of pools in Athens, Greece—a city with evident social disparities and largely affected by the great recession—was analysed during the most recent expansion and recession. Results shed light on the spatial linkage between pool density, class segregation and dispersed urban expansion in a context of rising income disparities. The spatial distribution of swimming pools became increasingly polarized in the Athens’ metropolitan region. The spread of residential pools in wealthier districts suggests how recession has consolidated disparities between rich and poor neighbourhoods. Based on the empirical findings of this study, pools can be considered a proxy of increased socio-spatial disparities reflecting class segregation and economic polarization at the local scale.
... Seit den 1930er-Jahren haben die Siedlungsflächen und die Zersiedelung der Landschaft deutlich zugenommen (Jaeger & Schwick 2014). Zwischen 1985 und 2009 hat sich die Siedlungsfläche in der Schweiz um 0,8 m 2 pro Sekunde bzw. ...
... Commercial strip development is the embodiment of urban sprawl that is development that exceeds available land capacity, development of built land increases urban sprawl degrees [13]. There are three types of development that are typical "urban sprawl", namely strip commercial development, leap frog development and low density, single dimension development [14]. ...
Indication of urban sprawl at the center of urban growth are characterized by strip development of residential-commercial zoning changes uncontrollably. One of the strip developments that took place in the city of Medan was Dr. Mansur street corridor. Changes in residential allocation functions become uncontrolled commercial places because of the dynamics of community activities and become a development degradation that requires efforts to revitalize the area. By uncovering the potential of urban square forming with direct observation in the field of social activities that take place in shared public spaces in this corridor, research raises the local wisdom of community behavior and potential places of interest that are bottom up development. The finding this research is the identification mapping of revitalization elements in the form of urban square (place and activity) for the complimentary of generic and organic revitalization models, which can later become a guide for the community and government in addressing changes from and by the community so that the negative strip development indication can be controlled.
... A key term of the discourse is 'urban sprawl'. "Sprawl is a result not just of population growth but also of new lifestyles that require more space" (Jaeger & Schwick, 2014). ...
In the past few decades, cities from various parts of the world have faced with unplanned and uncontrolled physical expansion due to inappropriate policies. Among different solutions against urban sprawl, the dominant sustainable cure is the so-called 'Urban Consolidation' (UC). This paper aims to explore urban sprawl characteristics and present its cause and effect on the sustainability criteria of Shiraz city, Iran. It is confined to an exploration of population growth and physical expansion of the city. The data has been collected from governmental organizations and documents. This paper examines UC policy implementation in the inner city of Shiraz to control low-density urban sprawl. As the result, this paper discovers that the policy emphasizes on the higher density housing development in existing urban areas considering the capacity of infrastructures and facilities’ availability prior to calculate housing targets to decrease the demand for Greenfield development. It concludes with a brief discussion on the challenges to achieve sustainable urban development goals in the city through UC strategies.
... Urban sprawl is a serious ongoing economic, environmental and social issue in Switzerland, where only a third of the surface area is available for settlement. It increased dramatically between 1960 and 1980 and then again from 2002 to 2010, mainly due to large-scale suburbanization (Jaeger & Schwick, 2014). 18. ...
Spatial planning has gone through significant shifts in recent years. Planners today face land use challenges, such as sprawl reduction and mixed use redevelopment, which must be reconciled with technological innovations and changing political and economic pressures. At the same time, their end goal is not just to support economic growth, but also to improve people’s health and social well-being in a place-based framework. Keeping in mind the debate on equity, participation and the achievement of sustainable well-being for all, this paper looks at these issues from both a theoretical point of view, as well as their practical implementation. It critically examines some aspects of spatial planning and territorial governance from Sweden and Switzerland, discussing their flaws and contradictions, as well as pointing out positive features. Overall, the paper suggests that current spatial planning philosophy should privilege an integrated holistic approach, avoiding policies that, in the name of increased speed and efficiency, might lead to partiality, randomness and fragmentation.
... Meanwhile, Soule [9] defines urban sprawl as a type of low-density land development, which is dependent on car traffic and occurs at the edge of urban centers. Furthermore, Jaeger and Schwick [10] explain that urban sprawl is a type of urban construction expansion, which builds over beyond the existing built-up areas of cities, and has dispersed spatial configuration and low utilization intensity in the built-up area. ...
Identifying the effects of urban sprawl on urban development is of strategic importance. This study takes 285 prefecture-level and above cities in China as research samples and empirically analyzes the heterogeneous impact of urban sprawl on economic development from 2009 to 2018. Results indicate the threshold effect of urban sprawl on economic development. That is, moderate urban sprawl has a significantly positive influence on economic development, whereas excessive urban sprawl has a significantly negative impact on economic development. The empirical analysis also identifies heterogeneities in the effects of urban sprawl on economic development. Compared with the sprawls of small- and medium-sized cities, those of large cities have a greater negative impact on economic development. Compared with the sprawls of cities dominated by the tertiary industry, those of cities dominated by the secondary industry have a greater negative impact on economic development. Findings of this study have important policy implications for scientific urban expansion, reasonable urban spatial layout, and sustainable urban economic development.
... Using multiple indices to measure sprawl has some drawbacks, such as the provision of redundant information [22]. More recent studies conceptualized urban sprawl as a multidimensional process [23,24], which is the approach adopted in this study. We therefore adopt three interrelated indices of urban sprawl, proposed by Hennig et al. and Jaeger et al. [6,23]: degree of urban dispersion (DIS), degree of urban permeation of the landscape (UP), and land uptake per inhabitant (LUP). ...
Urban sprawl is widely acknowledged as an environmental and socio-economic challenge worldwide. This study examines urban sprawl in Belgium over six decades from 1950 to 2010. We assume that sprawl is a self-reinforcing process, i.e., sprawl is fueling further sprawl over time. The main objective of this study is to examine this assumption. We measure urban sprawl at four different levels in this study: country, regions, municipalities, and 1-km2 cells. Three sprawl indices are employed: the degree of urban dispersion, degree of urban permeation of the landscape, and built-up land uptake per capita. These three indices consider both the growth of built-up areas and population density to measure the magnitude of sprawl. The drivers of urban sprawl have been analyzed at a 1-km2 level. The examined drivers are previous urban dispersion patterns, distance to urban cores, elevation, and slope degree by means of linear regression. Urban sprawl significantly increased between 1950 and 1980, whereas its increase was more moderate between 1980 and 2010. Urban dispersion and permeation strongly affect the Brussels and Flanders regions. The results show that the increase in the degree of dispersion is locally driven by previous values of dispersion; i.e., it provides an adequate milieu for further dispersion. Therefore, our conclusion is that urban sprawl in Belgium tends to be a self-reinforcing process.
... Based on available datasets for land use monitoring, academic research has made some progress in the development of indicators to benchmark sustainable development targets in relation to urban sprawl. Different methodological approaches have been proposed for the assumed information requirements of urban planning and land use governance, including contributions by the authors of this article and application in post-socialist countries (Esswein et al., 2002;Girvetz et al., 2007;Siedentop et al., 2007;Jaeger et al., 2008Jaeger et al., , 2009Fina, 2013;Jaeger and Schwick, 2014). In hindsight, the levels of complexity to source and process available datasets, remaining uncertainties about the information value of results for planning practice, and the reluctance of stakeholders and administration to adopt complex forms of urban metrics prevented the roll-out of monitoring concepts to measure urban sprawl so far. ...
Since 1990, urbanization in post-socialist countries has frequently resulted in a loss of urban density in the existing building stock while land use patterns at the outskirts of growing city regions began to sprawl. Formerly state-planned and controlled housing forms as well as industrial and business enterprises were suddenly exposed to new market interests and finance-led investments in a globalizing world. In the initial adaptation to socio-economic transformation pressures after the fall of the iron curtain, the countries in question took different approaches in the governance of urbanization trends. The comparison of urban development between Russian and Eastern German city regions showcases two contrasting examples. Urban development in Russian city regions is largely driven by action-oriented political control of land market interests on the project level. Today's Eastern German city regions have adopted the spatial planning regime of former West Germany. Where the German planning regime aims to coordinate long-term planning and decision-making between different tiers of government with an emphasis to empower land use management on the local community level, land use decisions in Russia are formally free of such regulatory frameworks. According to urban metrics that monitor the sustainability of urban development, both approaches result in increasing urban sprawl and related potential adverse impacts on multiple public goods. Experts interviewed for this article frequently attribute this outcome to “catch-up development” that prioritizes economic development over other land use interests. The cumulative negative effects of urban sprawl on land use efficiency are increasingly being recognized, but they are still frequently subordinate to urban development interests.
The present study aimed to investigate different socioeconomic factors as well as the perceptions and travel behaviors associated with urban sprawl in two cities of different sizes in Iran, as a developing country in the Middle East. Four Weighted Least Squares (WLS) regression models were developed for Hamedan and Nowshahr, as examples of large and small cities in Iran, respectively. The findings showed different correlations related to urban sprawl between Iranian cities and high-income countries in terms of socioeconomic and travel behavior determinants. Urban sprawl around home in Hamedan was positively correlated with the number of cars and driving licenses in households, the use of a private car for trips, and less use of public transport. Urban sprawl around homes in Nowshahr was related to an increased number of cars, the use of private cars for non-commuting trips, less sense of belonging to the neighborhood, and lower income. Additionally, urban sprawl around workplaces was correlated with main daily activity, number of non-commuting trips, mode of choice for non-commuting, and residential location choice in Hamedan a swell as monthly income, daily shopping area, frequency of public transport use, quality of recreational facilities, length of time for living in the current home, and commuting distance in Nowshahr.
The paper examines the impact of the General Urban Development Plan (GUDP) of Sofia on the development of the urban form of the Bulgarian capital. The aim of the plan is to discontinue the monocentric growth and establish polycentric and dispersed form of development. The paper concludes that the plan did not achieve its goal. With regard to the dispersed form, this failure is a positive result, because the dispersed form (i.e. urban sprawl) is an unsustainable form of development. At the same time, the opportunities for polycentric development are preserved.
Automatic thresholding methods are used to detect spatio-temporal changes in the land subject to different natural and anthropogenic processes. Image segmentation plays an important role in this analysis, where urban sprawl detection take place with daylight images. However, recently some investigators have used nocturnal images in remote sensing imagery research. Such georeferenced data represent a good tool for analysis of the light pollution and urban sprawl. There are various physical processes involved in the radiative transfer of the light projected from the cities. Though, with a correct method based on background subtraction, any satellite remotely sensed nocturnal image can be useful in detecting urban sprawl. We base this work on thresholding processes of georeferenced nocturnal satellite images. We used a method combining digital classification techniques, geographic information systems and statistical analyzes. The proposed method is helpful because of a simple implementation and time saving. The pixel intensity of nocturnal images can offer a tool to calculate aspects related to electricity consumption and the efficiency of public lighting. We hope the results motivates other authors to study relationships with other social, natural and economic issues.
The creation of shop house facade design appears as an effort to describe the function of space utilization. Shophouses facade is architecturally the only field that allows design creation in architectural art. This facade provides also provides an opportunity to communicate the meaning, content and function of shophouses through signs. This research aims to read the signs on the shophouses facade on the Dr. Mansur corridor and revealed the effectiveness of using these signs as a means of commercial advertising. With the method of Robert Venturi's version of semiotic interpretation and validation with the Charles Saunders Peirce version of the triadic concept of sign interpretation model, the interpretation results that there are four styles of shophouses with indexical, symbolic, iconic and exhibitionist characteristics. The results of the study show that the dominant commercial appeal is achieved with exhibitionist character and event / celebration as commercial meanings. This research is useful to give a deep meaning to the phenomenon of changes that occur in FASAD buildings that affect the creation of the face characters of cities that form urban vernacular architecture.
Automatic thresholding methods are used to detect spatio-temporal changes in the land subject to different natural and anthropogenic processes. Image segmentation plays an important role in this analysis, where urban sprawl detection take place with daylight images. However, recently some investigators have used nocturnal images in remote sensing imagery research. Such georeferenced data represent a good tool for analysis of the light pollution and urban sprawl. There are various physical processes involved in the radiative transfer of the light projected from the cities. Though, with a correct method based on background subtraction, any satellite remotely sensed nocturnal image can be useful in detecting urban sprawl. We base this work on thresholding processes of georeferenced nocturnal satellite images. We used a method combining digital classification techniques, geographic information systems and statistical analyzes. The proposed method is helpful because of a simple implementation and time saving. The pixel intensity of nocturnal images can offer a tool to calculate aspects related to electricity consumption and the efficiency of public lighting. We hope the results motivates other authors to study relationships with other social, natural and economic issues.
This paper investigates the phenomenon of spatial chaos in Poland resulting from urban sprawl. The phenomenon is particularly visible in the case of suburban small cities which, in contrast to cities in the EU-15 countries with similar populations, are expanding excessively, causing a growth of urbanized areas exceeding several times the growth of their population. Suburbs of these cities increasingly resemble a badly played Tetris game. The selected study area consists of several cities in the Warsaw suburban zone where an increased dynamic of these processes can be observed. The paper presents detailed studies concerning the selected representative small cities. The morphology of urban tissue was studied as a marker of spatial order including: development intensity, street grid, plots parameters, presence of technical infrastructure, and distance from the functional city center. The analyses were performed based on cartographic archives, the data of the Central Statistical Office of Poland, topographic database and Kernel Density Estimation. ArcGIS ESRI and AutoCad software was used to present the study results. The conducted studies intend to diagnose the changes in the spatial layout in the context of the objectives of spatial order and sustainable development, and to define the indicators which should be taken into account in spatial planning documents drawn up for the studied areas.
The COVID-19 lockdown in 2020–2021 and the refugee crisis in 2021–2022 were two new and unexpected social and political events in Poland in recent years. These “wildcards” will certainly have major effects on individuals and cities, both directly and indirectly, through the influence of “externalities.” The paper examines trends in the spatial development of Polish cities during the last five years (2016–2021), focusing on residential suburbanization and urban sprawl. The study aims to reveal the elements that determine the spatial scale of suburbanization, as well as “wildcards” that may have an indirect impact on the process but are difficult to quantify and include in spatial analysis. The use of location quotient (LQ) metrics, as well as a subset of the Global Human Settlement Layer in the spatial analysis allow for comparisons of locations with intensified urbanization throughout different periods, serving a task that is comparable to feature standardization from a time and space viewpoint. The analysis provides evidence of growing suburbanization surrounding major Polish cities from 2016 to 2021, while also exposing distinct elements of spatial development during a period that was marked by social and political stress (2021).
The rapidly occurring urbanization is associated with urban land use change dynamics. The conversion of natural land surfaces to artificial impervious built-up surfaces in urban clusters gives rise to numerous urban environmental problems such as urban heat island. So, the expanding built-up surfaces in urban areas require necessary monitoring. The use of satellite data and further spectral indices, for the built-up area estimation by remote sensing in urban clusters, is of great significance. Thus, the current study focuses on the revision of previously developed spectral indices for the classification of built-up areas. The study also covers the algorithms and concepts and then compares the outputs of different built-up area indices derived using distinct spatiotemporal satellite data. The applications of various built-up indices in several studies have also been discussed. The study will facilitate great help to the urban planners to use appropriate spectral index according to the accuracy and suitability of other parameters for classification of the built-up areas.
Quantifying urban forms to explore urban compactness or sprawl has become increasingly popular in multiple fields in the past decades. However, previous studies predominantly analyze the multidimensional phenomenon at large-area levels such as metropolitan areas, concealing variations that probably occur at small-area levels. Canadian studies measuring urban forms are usually conducted at the regional level with inconsistent indicators and approaches, hindering meaningful comparisons of compactness or sprawling between different regions. This study bridges a previous gap by applying Bayesian multivariate spatial factor analysis to construct a new composite urban compactness index for all Census Tracts (CT) in Canada. Nine urban form indictors representing four dimensions, density, centering, land use, and street connectivity are used in developing the index. Posterior probability is used to detect CTs that are most compact or sprawling. Results indicate that gross population and employment densities best characterize urban compactness at the CT level while land-use mix is the least central indictor to define the multi-faceted concept. Notable differences of urban compactness are detected across Canada and among different Census Metropolitan Areas (CMA). The most compact CTs usually locate in downtown or city center areas of a CMA. Larger and more populous CMAs, which also capture a larger extent of periphery areas, are not necessarily more compact and vice versa, suggesting the need to measure local variations of urban compactness. The constructed composite index allows direct urban compactness comparisons across different Canadian regions. Findings from this study can be used to guide smart and sustainable urban development in Canada.
Metoda nauki obywatelskiej jako podejście wspierające sposoby zbierania danych przez profesjonalnych badaczy staje się coraz popularniejsza w wielu krajach. Jednak w Polsce nie wykonano dotąd w ten sposób wielu projektów badawczych. Na przykładzie danych zebranych w ramach badań nad procesami suburbanizacji oraz w ramach próby delimitacji obszarów funkcjonalnych rozważamy, jak zwiększyć skuteczność polityki regionalnej i lokalnej. Zgodnie z ustaleniami naszymi i innych badaczy metoda citizen science zwiększa społeczne zaufanie do metody naukowej i legitymizację podjętych przy jej pomocy decyzji na temat chociażby gospodarki komunalnej czy transportu. Metoda ta ma szczególny potencjał w regionach o silnej tożsamości lokalnej lub ścierających się tożsamościach (np. lokalni vs. przyjezdni) oraz w obszarach występowania konkretnych problemów praktycznych, które aktywują możliwy do zaangażowania kapitał społeczny. Proponujemy na tej podstawie ramę zarządzania lokalnego opartą na modelu obywatelskiego ula – wielopoziomowej, powoływanej ad hoc struktury do rozwiązywania konkretnych problemów, której elementem może być wiedza naukowa/ekspercka, obywatele, organizacje pozarządowe oraz administracja. Model ten łączy partycypację i wiedzę/metodę naukową w jednej ścieżce podejmowania decyzji lokalnych.
Im Freistaat Bayern wird derzeit intensiv diskutiert, wie die nach wie vor hohe Freiflächeninanspruchnahme für Siedlungs- und Verkehrszwecke nachhaltig reduziert werden kann. Wissenschaftliche Grundlage für Steuerungsansätze in der Stadt- und Regionalentwicklung sollte ein verbessertes staatliches Flächenmonitoring sein, welches über die amtliche Flächenstatistik und deren Hauptindikator „Siedlungs- und Verkehrsfläche“ (SuV) hinaus auch die qualitative bzw. strukturelle Dimension der Flächeninanspruchnahme einbezieht. Zu diesem Zweck stellt dieser Beitrag methodische Erweiterungsansätze für das Flächenmonitoring vor, welche kleinräumige Analysen der Zersiedelung, Freiraumstruktur, Flächenversiegelung und Ökosystemleistungen am Beispiel des Landkreises Rhön-Grabfeld aufzeigen. Diese werden im Kontext der relevanten Debatten zu Ursachen und Steuerung der Flächeninanspruchnahme sowie zu aktuellen Anforderungen an das Flächenmonitoring diskutiert, sowie deren Bedeutung für das Monitoring rechtlicher Vorgaben und politischer Ziele zur nachhaltigen Flächennutzung betont.
Rapid urban sprawl in China has caused serious eco-environmental changes, and thus attracted significant attention of the international academic circles. However, the mechanism of influence of urban sprawl on eco-environmental quality has not been addressed adequately. The main objective of this study was to fill this gap by theoretically and empirically studying how urban sprawl influences eco-environmental quality, based on the Spatial Durbin model and on a panel data covering 30 provinces of mainland China during the period 2003–2018. The results show that China’s urban sprawl has significantly decreased the eco-environmental quality under both geographical and economic weight matrices. Moreover, the spillover effect played an essential role in investigating the influence of urban sprawl on eco-environmental quality. From the perspective of regional differences, the direct accumulation effect and the spatial spillover effect involved in the impact of urban sprawl on eco-environmental quality varied across the central, western, and northeast regions. The results of decomposition of urban sprawl into its component parts indicate that population sprawl, socio-economic sprawl, transportation sprawl, and land use sprawl can explain the change of eco-environmental quality in China to varying degrees. During the study period, land use sprawl exhibited the greatest effect on eco-environmental quality, followed by socio-economic sprawl, population sprawl, and transportation sprawl. The government should actively coordinate the development of different types of urban sprawl, thus increasing eco-environmental quality across different regions.
Detailed studies focusing on the spatio-temporal urban sprawl in mid-sized Indian cities are relatively rare. In this context, the paper attempts to investigate urban sprawl in eight mid-sized Indian cities from diverse physiographic regions. The selected cities are Lucknow, Patna from Indo-Gangetic Plains, Ranchi, Raipur from the peninsular plateau, Thiruvananthapuram, Bhubaneswar from coastal belts, and Srinagar, Dehradun from the northern mountainous region. Based on remote sensing (RS) and geographic information system (GIS), Landsat satellite images from 1991 to 2018 were classified into built-up and non-built-up land cover classes. After obtaining satisfactory accuracy results, land cover change detection was conducted. A multivariable integrated urban sprawl index (USI) was formulated by combining eleven significant variables related to urban sprawl patterns and typologies. The results revealed the rapid growth of built-up areas in all the cities, mainly toward the periphery. Despite the rapid growth of built-up areas, there was a decline in population density in most cities. The USI values ranged from 20.73 in Thiruvananthapuram Urban Agglomeration (UA) to 11.28 in Dehradun UA. The urban sprawl assessment revealed the prevalence of outward expansion, shape irregularity of built-up patches, and rapid dispersion. The urban sprawl typologies (UST), such as secondary urban core and urban fringe, exhibited an increasing trend in all the cities. The study emphasizes the use of modern research tools to gather scientific evidence on the urban sprawl in mid-sized cities. The obtained results will guide the concerned authorities to prepare strategies for promoting urban sustenance.
Il lavoro presentato vuole fornire un contributo alla comprensione delle dinamiche trasformative recenti in un particolare ambito costiero italiano quale quello adriatico. A tal fine sono state utilizzate come elementi di analisi le Unità Fisiografiche Costiere Principali (UFCP) censite dall’ISPRA nell’ambito del progetto Coste (aggiornato al marzo 2017) che ha consentito di impostare le basi per la definizione delle regole generali necessarie alla pianificazione di settore (Piani di Difesa della Costa, Pianificazione di bacino). In particolare sono state individuate le 7 UFCP che interessano l’ambito litoraneo adriatico all’interno delle quali sono state ricostruite le matrici di transizione relative ai cambi di uso/copertura del suolo tra il 2012 ed il 2018 tramite l’ausilio dei dati del progetto Copernicus Land Monitoring Service disponibili per la fascia di territorio compresa entro i 10 km dalla linea di riva. L’analisi mostra come sia intensa la pressione antropica lungo questo delicato ambito geografico con oltre 1.500 ha (250 ha/a) di suolo convertiti in aree urbane e circa 600 ha convertiti in aree agricole da precedenti coperture naturali e semi-naturali. Tali indicazioni danno idea di un fenomeno che certamente ha diminuito la sua intensità rispetto agli anni ’60-’70 del secolo scorso, ma che comunque continua a erodere suolo in un ambito territoriale fortemente fragile e soggetto a diversi rischi.
The accentuated dynamics of the real estate markets of the last 20 years, determined that a large part of the territories in the immediate vicinity of the big urban centers, to change their category of land use, in an accelerated rhythm. Most of the time, the land use changes according to the market requirements, the predominantly agricultural lands being occupied by constructions with residential or industrial functions. Identifying these changes is a difficult task due to the heterogeneity of spatial databases that come from different real estate development projects, so determining and implementing new methods to track land changes are currently highly required. This paper presents a methodologically innovative index-based approach for the rapid mapping of built-up areas, using Landsat-5, Landsat-7, and Landsat-8 satellite imagery. The approach described in this study differs from other conventional methods by the way the analysis was performed and also by the thematic indices used in the processes of built-up area delineation. The method, structured in a complex model, based on Remote Sensing and GIS techniques, can be divided into three distinct phases. The first stage is related to the pre-processing of the remote sensing data. The second stage involves the calculation of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), the modified normalized difference water index (MNDWI), and the bare soil index (BI) correlated with the extraction of all areas not covered by vegetation; respectively, the elimination from the result of all areas covered by water, bare land, or uncultivated arable land. The result of this stage is represented by a distinct thematic layer that contains only built-up areas and other associated territories. The last step of the model is represented by the validation of the results, which was performed based on statistical methods and also by direct comparison with field reality, obtaining a validation coefficient which is generally above 85% for any of the methods used. The validation process shows us that by applying this method, the fast mapping of the built-up areas is significantly enhanced and the model is suitable to be implemented on a larger scale in any practical and theoretical application that aims at the rapid mapping of the built-up areas and their evolutionary modeling.
https://www.iweps.be/publication/les-polarites-de-base-des-balises-pour-identifier-des-centralites-urbaines-et-rurales-en-wallonie/
L’Observatoire du Développement territorial de l’IWEPS propose dans ce Working Paper une méthodologie pour identifier des centralités pour le territoire wallon : les polarités de base. Il s’agit de lieux du territoire wallon qui combinent une certaine concentration en logements et en services de base à la population parmi lesquels des arrêts de transport en commun bien desservis. Ils correspondent à des villes et villages
qui offrent un minimum de services aux populations. L’objectif est de
proposer des référents spatiaux afin de mesurer l’étalement urbain, plus particulièrement en analysant la localisation des nouvelles implantations de logements ou d’activités par rapport à ces lieux centraux.
Urban sprawl is a phenomenon that is generally growing across all continents. As a result, modern city structures need larger areas for similar populations. Few studies have evaluated the effects of sprawl on an important aspect in terms of sustainable development: energy consumption. The aim of this paper is to analyse whether urban sprawl has a significant effect on electricity consumption in Spanish municipalities. The increase in sprawl in Spanish cities is heterogeneous, and the growth of household income during recent decades has allowed households to move to scattered residential areas. This situation makes this country especially interesting as a case study to evaluate the impacts of urban sprawl. In this paper, by disaggregating the electricity consumption of households at the local level using entropy, we measure the effect of sprawl to evaluate whether there is an effect on household energy consumption. The joint consideration of disaggregated data and spatial heterogeneity allows us to assess the effect that sprawl has for certain urban configurations on electricity consumption, which points to the need for policies that involve national, regional and local land use policies.
Urban sprawl is a quite researched phenomenon due to its significant expansion in past
decades and to the negative and disproportional impacts associated with it. Often,
transportation infrastructures and policies are associated as main drivers of urban sprawl, in addition to others such as lack or ineffective spatial planning or inexpensive real estate.
With this premise, the present research has the objective to assess the level of influence that transportation infrastructures and policies had on the expansion of urban sprawl in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area between 1991 and 2011.
To achieve this objective, a multi-step methodology was created, which included the
measurement of urban space, its classification, identification of urban sprawl and the
assessment of the influence of transportation on urban sprawl expansion.
To measure urban space, it was tested three Portuguese methodologies to identify the most suitable one. In the end, it was used a combination of different methods. To classify the measured urban space and at the same time identify urban sprawl in the LMA, it was developed a series of latent-class models. This model approach groups observations according to identified and unidentified characteristics between them. The created typologies were then used as alternatives in discrete choice models, in order to assess the influence of transportation on urban sprawl expansion. The most suitable model was a spatial panel logit model. In addition to use transportation indicators, it was also employed indicators related with land-use, economy, society, geography and to account for spatial and time effects. Besides creating more realistic models it also enhanced transportation’s coefficients. The spatial effects indicators also provided a way to account for the spatial autocorrelation.
It was concluded that transportation had relative influence in the expansion of urban sprawl. Moreover, the influence of the freeway network’s development was lower than the already existing major road network. This is a striking conclusion as often freeways are considered the main driver of sprawl expansion. In the end, it was the indicators related with the local spatial plans, along with the spatial indicators, that had more influence over the expansion of sprawl. The areas classified by the municipalities as urban and to be urbanized were significant drivers of sprawl. On the other hand, areas were urban expansion was forbidden, as ecological and agricultural protected areas, have been losing their efficiency. The failure of urban and regional policies, including the lack of integration of transportation planning with local planning (along with its general ineffectiveness), were effectively the main driver of sprawl expansion in the LMA in the past decades.
The unregulated and scattered pattern of urban footprints is termed as urban sprawl. Urban sprawl being a dynamic phenomenon is facing many uncertainties with respect to methods for studying its dynamism. The present study aims at quantifying the urban sprawl process in Dehradun Urban Agglomeration (DUA), India, based on two criteria, viz. urban built-up density and open space fragmentation. On the basis of these two criteria, six structural classes, viz. urban, suburban and rural built-up, urbanized open space, captured open space and rural open land, were delineated. The spatio-temporal variation of these structural classes provided the basis for defining the urban sprawl patterns, i.e. infill, extension and leapfrog. The results revealed that urbanization patterns in DUA valley shifted from leapfrog to extension and then to infill pattern. The study thus attempts to develop a model for objectively defining the process of urban sprawl.
One of the most important challenges of land-use regulation relates to the control of urban sprawl. The Urban Metric System (UMS) has been conceived in order: 1- to standardize the definitions of central city, agglomeration, metropolitan area, megacity, and other urban-area concepts; 2- to characterize and compare urban areas; 3- to measure urban sprawl. This paper focusses on the step-by-step application of the continuous version of UMS. It also presents a new global urban sprawl index.
The association between municipal fragmentation and suburban sprawl is examined, based on a cross-sectional analysis of all U.S. and Canadian metropolitan areas with more than 500,000 residents in the 1990s. Results reveal that this association is rather weak but significant and is sustained even when the less fragmented and more compact Canadian metropolitan areas are excluded from the analysis. The impact of residential sprawl on fragmentation is significant, but fragmentation does not predict sprawl. Low levels of fragmentation do not guarantee compact development, but lack of excessive fragmentation might be a precondition for compact development in North America.
The literature on urban sprawl confuses causes, consequences, and conditions. This article presents a conceptual definition of sprawl based on eight distinct dimensions of land use patterns: density, continuity, concentration, clustering, centrality, nuclearity, mixed uses, and proximity. Sprawl is defined as a condition of land use that is repre- sented by low values on one or more of these dimensions. Each dimension is operationally defined and tested in 13 urbanized areas. Results for six dimensions are reported for each area, and an initial comparison of the extent of sprawl in the 13 areas is provided. The test confirms the utility of the approach and suggests that a clearer conceptual and operational definition can facilitate research on the causes and consequences of sprawl.
This paper develops a set of quantitative variables to characterise urban forms at the metropolitan level and, in particular, to distinguish compactness from 'sprawl'. It first reviews and analyses past research on the definitions of urban form, compactness and sprawl, and corresponding quantitative variables. Four quantitative variables are developed to measure four dimensions of urban form at the metropolitan level: metropolitan size, activity intensity, the degree that activities are evenly distributed, and the extent that high-density sub-areas are clustered. Through a series of simulation analyses, the global Moran coefficient, which characterises the fourth dimension, distinguishes compactness from sprawl. It is high, intermediate and close to zero for monocentric, polycentric and decentralised sprawling forms respectively. In addition, the more there is more local sprawl, composed of discontinuity and strip development, the lower is the Moran coefficient.
This study examined the dynamics of global urban expansion by defining a new universe of 3,943 cities with population in excess of 100,000 and drawing a stratified global sample of 120 cities from this universe. Population data and satellite images for two time periods⎯a decade apart⎯were obtained and analyzed, and several measures of urban extent and expansion⎯among them the built-up area of cities and the average density of the built-up area⎯were calculated. Data for 90 cities out of the global sample of 120 is presented and analyzed in this report. Weighted averages of the built-up area and the average density, as well as compactness and contiguity measures⎯and their change over time⎯are presented for nine regions, four income groups and four city size groups covering the entire globe. Densities in developing-country cities were found to be some three times higher than densities in cities in industrialized countries, and densities in all regions were found to be decreasing over time. If average densities continue to decline at the annual rate of 1.7%⎯as they have during the past decade⎯the built-up area of developing-country cities will increase from 200,000 km 2 in 2000 to more than 600,000 km 2 by 2030, while their population doubles. Ten econometric models that sought to explain the variation in urban extent and expansion in the universe of cities were constructed, and several hypotheses postulated by neoclassical theories of urban spatial structure were tested. All tests yielded R 2 values in excess of 0.80. The policy implications of the analysis are presented and discussed. The Central message of this study is quite clear: Developing country cities should be making realistic⎯yet minimal⎯plans for urban expansion, designating adequate areas for accommodating the projected expansion, investing wisely in basic trunk infrastructure to serve this expansion, and protecting sensitive land from incursion by new urban development.
Despite growing recognition of the important role of cities in economic, political and environmental systems across the world, comparative, global-scale research on cities is severely limited. This paper examines the similarities and differences in urban form and growth that have occurred across 25 mid-sized cities from different geographical settings and levels of economic development. The results reveal four city types: low-growth cities with modest rates of infi lling; high-growth cities with rapid, fragmented development; expansive-growth cities with extensive dispersion at low population densities; and frantic-growth cities with extraordinary land conversion rates at high population densities. Although all 25 cities are expanding, the results suggest that cities outside the US do not exhibit the dispersed spatial forms characteristic of American urban sprawl.
Anthropogenic fragmentation of landscapes is known as a major reason for the loss of species in industrialized countries. Landscape fragmentation caused by roads, railway lines, extension of settlement areas, etc., further enhances the dispersion of pollutants and acoustic emissions and affects local climatic conditions, water balance, scenery, and land use. In this study, three new measures of fragmentation are introduced: degree of landscape division (D), splitting index (S), and effective mesh size (m). They characterize the anthropogenic penetration of landscapes from a geometric point of view and are calculated from the distribution function of the remaining patch sizes.First, D, S, and m are defined, their mathematical properties are discussed, and their reactions to the six fragmentation phases of perforation, incision, dissection, dissipation, shrinkage, and attrition are analysed. Then they are compared with five other known fragmentation indices with respect to nine suitability criteria such as intuitive interpretation, low sensivity to very small patches, monotonous reaction to different fragmentation phases, and detection of structural differences. Their ability to distinguish spatial patterns is illustrated by means of two series of model patterns. In particular, the effective mesh size (m), representing an intensive and area-proportionately additive measure, proves to be well suited for comparing the fragmentation of regions with differing total size.
In a seminal paper, Garrett Hardin argued in 1968 that users of a commons are caught in an inevitable process that leads to
the destruction of the resources on which they depend. This article discusses new insights about such problems and the conditions
most likely to favor sustainable uses of common-pool resources. Some of the most difficult challenges concern the management
of large-scale resources that depend on international cooperation, such as fresh water in international basins or large marine
ecosystems. Institutional diversity may be as important as biological diversity for our long-term survival.
In the United States, there is widespread concern about understanding and curbing urban sprawl, which has been cited for its negative impacts on natural resources, economic health, and community character. There is not, however, a universally accepted definition of urban sprawl. It has been described using quantitative measures, qualitative terms, attitudinal explanations, and landscape patterns. To help local, regional and state land use planners better understand and address the issues attributed to sprawl, researchers at NASA's Northeast Regional Earth Science Applications Center (RESAC) at The University of Connecticut have developed an urban growth model. The model, which is based on land cover derived from remotely sensed satellite imagery, determines the geographic extent, patterns, and classes of urban growth over time.
The public sector in the United States has responded to growing concern about the social and environmental costs of sprawling development patterns by creating a wide range of policy instruments designed to manage urban growth and protect open space. These techniques have been implemented at the local, regional, state and, to a limited extent, national levels. This paper provides a systematic review of the extensive literature that describes these public policies and their implementation. The main public policy instruments for managing urban growth and protecting open space at various governmental levels are identified and briefly described, including public acquisition of land, regulatory approaches, and incentive-based approaches. Key lessons are gleaned from the literature on the implementation of growth management policies. Our assessment of lessons found: (1) a lack of empirical evaluations of growth management policies, (2) administrative efficiency and other details of policy implementation—rather than the general type of policy—are critical in determining their effectiveness, (3) the use of multiple policy instruments that reinforce and complement each other is needed to increase effectiveness and avoid unintended consequences, (4) vertical and horizontal coordination are critical for successful growth management but are often inadequate or lacking, and (5) meaningful stakeholder participation throughout the planning process and implementation is a cornerstone of effective growth management. Faced with a growing population and increasingly land consumptive development patterns, more effective policies and programs will be required to stem the tide of urban sprawl in the United States. We conclude with a discussion of potential federal roles in managing development and coordinating state, regional, and local growth management efforts.
Due to human population growth and migration, there will be nearly 2 billion new urban residents by 2030, yet the consequences of both current and future urbanization for biodiversity conservation are poorly known. Here we show that urban growth will have impacts on ecoregions, rare species, and protected areas that are localized but cumulatively significant. Currently, 29 of the world’s 825 ecoregions have over one-third of their area urbanized, and these 29 ecoregions are the only home of 213 endemic terrestrial vertebrate species. Our analyses suggest that 8% of terrestrial vertebrate species on the IUCN Red List are imperiled largely because of urban development. By 2030, 15 additional ecoregions are expected to lose more than 5% of their remaining undeveloped area, and they contain 118 vertebrate species found nowhere else. Of the 779 rare species with only one known population globally, 24 are expected to be impacted by urban growth. In addition, the distance between protected areas and cities is predicted to shrink dramatically in some regions: for example, the median distance from a protected area to a city in Eastern Asia is predicted to fall from 43 km to 23 km by 2030. Most protected areas likely to be impacted by new urban growth (88%) are in countries of low to moderate income, potentially limiting institutional capacity to adapt to new anthropogenic stresses on protected areas. In short, trends in global ecoregions, rare species, and protected areas suggest localized but significant biodiversity degradation associated with current and upcoming urbanization.
Measuring urban sprawl is a controversial topic among scholars who investigate the urban landscape. This study attempts to measure sprawl from a landscape perspective. The measures and indices used are derived from various research disciplines, such as urban research, ecological research, and fractal geometry. The examination was based on an urban land-use survey performed in seventy-eight urban settlements in Israel over the course of fifteen years. Measures of sprawl were calculated at each settlement and were then weighted into one integrated sprawl index through factor analysis, thus enabling a description of sprawl rates and their dynamics over a time period of approximately two decades. The results reveal that urban sprawl is a multidimensional phenomenon that is best quantified by various measures.
In a seminal paper, Garrett Hardin argued in 1968 that users of a commons are caught in an inevitable process that leads to the destruction of the resources on which they depend. This article discusses new insights about such problems and the conditions most likely to favor sustainable uses of common-pool resources. Some of the most difficult challenges concern the management of large-scale resources that depend on international cooperation, such as fresh water in international basins or large marine ecosystems. Institutional diversity may be as important as biological diversity for our long-term survival.
Humans' superiority over all other organisms on earth rests on five main foundations: command of fire requiring fuel; controlled production of food and other biotic substances; utilization of metals and other non-living materials for construction and appliances; technically determined, urban-oriented living standard; economically and culturally regulated societal organization. The young discipline of ecology has revealed that the progress of civilization and technology attained, and being further pursued by humankind, and generally taken for granted and permanent, is leading into ecological traps. This metaphor circumscribes ecological situations where finite resources are being exhausted or rendered non-utilizable without a realistic prospect of restitution. Energy, food and land are the principal, closely interrelated traps; but the absolutely decisive resource in question is land whose increasing scarcity is totally underrated. Land is needed for fulfilling growing food demands, for producing renewable energy in the post-fossil and post-nuclear era, for maintaining other ecosystem services, for urban-industrial uses, transport, material extraction, refuse deposition, but also for leisure, recreation, and nature conservation. All these needs compete for land, food and non-food biomass production moreover for good soils that are scarcer than ever. We are preoccupied with fighting climate change and loss of biodiversity; but these are minor problems we could adapt to, albeit painfully, and their solution will fail if we are caught in the interrelated traps of energy, food, and land scarcity. Land and soils, finite and irreproducible resources, are the key issues we have to devote our work to, based on careful ecological information, planning and design for proper uses and purposes. The article concludes with a short reflection on economy and competition as general driving forces, and on the role and reputation of today's ecology.
The number and variety of statistical techniques for spatial analysis of ecological data are burgeoning and many ecologists are unfamiliar with what is available and how the techniques should be used. This book provides an overview of the wide range of spatial statistics available to analyze ecological data, and provides advice and guidance for graduate students and practicing researchers who are either about to embark on spatial analysis in ecological studies or who have started but need guidance to proceed. © M.-J. Fortin and M.R.T. Dale 2005 and Cambridge University Press 2009.
This article argues that urban spatial expansion results mainly from three powerful forces: a growing population, rising incomes, and falling commuting costs. Urban growth occurring purely in response to these fundamental forces cannot be faulted as socially undesirable, but three market failures may distort their operation, upsetting the allocation of land between agricultural and urban uses and justifying criticism of urban sprawl. These are the failure to account for the benefits of open space, excessive commuting because of a failure to account for the social costs of congestion, and failure to make new development pay for the infrastructure costs it generates. Precise remedies for these market failures are two types of development taxes and congestion tolls levied on commuters. Each of these remedies leads to a reduction in the spatial size of the city.
This article reviews the literature on characteristics, causes, and costs of alternative development patterns. In doing so it debunks arguments by Gordon and Richardson in favor of Los Angeles-style sprawl. Sprawl is not suburbanization generally, but rather forms of suburban development that lack accessibility and open space. Sprawl is not a natural response to market forces, but a product of subsidies and other market imperfections. The costs of sprawl are borne by all of us, not just those creating it, and include inflated public spending, loss of resource lands, and a waning sense of community. The only realistic cure for sprawl is active planning of the sort practiced almost everywhere except the United States (and beginning to appear here out of necessity).
Across the United States, urban sprawl, its impacts, and appropriate containment policies have become the most hotly debated issues in urban planning. Today's debates have no anchoring definition of sprawl, which has contributed to their unfocused, dogmatic quality. Efforts to measure sprawl and test for relationships between sprawl and transportation outcomes are described. This is the first use of the newly minted Rutgers-Cornell sprawl indicators. Sprawl is operationalized by combining many variables into a few factors representing density, land use mix, degree of centering, and street accessibility. This consolidation of variables is accomplished with principal component analysis. These factors are then related to vehicle ownership, commute mode choice, commute time, vehicle miles traveled per capita, traffic delay per capita, traffic fatalities per capita, and 8-h ozone level. These associations are made with multiple regression analysis. For most travel and transportation outcomes, sprawling regions perform less well than compact ones. The exceptions are average commute time and annual traffic delay per capita, which do not clearly favor compactness over sprawl. The main limitation of this study has to do with the data it uses. By necessity, the study uses highly aggregate data from a variety of sources that are not always consistent as to the area under study and time period. They are simply the best data available from national sources with sufficient breadth to provide a panoramic view of sprawl in the United States. Results will have to be validated through follow-up work of a more focused nature.
The purpose of this paper is to project historic national development patterns (sprawl, or uncontrolled growth) into the future and measure the impacts of this development compared to a more controlled development future. The costs of sprawl are calculated from 25-year growth projections where resulting impacts are recorded in each of 3,100 counties nationwide. Unique regional definitions of urban, suburban, rural, and undeveloped counties are formulated according to density and prior levels of development. Then sprawl is defined as significant residential and nonresidential development in rural and undeveloped counties. Sprawl is subsequently controlled both within a region and within a county to contain growth in the most developed portions of each, using the equivalent of urban growth boundaries at the regional level and urban service areas at the county level. A future with and without controls generates the differences in development in particular locations. Differences in counties with respect to land conversion rates, road development requirements, housing unit mix and costs, public-service availability and costs, determine growth impacts under the two scenarios. The difference between the two analyses provides empirical evidence of the likely impact of a future with sprawl as opposed to one where it is reduced.
Urban land-cover change threatens biodiversity and affects ecosystem productivity through loss of habitat, biomass, and carbon storage. However, despite projections that world urban populations will increase to nearly 5 billion by 2030, little is known about future locations, magnitudes, and rates of urban expansion. Here we develop spatially explicit probabilistic forecasts of global urban land-cover change and explore the direct impacts on biodiversity hotspots and tropical carbon biomass. If current trends in population density continue and all areas with high probabilities of urban expansion undergo change, then by 2030, urban land cover will increase by 1.2 million km(2), nearly tripling the global urban land area circa 2000. This increase would result in considerable loss of habitats in key biodiversity hotspots, with the highest rates of forecasted urban growth to take place in regions that were relatively undisturbed by urban development in 2000: the Eastern Afromontane, the Guinean Forests of West Africa, and the Western Ghats and Sri Lanka hotspots. Within the pan-tropics, loss in vegetation biomass from areas with high probability of urban expansion is estimated to be 1.38 PgC (0.05 PgC yr(-1)), equal to ∼5% of emissions from tropical deforestation and land-use change. Although urbanization is often considered a local issue, the aggregate global impacts of projected urban expansion will require significant policy changes to affect future growth trajectories to minimize global biodiversity and vegetation carbon losses.
Urban sprawl (dispersed urban development) has increased at alarming rates in Europe and North America over the last 50 years. Quantitative data are urgently needed in monitoring systems for sustainable development. However, there is a lack of reliable measures of urban sprawl that take into account the spatial configuration of the urban areas (not just total amount). This paper introduces four new measures of urban sprawl: degree of urban dispersion (DIS), total sprawl (TS), degree of urban permeation of the landscape (UP), and sprawl per capita (SPC). They characterize urban sprawl from a geometric point of view. The measures are related through TS = DIS × urban area, UP = TS/size of the landscape studied, and SPC = TS/number of inhabitants.The paper investigates the properties of the new measures systematically using 13 suitability criteria which were derived from a clear definition of urban sprawl as discussed in a previous paper. The scale of analysis is specified by the so-called horizon of perception. Second, the new measures are applied to three examples from Switzerland. Subsequently, the measures are briefly compared to other measures of urban sprawl from the literature. We demonstrate that UP is an intensive and area-proportionately additive measure and is suitable for comparing urban sprawl among regions of differing size, while SPC is most appropriate when comparing sprawl in relation to human population density. The paper also provides practical advice for calculating the new measures. We conclude that the new method is more suitable than previous methods to quantify the indicator “urban sprawl” in monitoring systems as this method distinguishes the phenomenon of urban sprawl from its various causes and consequences. This article is part II of a set of two papers.
Rapid increase of urban sprawl in many countries worldwide has become a major concern because of its detrimental effects on the environment. Existing measures of urban sprawl suffer from a confusing variety of differing, and sometimes contradictory, interpretations of the term “urban sprawl”. Therefore, results from different studies cannot usually be compared to each other and are difficult to interpret consistently. Every meaningful method to measure the degree of urban sprawl needs to be based on a clear definition of “urban sprawl” disentangling causes and consequences of urban sprawl from the phenomenon of urban sprawl itself, as urban sprawl has differing causes and consequences in different regions and regulatory contexts. This paper contributes to the development of more reliable measures of urban sprawl by providing clarifications to the definition of “urban sprawl” and by developing a set of 13 suitability criteria for measures of urban sprawl.
ist Präsident des Schweizerischen Rates für Raumordnung. Bis zu seiner Emeritierung war er am Wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Zentrum (WWZ) der Universität Basel tätig. Seither leitet er das Center for Research in Econo-mics, Management and the Arts (CREMA) in Basel. Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Horst Zimmer-mann war zur Zeit der Erstellung des Beitrags Präsident der Akademie für Raumforschung und Landesplanung (ARL) in Hannover. Er ist an der Abteilung für Finanzwissenschaft der Phi-lipps-Universität Marburg tätig. For many decades, territorial policy in Germany and Switzerland has primarily tried to reduce regional disparities. Since the nineties, global competition among cities, regions, and coun-tries has been demanding that more weight be put on economic growth and innovation. This shift from redistribution to effi ciency should be supported by new instruments: not only land use regulation (city and regional planning), but also economic instruments. New rules should help the various local and regional stakeholders solve their confl icts by negotiation. New incen-tives should gently induce private households, fi rms, and investors to act (more) for the public benefi t, while still allowing them to pursue their own interests. Examples of such instruments are the "polluters pay principle" for allocating directly (instead of externalizing) the cost of pri-vate and public building activity and newly de-fi ned property rights for land use, such as the transferable development rights (TDRs) of the United States.
Debate regarding suburban sprawl in urban studies is contentious. It is fair to say that the phenomenon is not fully understood
to satisfaction in the academic, policy, or planning communities and there are a host of reasons why this may be the case.
Characterization of sprawl in the literature is often narrative and subjective. Measurement is piecemeal and largely data-driven.
Existing studies yield contrary results for the same cities in many cases. The partial appreciation for the intricacies of
sprawl is problematic. In practice, city planning agencies and citizen advocacy groups are scrambling to suggest and develop
“smart growth” strategies to curb sprawl, without a strong empirical basis for measuring the phenomenon. Yet, sprawl is extremely
popular with consumers. In this paper, we develop an innovative approach to diagnosing sprawl, looking across the full range
of its characteristic attributes in a comprehensive fashion that is robust to some well-known challenges. This proves to be
very useful in sweeping the parameter space of the phenomenon, enabling the visualization and valuation of sprawl surfaces
across attributes, allowing us to check the pulse of a developing city. We apply the work to Austin, TX, a controversial exemplar
of American sprawl, with the surprising result that sprawl and “smart growth” are found to co-exist and co-evolve. This raises
questions about relationships between the two, with consequences for planning and public policy.
This paper aims to analyse empirically the intricate relationship between urban sprawl and commuting, a process that started a few decades ago in Italy. Using a mobility impact index based on commuting data for 1981 and 1991, we quantify the impact of commuting for seven major Italian urban areas, comprising in total 739 municipalities (communes). Our modelling experiment highlights the effect of sprawl at the commune level, while taking into account the variability of communes across geographical location and level of polycentrism. Causal relationships between spatial developments and explanatory factors related to changes in urban density are analysed using multivariate cross-section regression analysis and Causal Path Analysis (CPA). Our empirical results confirm the expectation that sprawl is accompanied by intensive travel movements and associated environmental effects.
Urbanization is one of the fundamental characteristics of the European civilization. It gradually spread from Southeast Europe around 700 b.c., across the whole continent. Cities and the urban networks they formed were always an important factor in the development and shaping of their surrounding regions. Polarization of territory between urban and rural and accessibility are still important aspects in landscape dynamics. Urbanization and its associated transportation infrastructure define the relationship between city and countryside. Urbanization, expressed as the proportion of people living in urban places shows a recent but explosive growth reaching values around 80% in most European countries. Simultaneously the countryside becomes abandoned. Thinking, valuing and planning the countryside is done mainly by urbanites and future rural development is mainly focused upon the urban needs. Thinking of urban places with their associated rural hinterland and spheres of influence has become complex. Clusters of urban places, their situation in a globalizing world and changing accessibility for fast transportation modes are some new factors that affect the change of traditional European cultural landscapes. Urbanization processes show cycles of evolution that spread in different ways through space. Urbanization phases developed at different speeds and time between Northern and Southern Europe. Main cities are affected first, but gradually urbanization processes affect smaller settlements and even remote rural villages. Functional urban regions (FURs) are a new concept, which is also significant for landscape ecologists. Local landscape change can only be comprehended when situated in its general geographical context and with all its related dynamics. Patterns of change are different for the countryside near major cities, for metropolitan villages and for remote rural villages. Planning and designing landscapes for the future requires that this is understood. Urbanized landscapes are highly dynamic, complex and multifunctional. Therefore, detailed inventories of landscape conditions and monitoring of change are urgently needed in order to obtain reliable data for good decision-making.
"Technology is not the answer to the population problem. Rather, what is needed is 'mutual coercion mutually agreed upon'--everyone voluntarily giving up the freedom to breed without limit. If we all have an equal right to many 'commons' provided by nature and by the activities of modern governments, then by breeding freely we behave as do herders sharing a common pasture. Each herder acts rationally by adding yet one more beast to his/her herd, because each gains all the profit from that addition, while bearing only a fraction of its costs in overgrazing, which are shared by all the users. The logic of the system compels all herders to increase their herds without limit, with the 'tragic,' i.e. 'inevitable,' 'inescapable' result: ruin the commons. Appealing to individual conscience to exercise restraint in the use of social-welfare or natural commons is likewise self-defeating: the conscientious will restrict use (reproduction), the heedless will continue using (reproducing), and gradually but inevitably the selfish will out-compete the responsible. Temperance can be best accomplished through administrative law, and a 'great challenge...is to invent the corrective feedbacks..to keep custodians honest.'"
While urban sprawl is recognised as rapid and uncoordinated growth at the urban fringe, there is little broader consensus as to its causes and consequences. Sprawl can be recognised in terms of urban forms, landuse patterns, and the related movement patterns that are necessary for urban areas to function. Several types of sprawl can be identified, namely, continuous suburban growth, linear/ribbon development, and scattered/leapfrog development. Yet sprawl cannot be defi ned through physical form alone. This chapter describes the qualitative and quantitative methods that we are developing for the comparative analysis of sprawl in Europe within the SCATTER Project. Qualitative methods consist of indepth examination of the opinions of local authority practitioners gathered through interviews and synthesized by content analysis and concept mapping. Quantitative methods based on density and land-use patterns are also being developed from space-time series data that reflect changes in population, employment and mobility.
The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality.
Human institutions—ways of organizing activities—affect the resilience of the environment. Locally evolved institutional arrangements
governed by stable communities and buffered from outside forces have sustained resources successfully for centuries, although
they often fail when rapid change occurs. Ideal conditions for governance are increasingly rare. Critical problems, such as
transboundary pollution, tropical deforestation, and climate change, are at larger scales and involve nonlocal influences.
Promising strategies for addressing these problems include dialogue among interested parties, officials, and scientists; complex,
redundant, and layered institutions; a mix of institutional types; and designs that facilitate experimentation, learning,
and change.
De l'espace pour l'homme et la nature (Initative pour le paysage
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Chancellerie fédérale suisse, 2007. Initiative populaire fédérale "De l'espace pour
l'homme et la nature (Initative pour le paysage)". Examen préliminaire. Feuille
fédérale 2007 4721, 10 juillet 2007, Berne, Confédération suisse.
Constitution fédérale de la confédération suisse
- Berne
Berne. pp. 72. Constitution fédérale de la confédération suisse, 1999. Du 18 avril (Etat le 11 mars 2012).
Die ausgewechselte Landschaft. Vom Umgang der Schweiz mit ihrer wichtigsten natürlichen Ressource
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Ewald, K. C., Klaus, G., 2009. Die ausgewechselte Landschaft. Vom Umgang der Schweiz mit ihrer wichtigsten
natürlichen Ressource. Bern, Stuttgart, Wien, Haupt-Verlag. 752 pp. (+ 8 maps)
Botschaft zur Volksinitiative "Raum für Mensch und Natur (Landschafts-!"26"!" initiative)
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Leuthard, D., Casanova, C., 2010. Botschaft zur Volksinitiative "Raum für Mensch und Natur (Landschafts-!"26"!"
initiative)". Bundesblatt 2010 1033 (20. Januar 2010).
Statistique suisse de la superficie 2004/09, www.bfs.admin.ch Ostrom Revis-iting the commons: local lessons, global challenges
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Office fédéral de la statistique (OFS), 2012. Statistique suisse de la superficie 2004/09, www.bfs.admin.ch Ostrom, E., Burger, J., Field, C.B., Norgaard, R.B., Policansky, D., 1999. Revis-iting the commons: local lessons, global challenges. Science 248 (5412), 278–282.
Urban sprawl: Causes, consequences & policy responses
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Squires, G.D. (ed.), 2002. Urban sprawl: Causes, consequences & policy responses. Washington, D.C., Urban
Institute Press.
Landschaft 2020 -Analysen und Trends
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Landschaft, Bern. Schriftenreihe Umwelt Nr. 352, 152 pp.
Projecting Incidence and Costs of Sprawl in the United States Chancellerie fédérale suisse Initiative populaire fédérale "De l'espace pour l'homme et la nature (Initative pour le paysage)". Examen préliminaire. Feuille fédérale
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The implications of current and future urbanization for global protected areas and biodiversity conservatoin Office fédéral de la statistique (OFS), 2012. Statistique suisse de la superficie Revisiting the commons: local lessons, global challenges
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Bevölkerungsstruktur und -bilanz. Bundesamt für Statistik Spatial Analysis. A Guide for Ecologists
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Federal Statistical Office (BFS), 2003. Bevölkerungsstruktur und -bilanz. Bundesamt für Statistik, Neuenburg.
Fortin, M.J., Dale, M.R.T., 2005. Spatial Analysis. A Guide for Ecologists. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 365 pp.
Environmental Signals
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Bevölkerungsstruktur und -bilanz
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Federal Statistical Office (BFS), 2003. Bevölkerungsstruktur und -bilanz. Bundesamt für Statistik, Neuenburg.
Fortin, M.J., Dale, M.R.T., 2005. Spatial Analysis. A Guide for Ecologists. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 365 pp.