Implications of Two Colonial Approaches on Urban Expansion of Tripoli, Libya

The conversion of Earth's land surface to urban uses is one of the most irreversible human impacts on the global biosphere. It drives the loss of farmland, affects local climate, fragments habitats, and threatens biodiversity. Here we present a meta-analysis of 326 studies that have used remotely sensed images to map urban land conversion. We report a worldwide observed increase in urban land area of 58,000 km2 from 1970 to 2000. India, China, and Africa have experienced the highest rates of urban land expansion, and the largest change in total urban extent has occurred in North America. Across all regions and for all three decades, urban land expansion rates are higher than or equal to urban population growth rates, suggesting that urban growth is becoming more expansive than compact. Annual growth in GDP per capita drives approximately half of the observed urban land expansion in China but only moderately affects urban expansion in India and Africa, where urban land expansion is driven more by urban population growth. In high income countries, rates of urban land expansion are slower and increasingly related to GDP growth. However, in North America, population growth contributes more to urban expansion than it does in Europe. Much of the observed variation in urban expansion was not captured by either population, GDP, or other variables in the model. This suggests that contemporary urban expansion is related to a variety of factors difficult to observe comprehensively at the global level, including international capital flows, the informal economy, land use policy, and generalized transport costs. Using the results from the global model, we develop forecasts for new urban land cover using SRES Scenarios. Our results show that by 2030, global urban land cover will increase between 430,000 km2 and 12,568,000 km2, with an estimate of 1,527,000 km2 more likely.

The paper surveys issues explored in some Swahili works written mainly in the colonial, independence, and postindependence periods. Central to the issues is the writers' perception of their position as citizens, and their relationship to those who govern them. The nationalist agenda, commencing in the nineteenth century, manifests itself in different ways in the three periods. Authors express opposite attitudes during the colonial period: of gratitude for being freed (as slaves), and yet of wanting greater freedom through the practice of law. Independence brings euphoria, and with it, a looking back in history, which sees unity transcending ethnic differences. Finally, the paper assesses the response given by authors to problems that arise in the postindependence period; in particular, it surveys Nyerere's vision of ujamaa as a policy for the betterment of Tanzania. The paper also mentions the effects of globalization, with a clique within the multinationals virtually dominating the economy of developing countries.

Integrating Urban Space and Water Systems in Growth Boundary Management: A Case Study of Tianjin

The varying driving forces of urban land expansion in China: Insights from a spatial-temporal analysis

The characteristics of urban space expansion reflect the changes of urban space layout and space structure, as well as the urban developing direction and urban orientation in the future. Based on the remote sensing image data of 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2020, this paper analyzes the urban space expansion characteristics of Luoyang, by using the urban land compaction index, expansion intensity index and centroid distribution in 4 time sections and 3 periods. The results show that: 1) the urban land area of Luoyang has expanded rapidly, the urban planning policy has successfully guided the urban expansion. 2) In the first period, the urban expansion belongs to the rapid expansion type, mainly filling the built-up area and natural expansion to outward; the second period is of high-speed expansion type, the urban expansion mainly enlarges the urban framework, then fills the expanded district, and the influence of urban natural growth factor is very small; the third period belongs to the high-speed expansion type, and the expansion rate is significantly lower than that in the second period, the urban expansion is mainly to fill in the urban framework enlarged in the previous period and continue to enlarge the urban framework, and the influence of urban natural growth factor is very little. 3) The urban land centroid gradually migrates to the southeast with the azimuth of 151.47°, the annual migration distance is of 138.29 m. The migration rate in the second period is the fastest, which is about 7.43 times that of the first period, and 2.70 times that of the third period. In the first period, the urban land is mainly expanded to southward, with the main azimuth of 201.13°. Compared with the urban land centroid in 2000, the urban land in the second period mainly expands to east-southeast and southward along the azimuths of 141.92° and 154.17° respectively. Compared with the urban centroid in 2010, the urban land in the third period mainly expands in the orientations of southeast and eastward along the azimuth of 96.24° and 133.45°.

Modeling different urban growth patterns based on the evolution of urban form: A case study from Huangpi, Central China

Developing countries such as China are undergoing rapid urban expansion and land use change. Urban expansion regulation has been a significant research topic recently, especially in Eastern China, with a high urbanization level. Among others, roads are an important spatial determinant of urban expansion and have significant influences on human activities, the environment, and socioeconomic development. Understanding the urban road network expansion pattern and its corresponding social and environmental effects is a reasonable way to optimize comprehensive urban planning and keep the city sustainable. This paper analyzes the spatiotemporal dynamics of urban road growth and uses spatial statistic models to describe its spatial patterns in rapid developing cities through a case study of Nanjing, China. A kernel density estimation model is used to describe the spatiotemporal distribution patterns of the road network. A geographically weighted regression (GWR) is applied to generate the social and environmental variance influenced by the urban road network expansion. The results reveal that the distribution of the road network shows a morphological character of two horizontal and one vertical concentration lines. From 2012 to 2016, the density of the urban road network increased significantly and developed some obvious focus centers. The development of the urban road network had a strong correlation with socioeconomic and environmental factors, which however, influenced it at different degrees in different districts. This study enhances the understanding of the effects of socio-economic and environmental factors on urban road network expansion, a significant indicator of urban expansion, in different circumstances. The study will provide useful understanding and knowledge to planning departments and other decision makers to maintain sustainable development.

Bourgeois Self-Fashioning in India: Domesticity, urbanity and consumption Anoma Pieris The Bungalow in Twentieth Century India: The cultural expression of changing ways of life and aspirations in the domestic architecture of colonial and post-colonial society. By Madhavi Desai, Miki Desai and John Lang. London: Ashgate Publishing, 2012. A Joint Enterprise: Indian elites and the making of British Bombay. By Preeti Chopra. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2011. India’s Middle Class: New forms of urban leisure consumption and prosperity. By Christiane Brosius. New Delhi: Routledge, 2010. It is nearly three decades since Anthony King offered us a fascinating study of the global proliferation of the bungalow as a type originally derived from the traditional village house in Bengal but destined to influence detached houses across the world.1 King’s emphasis was typically on the socio-political dimension of built space—the objectification of power structures through the artifact or the complexities of race, space or difference explored in postcolonial scholarship. More recently, in 2012, Desai, Desai and Lang locate the bungalow within a longer history of detached houses within India, indigenizing it as a phenomenon local to the sub-continent. They describe the bungalow as a signifier of individualistic colonial values in India that would transform the meaning of the house as an artifact and accommodate heterogeneous variations of the form. By bringing the discussion of the bungalow back to its indigenous roots and documenting the resilience of its formal attributes as a vehicle of middle class mobility, this significant and timely study supports a recent resurgent interest in bourgeois self-fashioning. An example of this trend would be Christiane Brosius’ India’s Middle Class: New forms of urban leisure consumption and prosperity—a cultural anthropology of Indian society following economic liberalization. Preeti Chopra’s A Joint Enterprise: Indian elites and the making of British Bombay discusses similar processes of elite formation during the colonial period and through public architecture. This review locates these three publications within a broader context of recent spatial histories of South Asia in order to understand how they engage with the region and more specifically the sub continent’s colonial past. They respond to distinct types of spatial analysis that can be organized according to the following three schemas. The first model is of survey histories based on close empirical studies such as that by Desai, Desai and Lang. These straddle the boundary between historical and design monographs, and require a close understanding of the contemporary context. They are frequently collaborative research endeavors between local and international researchers located in professional programs of architecture or urban planning. Research higher degree programs are as yet undeveloped in the spatial disciplines (such as architecture and urban planning) in South Asia and books like these inform and educate future professionals. They are invaluable for drawing attention to colonial or nationalist period buildings that are neglected by archaeological surveys. Such books also play a significant role in replacing colonial accounts of local phenomena with fine-grained and culturally attenuated studies of indigenous material accessible to both local and international audiences. The second model discussed in this essay, and as exemplified by Chopra, belongs to a group of scholars writing on India but located in the West. They are theoretically informed by Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault and postcolonial theory and follow in a tradition established by innovators in the spatial fields like Anthony D. King and Thomas Metcalf.2 They are intimately involved in the project of decolonization. Spatial histories on South Asian nationalism and on the colonial period in South Asia, such as these, far outnumber equivalent spatial histories on or from other parts of Asia.3 The scars of colonization appear to run deeper and produce a far more pervasive spatial dialectic on the subcontinent, when compared with spatial histories on Southeast Asia, for example, where neither nationalism nor colonization takes centre-stage. Conversely, Southeast Asian spatial histories appear to be predominantly concerned with postcolonial phenomena linked to the regions rapid economic growth and national developmental policies.4 The absence of that kind of content in twentieth century spatial histories of South Asia is highlighted by their relatively late emergence, in the...

Simulating the impact of urban expansion on ecosystem services in Chinese urban agglomerations: A multi-scenario perspective

China has seen a transition from impulsive industrial development-driven urban expansion to urban planning and government control since the start of the 21st century. Urban planning attempts to ensure the sustainable development of cities and the rational use of land resources. The dual-track urbanization process does, however, often result in a significant gap between planning and actual development. This paper contends that a comprehensive dual-track urbanization research perspective is better suited for investigating urban sprawl in peri-urban areas in post-reform market economy-active regions. Taking Xiaoshan District, the peri-urban area of Hangzhou, China, as a case study, this research utilizes land use raster data from 1985, 2000, 2010, and 2020 to identify the dynamic changes in urban construction land and examines the driving elements through the logistic regression model. Based on the results, the mechanisms of market-incented and government-controlled impacts on urban expansion are explained. This study aims to (1) analyze the spatial and temporal patterns of Xiaoshan’s urban expansion during 1985–2020; (2) compare the compositional characteristics of three types of urban growth (edge growth, infilling, and leapfrog development) in each phase of Xiaoshan; (3) identify the natural environment, accessibility factors, and socioeconomic aspects that promote Xiaoshan’s urban expansion in 2000–2020; (4) discuss Xiaoshan’s dual-track urbanization from four perspectives: regional development, private business, government control, and major events. This study advanced our knowledge of the driving mechanisms of urban land expansion in small towns, from peri-urban areas to metropolitan sub-centers, and, thus, has important implications for Chinese urban planning and the management of metropolitan suburbs, especially those located in the Yangtze River Delta.

Urban expansion in Zanzibar City, Tanzania: Analyzing quantity, spatial patterns and effects of alternative planning approaches

Research into urban expansion patterns and their driving forces is of great significance for urban agglomeration development planning and decision-making. In this paper, we reveal the multi-dimensional characteristics of urban expansion patterns, based on the intensity index of the urban expansion, the differentiation index of the urban expansion, the fractal dimension index, the land urbanization rate, and the center of gravity model, by taking the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (Jing-Jin-Ji) urban agglomeration as an example. We then build the center of gravity-geographically and temporally weighted regression (GTWR) model by coupling the center of gravity model with the GTWR model. Through the analysis of the temporal and spatial patterns and by using the center of gravity-GTWR model, we analyze the driving forces of the urban land expansion and summarize the dominant development modes and core driving forces of the Jing-Jin-Ji urban agglomeration. The results show that: 1) Between 1990 and 2015, the expansion intensity of the Jing-Jin-Ji urban agglomeration showed a down-up-down trend, and the peak period was in 2005–2010. Before 2005, high-speed development took place in Beijing, Tianjin, Baoding, and Langfang; after 2005, rapid development was seen in Xingtai and Handan. 2) Although the barycenter of cities in the Jing-Jin-Ji urban agglomeration has shown a divergent trend, the local interaction between cities has been enhanced, and the driving forces of urban land expansion have shown a characteristic of spatial spillover. 3) The spatial development mode of the Jing-Jin-Ji urban agglomeration has changed from a dual-core development mode to a multi-core development mode, which is made up of three functional cores: the transportation core in the northern part, the economic development core in the central part, and the investment core in the southern part. The synergistic development between each functional core has led to the multi-core development mode. 4) The center of gravity-GTWR model combines the analysis of spatial and temporal nonstationarity with urban spatial interaction, and analyzes the urban land expansion as a space-time dynamic system. The results of this study show that the model is a feasible approach in the analysis of the driving forces of urban land expansion.

Abstract. Urban expansion and land use and land cover change (LUCC) studies are a key knowledge of efficient local governance and urban planning and a lot contributing to the future sustainable development of the city. The main goal of the paper is to model a future urban spatial expansion by 2029 and 2039 of Darkhan city using Landsat TM satellite imagery (land use and cover change map of 1999, 2009, and 2019) and multivariate logistic regression model. Clark Lab’s (Clark University) IDRISI & TerrSet software applied for the urban expansion prediction and the correlation between expansion and driving factors. On account of multivariate logistics regression modelling, eight physical factors influencing urban expansion identified to predict urban expansion based on USGS Landsat TM imageries (Landsat Multispectral Scanner with 60 m resolution). The regression statistic accounted for the probability of future urban expansion was positive. Overall, the LUCC has estimated the transition of natural cover to the impervious surface in Darkhan city. Our result estimates an increase in the built-up area and slum area during the period 1999–2009 and 2009–2019, represents LUCC was characterized by an external transformation from natural to urban area. According to the future urban growth prediction, the urban area would be significantly spread into the open space and natural vegetation area. The main findings stated here are that Darkhan city is expanding in an unsystematic way, even though the urban growth has not been analysed in detail and has a bad case of urban unregulated sprawl.

Urban expansion is probably the most drastic form of land conversion and its impacts far transcend city’s physical boundaries. Many studies have documented China’s rapid urban expansion while the urban expansion in the traditional industrial base in Northeast China was understudied. Based on multi-temporal remote sensing images and landscape metrics, this study characterized the spatiotemporal patterns of urban land use changes in the metropolitan regions of three capital cities (i.e., Shenyang, Changchun and Harbin) in the Northeast China’s traditional industrial base over the past three decades. The urban land in Shenyang, Changchun and Harbin expanded from 209.8, 202.0, and 239.6 km2 in the late 1970s to 836.3, 682.4 and 567.9 km2 in 2010, with an annual growth rate of 4.6, 4.0 and 2.6 %, respectively. The newly developed urban lands were largely distributed around the edge of urban districts. For all cities, the edge expansion was the dominant urban growth type (>50 %), followed by infilling growth, and the proportion of outlying growth type was relatively low (<20 %). City landscape became more complicated and fragmented, and landscape composition became evener. Despite these general similarities, there are differences in the magnitude and spatial patterns of urban expansion among three cities. Shenyang and Changchun generally had higher urban growth rates and expansion became compact earlier than Harbin. However, entering the twenty-first century, all cities went into a new era of urban expansion. Old industrial bases and newly established high-tech development districts have become urban expansion hotspots, and natural barriers to urban expansion weakened, stimulated by the policy of “Revitalizing Old Industrial Base of Northeast China”. Managing the tradeoffs between urban expansion and environmental protection would be a great challenge for the local governments.

This chapter provides an exposition of Zambia’s rural economy during the colonial and post-independence period. It occasionally delves into the decade before the colonial period to explain developments during the colonial period. A two-phased post-independence era comprising a state-led rural economy landscape from 1964 to 1990 and a market-driven neoliberal phase from 1991 to 2000 is described in detail. The chapter explores trends in the socio-economic aspects of Zambia’s rural environment. Actors and drivers in the Zambian rural economy are identified and discussed in terms of their respective roles and associated effects. Additionally, the chapter narrates the overarching policy frameworks and rural development approaches used from 1924 to 2021 with the respective outcomes such as food security. Special reference is made to the main pillars of the rural economy: the contribution of forestry, agriculture, fisheries, and wildlife resources. Furthermore, the chapter elucidates on rural developments in terms of challenges and opportunities before raising a conclusion.