A Century of Monitoring Urban Growth in Menofya Governorate, Egypt, Using Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Analysis

Islam Abou El-Magd,Abdelfatah El Sayed,Ahmed Hasan

doi:10.4236/jgis.2015.74032

Abstract

Urban growth is a global phenomenon mainly driven by the overpopulation growth particularly in developing countries like Egypt. Pattern and extent of urban growth could be monitored and modelled on a spatial and temporal dimension. GIS and remote sensing data along with other thematic maps were used to analyze the urban growth, pattern and extent in the last century in one of the biggest governorates at the heart of the Nile Delta of Egypt. Both spatial and temporal analyses enabled to identify the pattern of urban growth and subsequently project the nature of future growth. However, the overall urban growth in the last century was 12 times the original built up areas in 1910; the third stage from 1950 to 1972 was the highest stage of urban growth with 124% increase of the built-up area. The dominant pattern of urban growth was linear along highways and railways with majority to the North, North East and North West directions. The study developed a spatial model to project urban growth by 2027, indicating that urban growth in the Menofya Governorate would be continued at the same directions with the same pattern with an estimated increase of 33%. The study provided an understanding of the controlling factors which drove the urban growth along this long time.

Highlights

Urban growth is a global phenomenon taking place in response to the population growth as well as economy and infrastructure initiatives
The rest of the cities, the 6 cities were growing by a percent that was less than 10% and all are contributed by 46% of the overall urban growth in this stage
There were some reasons behind this accelerated rate of urban growth, which includes the increased offers of national employment and recruitment in some of these cities and the development of the railway from Cairo to Alexandria that acted as a catalyst for the urban growth

Summary

Introduction

Urban growth is a global phenomenon taking place in response to the population growth as well as economy and infrastructure initiatives. The extent of urbanisation always drives the change in land use patterns, which takes place in radial direction around the city centre or in linear direction along the highways [6]. In developing countries, it usually extends on the urban fringe, at the edge of an urban area or along the linear features such as roads, railways, and canals. Modelling the spatial and temporal dimensions has been an intense subject in studying geography [12] It was efficiently used in determining the dynamics of land cover/land use change and urban growth [13]. The wind direction is normally from the North, North East and North West

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Conclusion