Abstract
Urbanization in Mediterranean Europe has occurred in recent decades with expansion of residential, commercial and industrial settlements into rural landscapes outside the traditional metropolitan boundaries. Industrial expansion in peri-urban contexts was particularly intense in Southern Europe. Based on these premises, this work investigates residential and industrial settlement dynamics in the Valencian Community, Spain, between 2005 and 2015, with the aim to clarify the role of industrial expansion in total urban growth in a paradigmatic Mediterranean region. Since the early 1990s, the Valencian industrial sector developed in correspondence with already established industrial nodes, altering the surrounding rural landscape. Six variables (urban hierarchy, discontinuous settlements, pristine land under urban expansion, isolated industrial settlements, within- and out-of-plan industrial areas) were considered with the aim at exploring land-use change. Empirical results indicate a role of industrial development in pushing urban sprawl in coastal Valencia. A reflection on the distinctive evolution of residential and industrial settlements is essential for designing new planning measures for sustainable land management and containment of urban sprawl in Southern Europe. A comparative analysis of different alternatives of urban development based on quantitative assessment of land-use change provides guidelines for local development and ecological sustainability.
Highlights
Land-use has transformed substantially in recent decades since agricultural and forest areas have been replaced by urban settlements designated for both residence and industrial/commercial activities [1,2]
The analysis of polygon centroids falling in residential areas and industrial areas is illustrated in Table 2 separately for 2005 and 2015
Planned industrial areas have grown moderately (5%), to settlements dispersed along the major economic poles and roads aver_parc cv_parc sup_area n_parc aver_parc cv_parc
Summary
Land-use has transformed substantially in recent decades since agricultural and forest areas have been replaced by urban settlements designated for both residence and industrial/commercial activities [1,2]. Such transformations were associated with distinctive socioeconomic contexts [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. In Europe, the recent expansion of industrial settlements was the result of multiple factors, including economic and financial globalization, national and local policies, societal changes, and new lifestyles [10,14]. Firms participating in territorial-based networks have developed a set of relationships in the form of “untraded interdependencies”, which benefit their innovation and competitive capabilities in different aspects [31]
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