Abstract
Multiple driving forces shape cities. These forces include the costs of transporting goods and people, the types of predominant local industries, and the policies that govern urban planning. Here, we examine how agglomeration and dispersion change with increasing population and population density. We study the patterns in the evolution of urban forms and analyze the differences between developed and developing countries. We analyze agglomeration across 233 European and 258 Chinese cities using nighttime luminosity data. We find a universal inverted U-shape curve for the agglomeration metric (Lasym index). Cities attain their maximum agglomeration level at an intermediate density, above which dispersion increases. Our findings may guide strategic urban planning for the timely adoption of appropriate development policies.
Highlights
Urbanization is driven by the material and social benefits that arise from the size and population density of cities [1,2,3]
Empirical studies have shown that nighttime luminosity data (NTL) is capable of mapping local economic activity [21,22,23], so the spatial distribution of luminosity across a whole city can reveal its underlying urban form
We explore if cities are going through the peak of their U-shaped evolution path during the period covered in the study, i.e., between the two snapshots available in the NTL data
Summary
Urbanization is driven by the material and social benefits that arise from the size and population density of cities [1,2,3]. By 2050, nearly 90% of the projected 2.5 billion growth in urban population will be concentrated in Asia and Africa [4]. This makes the sustainable growth of cities in the developing world an issue of significant global importance. Appropriate planning policies based on in-depth understanding of the evolution of urban forms are needed to alleviate the negative effects of rapid growth and maximize its economic benefits. Far-reaching low-density sprawls and compact high-density cities are two extremes of urban forms that reflect the dominant effects of dispersion and agglomeration, respectively
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