Trade-offs between prosperity and urban land per capita in major world cities

Abstract

Globally, urban land expands at a faster rate than the corresponding urban population, which comes at a cost of agricultural and natural land. Wealth has been identified as an underlying driver of this trend, but it is unclear whether more prosperous cities inevitably have a greater urban land consumption. Here, we map urban prosperity indicators to their relevant Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 64 major world cities and relate these to the corresponding urban land consumption (defined here as built-up land per capita). Results indicate a moderately-weak but significant correlation between overall prosperity and urban land consumption (Spearman's correlation, ρ = 0.47, p < 0.001), suggesting a trade-off between both. In addition, we find a regional clustering, with for example cities with relatively low prosperity and low urban land consumption in Africa, and cities with high prosperity and low-to-medium urban land consumption in Europe. The moderately-weak correlation in combination with these regional differences suggests that the observed trade-off is avertable and that other drivers moderate this relation. Consequently, cities can increase their prosperity without additional environmental consequences entailing land take and the conversion of natural and agricultural land.