Assessment of urban sprawl mitigation measures: a case study of Amman’s metropolitan growth plan in selected neighborhoods

Against the background that urbanization has proceeded quickly in China over the last two decades, a limited number of empirical researches have been performed for analyzing the measurement and driving forces of urban sprawl at the national and regional level. The article aims at using remote sensing derived data and administrative data (for statistical purposes) to investigate the development status of urban sprawl together with its driving forces. Compared with existing studies, NPP/VIIRS data and LandScan data were used here to examine urban sprawl from two different perspectives: urban population sprawl and urban land sprawl. Furthermore, we used population density as a counter-indicator of urban sprawl, and the regression results also prove the superiority of the urban sprawl designed by us. The main results show that the intensity of urban population sprawl and urban land sprawl has been enhanced. However, the upside-down between the inflow of migrants and the supply of urban construction land among different regions aggravates the intensity of urban sprawl. According to the regression analyses, the driving mechanism of urban sprawl in the eastern region relying on land finance and financial development has lost momentum for the limitation of urban construction land supply. The continuous outflow of population and loosely land supply have accelerated the intensity of urban land sprawl in the central and western regions. The findings of the article may help people to realize that urban sprawl has become a staggering reality among Chinese cities; thereby urban planners as well as policymakers should make some actions to hinder the urban sprawl.

Due to extensive population growth, urbanization increases urban development and sprawl in the world’s cities. Urban sprawl is a socioeconomic phenomenon that has not extensively incorporated socioeconomic factors in the prediction of most of the urban sprawl models. This study aimed to predict the urban sprawl pattern in 2030 by integrating socioeconomic and biophysical factors. NDBI, Cramer’s V, logistic regression, and CA-Markov analyses were used to classify and predict built-up patterns. The built-up area is the dominant land use, which had a gradual growth from 1990 to 2020. A total of 20 socioeconomic and biophysical factors were identified as potentials in the municipality, affecting the urban sprawl. Policy regulation was the most attractive driver with a positive association, and land value had a high inverse association. Three prediction scenarios for urban sprawl were achieved for 2030. Higher sprawling growth is expected in scenario 3, compared with scenarios 1 and 2. Scenario 3 was simulated with biophysical and socioeconomic factors. This study aids in addressing urban sprawl at different spatial and temporal scales and helps urban planners and decision makers enhance the development strategies in the municipality. Predicted maps with different scenarios can support evaluating future sprawling growth and be used to develop sustainable planning for the city.

Urban sprawl (US), propelled by rapid population growth leads to the shrinkage of productive agricultural lands and pristine forests in the suburban areas and, in turn, adversely affects the provision of ecosystem services. The quantification of US is thus crucial for effective urban planning and environmental management. Like many megacities in fast growing developing countries, Chennai, the capital of Tamilnadu and one of the business hubs in India, has experienced extensive US triggered by the doubling of total population over the past three decades. However, the extent and level of US has not yet been quantified and a prediction for future extent of US is lacking. We employed the Random Forest (RF) classification on Landsat imageries from 1991, 2003, and 2016, and computed six landscape metrics to delineate the extent of urban areas within a 10 km suburban buffer of Chennai. The level of US was then quantified using Renyi’s entropy. A land change model was subsequently used to project land cover for 2027. A 70.35% expansion in urban areas was observed mainly towards the suburban periphery of Chennai between 1991 and 2016. The Renyi’s entropy value for year 2016 was 0.9, exhibiting a two-fold level of US when compared to 1991. The spatial metrics values indicate that the existing urban areas became denser and the suburban agricultural, forests and particularly barren lands were transformed into fragmented urban settlements. The forecasted land cover for 2027 indicates a conversion of 13,670.33 ha (16.57% of the total landscape) of existing forests and agricultural lands into urban areas with an associated increase in the entropy value to 1.7, indicating a tremendous level of US. Our study provides useful metrics for urban planning authorities to address the social-ecological consequences of US and to protect ecosystem services.

Rapid urbanization poses several challenges, especially when faced with an uncontrolled urban development plan. Therefore, it often leads to anarchic occupation and expansion of cities, resulting in the phenomenon of urban sprawl (US). To support sustainable decision–making in urban planning and policy development, a more effective approach to addressing this issue through US simulation and prediction is essential. Despite the work published in the literature on the use of deep learning (DL) methods to simulate US indicators, almost no work has been published to assess what has already been done, the potential, the issues, and the challenges ahead. By synthesising existing research, we aim to assess the current landscape of the use of DL in modelling US. This article elucidates the complexities of US, focusing on its multifaceted challenges and implications. Through an examination of DL methodologies, we aim to highlight their effectiveness in capturing the complex spatial patterns and relationships associated with US. This work begins by demystifying US, highlighting its multifaceted challenges. In addition, the article examines the synergy between DL and conventional methods, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages. It emerges that the use of DL in the simulation and forecasting of US indicators is increasing, and its potential is very promising for guiding strategic decisions to control and mitigate this phenomenon. Of course, this is not without major challenges, both in terms of data and models and in terms of strategic city planning policies.

The urban planning system seeks to guide appropriate development to the right place and to prevent inappropriate development from taking place aiming at securing sustainable development. However, rapid urban growth due to high fertility and rural-urban migration have exerted pressure on the environment of urban settlements. Urban settlements in developing countries, especially, are facing increasing issues and challenges in various aspects, i.e. physical, social and economic. In Malaysia, various researches and studies have been carried out to understand the issues and challenges of urban settlements in the country.This issue of Planning Malaysia aims to share findings of researches/studies in various aspects of urban settlement and planning in Malaysia. It covers the aspects of globalization and urban planning, urban forms, finance, housing, social, agro-tourism, recreation, urban spaces, transportation, and heritage.The authors of paper 1 suggest that neoliberal globalization certainly gives rise for enabling urban settlements as can be seen in the area of Kuala Lumpur and Selangor. However, the process brings further challenges to the Malaysian planning system such as social injustice and environmental deterioration. In paper 2, the study on urban sprawl has found that cost of development is higher when built further away from service centres. The substantial infrastructure costs savings can be achieved by increasing urban densities and locating new development near existing built-up areas. In paper 3, the authors highlighted the efforts by the government to eradicate squatters and providing low-cost housing in Malaysia. However, the existing policies and programs have yet to meet the target of “zero squatter”.For social-related issues, paper 4 concludes that most of the local respondents from one of the medium cost apartments felt that the presence of foreign immigrants negatively affecting them in terms of family and community relationship, sense of belonging, safety and housing price/cost. In paper 5, the authors discuss several negative and positive impacts on locals due to the presence of foreign immigrants in agro-tourism industry in Cameron Highland.In terms of recreational planning in urban settlements, paper 6 shows that recreational facilities in urban areas can give satisfaction to youths. It covers the aspects of the current state of the facilities, proximity, accessibility and level of maintenance. Meanwhile, paper 7 indicates that the nature and human interactions require elements of open spaces such as green spaces, water elements, and physical attributes to enhance the human-human and human-nature interactions.For the aspect of transportation, paper 8 found that majority of respondents were not ready to consider cycling or walking as an alternative mode of travel. Besides, respondents who use their cars more frequently have lower level of willingness to use public transport. Further, the authors of paper 9 also found that majority of respondents did not use bicycles as a primary mode of transportation in their daily trips to work, shops, and others even though the provision of cycle lanes and the related infrastructure were excellent. In paper 10, the authors look into public transportation service (Hop-On Hop-Off bus) for urban tourism. It was found that the single route bus service for whole Kuala Lumpur city centre is not suitable. It takes tourists too long to complete the route. The authors propose that the existing route should be broken into three.For the issues on heritage, paper 11 shows that gentrification is a decent way of developing an urban heritage site to be in line with the development strategies of a country. However, uncontrolled gentrification can result in negative consequences. In the study area, many members of the local community felt marginalized and isolated in their place of birth.Finally, it should be mentioned that the publication of this Planning Malaysia Journal is aimed at encouraging professional/academic communication and sharing of research findings among practitioners, policy makers, researchers, students, and managers in urban development and planning related fields. Continuous research, study, and sharing of knowledge should be able to improve the existing practice of planning, design, andmanagement of urban settlements.

Urban growth is a major threat to biodiversity conservation at the global scale. Its impacts are expected to be especially detrimental when it sprawls into the landscape and reaches sites of high conservation value due to the species and ecosystems they host, such as protected areas. I analyzed the degree of urbanization (i.e., urban cover and growth rate) from 2006 to 2015 in protected sites in the Natura 2000 network, which, according to the Habitats and Birds Directives, harbor species and habitats of high conservation concern in Europe. I used data on the degree of land imperviousness from COPERNICUS to calculate and compare urban covers and growth rates inside and outside Natura 2000. I also analyzed the relationships of urban cover and growth rates with a set of characteristics of Natura sites. Urban cover inside Natura 2000 was 10 times lower than outside (0.4% vs. 4%) throughout the European Union. However, the rates of urban growth were slightly higher inside than outside Natura 2000 (4.8% vs. 3.9%), which indicates an incipient urban sprawl inside the network. In general, Natura sites affected most by urbanization were those surrounded by densely populated areas (i.e., urban clusters) that had a low number of species or habitats of conservation concern, albeit some member states had high urban cover or growth rate or both in protected sites with a large number of species or habitats of high conservation value. Small Natura sites had more urban cover than large sites, but urban growth rates were highest in large Natura sites. Natura 2000 is protected against urbanization to some extent, but there is room for improvement. Member states must enact stricter legal protection and control law enforcement to halt urban sprawl into protected areas under the greatest pressure from urban sprawl (i.e., close to urban clusters). Such actions are particularly needed in Natura sites with high urban cover and growth rates and areas where urbanization is affecting small Natura sites of high conservation value, which are especially vulnerable and concentrated in the Mediterranean region.

Urban sprawl has become the main pattern of spatial expansion in many large cities in China, and its ecological and environmental effects profoundly impact Chinese urban development. In this paper, nighttime light data and statistical yearbook data are adopted as basic data sources to simulate the evolution trend of the urban sprawl in the upper Yangtze River (UYR), China. First, the urban sprawl index (USI) is employed to assess the level of urban sprawl and to determine the characteristics of urban sprawl under different scales. Second, the spatial autocorrelation model is applied to reveal the spatial pattern change characteristics of urban sprawl from 1992 to 2015. Third, a scenario analysis model of urban sprawl is constructed to simulate the evolution trend of the urban sprawl under different scenarios. Finally, based on the Geodetector, the influence of factors and factor interactions influencing urban sprawl in different time periods is analyzed. The results yield the following main conclusions: (1) The urban sprawl in the UYR first intensifies and then stabilizes over time. The number of cities with high USI in Sichuan province, medium cities, and Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomeration increases over time, indicating that urban sprawl is intensifying in these areas. (2) The urban sprawl hot spots experience a pattern transformation process of point-like expansion-point-ring expansion-point-axis expansion-axis radiation. (3) Under the scenarios with different scales, the urban land sprawl in large cities is the highest, accounting for more than 47% of the UYR. Urban land sprawl extent in the Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomeration is the highest, accounting for more than 51% of the UYR. The cities exhibiting the highest sprawl are Chongqing, Lijiang, and Kunming, accounting for 25.84%, 7.37%, and 5.11%, respectively, of the UYR. (4) In the different time scenario simulations, the urban land in large cities exhibits the highest sprawl, accounting for approximately 48.16% of the UYR. The urban land in the Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomeration demonstrates the highest sprawl, accounting for 50.92% of the UYR. (5) From 1996 to 2002, the driver with the highest influence on urban sprawl was secondary industry share of GDP, with a q-statistic of 0.616. From 2009 to 2015, the driver with the highest influence on urban sprawl was green space per capita with a q-statistic of 0.396.

This novel study explores the driving forces and dynamics of rapid urbanization, highlighting the main causes and effects of urban explosion, environmental disruption, and city pattern transformation. This study was carried out that how urbanization and urban sprawl have influenced the structure of the city of Sulaymaniah in Kurdistan region of Iraq. This is because over the years many urban areas have experienced dramatic growth and population explosion that has resulted in the exhaustion of social amenities in the concerned communities. For this purpose, a qualitative method is used based on in-depth face-to-face interviews with local authority, including planners, architects, and experts of master planning, as well as professors in the academic institutions. This study also utilizes extensive document analysis to present the evolution of urban growth. The findings reveal that the autonomy, political conflict, non-implementation of master plans, and economic prosperity are the driving forces which are accelerating this urbanization process. It is proposed that the practical policies and strategic urban development plans are urgent requirement to control the unplanned urban growth and stimulate the desired sustainable future urban development.

Urban Sprawl in Europe Eleonora Patacchini and Yves Zenou Changes in urban forms and development patterns are crucial to understanding the role of cities as engines of growth. Urban sprawl is usually defined as the spreading of a city and its suburbs over rural land at the fringe of an urban area. Urban planners emphasize the qualitative aspects of sprawl such as the lack of transportation options and pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods. Conservationists tend to focus on the actual amount of land that has been urbanized by sprawl. Although urban sprawl has been extensively studied in the United States (see, for example, Brueckner 2000, 2001; Glaeser and Kahn 2001, 2004; Nechyba and Walsh 2004), very few empirical studies have been undertaken in Europe. Basic reasons for this lack of research are the conceptual divergences in the U.S. and European geographical definitions of cities and the limitations in the availability of actual data for Europe. Urban sprawl is one of the most important types of land use changes currently affecting Europe. It increasingly creates major impacts on the environment (via surface sealing, emissions by transport, and ecosystem fragmentation), on the social structure of an area (by segregation, lifestyle changes, and neglect of urban centers), and on the economy (via distributed production, land prices, and issues of scale). It is therefore crucial to understand it better. During the second half of the twentieth century, urban sprawl has become a mass phenomenon throughout the Western world. Although suburbanization took also place in Europe during the post war period, its dimensions were by far less expansive than in the United States. In the 1950s, numerous European countries were concerned about reshaping their cities. Besides, a lot of countries had been decimated by the war, and many large cities such as Berlin, [End Page 125] Vienna, Glasgow, and Birmingham were stagnating, or even lost population (Bruegmann 2005). The postwar period in the United States, on the contrary, was characterized by economic prosperity and a vast population growth (Burchfield and others 2006). Within less than twenty years, the U.S. population increased by 50 million people from 150 million in 1950 to 200 million in 1968 (Couch, Leontidou, and Arnstberg 2007). Some cities were even growing to a faster degree. In the same period, the Los Angeles area more than doubled from under 4 million to more than 8 million people. The Phoenix urbanized area grew almost fourfold, the San Jose area more than fivefold. In Europe, there was generally less growth in urban areas and therefore less pressure to develop the countryside. Besides, urban expansion was usually highly regulated. Planners and other government officials were able to intervene in city development more actively than their U.S. counterparts. In Paris, for example, large parts of suburban settlements consisted of high-density houses that were directly built by governmental bodies or were at least highly subsidized. This procedure was not common in the United States, where the private-market, single-family home was the norm. As long as the American metaphor has not been replaced by a European one, it will shape the perception of many Europeans. In fact, remarkably little research has been done on the development of a "European" model (at least from economists). As stated above, this is mainly due to the scarce availability of data on indicators of urban performance such as urban amenities, housing, job opportunities, skills, and economic structure that limit the research possibilities in the European Union. In this paper, we use a recently available dataset, the Urban Audit, which claims that it contains information on more than 300 variables for 258 towns and cities in the European Union's fifteen member states and its twelve eastern European candidate countries, measured at three different points in time: in 1991 (or in the period 1989–93), in 1996 (or in 1994–98), and in 2001 (or in 1999–2003).1 Unfortunately, the effective information delivered is much more limited. Its coverage is rather poor. For several countries, many indicators are not provided, and missing values do not generally occur for the same cities across variables (even though data coverage does improve over the course of the decade). Nevertheless, collection of...

Energy Consumption and Transportation in Developing Countries: Need for Local Scenario-Based Energy Efficiency Plans

Defined as the uncontrolled expansion of cities toward their periphery, urban sprawl emerges during urban developments where the urban area grows more than the population increase. Furthermore, land-related demands emerge for the needs regarding settlement and infrastructure due to certain reasons such as the increase in the urban population, industrialization and lifestyle changes. As these demands are met through irregular area use, cities expand toward their peripheral areas more than necessary. Moreover, natural resources and agricultural areas are damaged, infrastructure and transportation costs increase, urban functions get separated, and social and financial issues occur. The problem of urban sprawl is one of the major issues suffered by the global cities in the last decades. For Turkey where approximately 75% of the population live in cities, examining the urban developments and specifying the rate of urban sprawl is critical. This study aimed to assess the case study of urban development and sprawl in Konya (Turkey). It first examined the population and urban area in the urban plans guiding the urban development pattern. Then, the study analyzed the changes the built-up areas underwent for 35 years between 1985 and 2020. As method, satellite images and GIS were used. Moreover, the level of sprawl regarding the urban development in Konya was measured based on Shannon’s Entropy Index. Finally, this study found that Konya was suffering the issue of sprawl, and it emphasized the importance of studies for guiding the activities of urban development in a sustainable manner.

In this study, a coordination model based on the data of urban population and built-up areas from 2006 to 2015 is used to assess the relationship between population urbanization and urban sprawl across 654 cities in Mainland China. For analysis, 654 cities are divided into five categories (small city, medium city, large city, super city and mega city) and the relationship between population urbanization and urban sprawl is divided into four types (rapid growth of population, rapid expansion of land, shrinkage of population and land and coordinated development between population and land). The results show that 60.6% of cities are rapid expansion of land, 18.5% are rapid growth of population, 14.1% are shrinkage of population and land and only 6.9% of cities are coordinated development between population and land. Small, medium, large and super cities were characterized by rapid expansion of land, while mega cities featured rapid growth of population. The size of the cities decreased mainly because of the shrinkage of people and land while it increased because of the rapid expansion of land. The cities with shrinkage of population and land, and rapid growth of population are mostly distributed in the east of the Hu Line.

Expansion of the built-up areas in Finnish city regions – The approach of travel-related urban zones

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Sustainable Development and Environmental Justice in African Cities

Urban sprawl or sprawl is phenomenon attached to urbanization, which increases corresponding to the speed of urbanization. Sprawl happens when city central facilities become overloaded and even stronger if there is implementation of the policy of decentralized development from urban planners and government. Ho Chi Minh city central facilities is overloaded because of high density of population, which is the reason Ho Chi Minh city government implements decentralized development policies and decentralized urban planning project. Even through, there are lots of decentralized urban planning and support policies but there is still lack of research about urban sprawl, especially about transportation network of sprawling area like Phuoc Kien Commune. Applying research, scientific observation and analysis, summary methods, this research main purpose is pointing out the change of transportation of Phuoc Kien Commune, which is the most affected by Ho Chi Minh city urbanization and urban sprawl. Moreover, this research is the framework research for further research about transportation network transition affected by urban sprawl and urbanization in future.