Income Driven Patterns of the Urban Environment

Anibal Gusso,Conrad Philipp,John Boland,André Silva,Leticia Lenz

doi:10.3390/su9020275

Abstract

This study investigates the land surface temperature (LST) distribution from thermal infrared data for analyzing the characteristics of surface coverage using the Vegetation–Impervious–Soil (VIS) approach. A set of ten images, obtained from Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper, between 2001 and 2010, were used to study the urban environmental conditions of 47 neighborhoods of Porto Alegre city, Brazil. Porto Alegre has had the smallest population growth rate of all 27 state capitals in the last two decades in Brazil, with an increase of 11.55% in inhabitants from 1.263 million in 1991 to 1.409 million in 2010. We applied the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) theory in order to test the influence of the economically-related scenario on the spatial nature of social-environmental arrangement of the city at neighborhood scale. Our results suggest that the economically-related scenario exerts a non-negligible influence on the physically driven characteristics of the urban environmental conditions as predicted by EKC theory. The linear inverse correlation R2 between household income (HI) and LST is 0.36 and has shown to be comparable to all other studied variables. Future research may investigate the relation between other economically-related indicators to specific land surface characteristics.

Highlights

The powerful transformation initiated by the economic development in the 19th century is leading civilization to a continuous and rising population migration from rural to urban areas
Results suggest that the economically-related scenario exerts a non-negligible influence on the physically driven characteristics of the urban environmental conditions as predicted by environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) theory
The characteristics of the urban environmental conditions that can be detected by thermal remote sensing are linked to the aspects that are associated with different levels of social organization in the urban contexts that cannot be objectively measured, including public administration efficiency, welfare, education or even sustainable urban environment concept which depends on social and economic standards

Summary

Introduction

The powerful transformation initiated by the economic development in the 19th century is leading civilization to a continuous and rising population migration from rural to urban areas. Excessive local demands on environmental systems, due to urban growth demand, have become global in scope [1]. The agglomeration in space, through social and functional organizations, generates constructive densification, which, in turn, makes it possible for people to access more rapidly the activities in a shorter time and distance [4]. The high constructive and population density, allied with the diversity of activities, can cause the urban areas to enter a degenerative trend, because, while they generate an agglomeration economy, maximizing urban equipment and infrastructure, they generate anti-economies [5], like holdups, soaring localization costs and alterations to the urban microclimate in terms of higher temperature. There are a number of diverse definitions of urban sustainability, the core value of urban sustainability always lies in the balance of environmental, economic and social development [6,7,8]

Methods

Results

Conclusion