Sprawl Patterns Research Articles

Assessing urban sprawl using remote sensing and landscape metrics: A case study of City of Tshwane, South Africa (1984–2015)

Urbanisation is a phenomenon that is of major concern in both developing and developed countries. Uncontrolled urbanisation leads to formal and informal settlements, industrialisation, improvement of transport networks and economic growth. Monitoring, quantifying and mapping urban sprawl as well as establishing the contributors of land cover change are crucial in designing strategies and policies for effective and sustainable land use management. This study determines the spatio-temporal characteristics of urban sprawl in the City of Tshwane (CoT) from 1984 to 2015 using Landsat satellite imagery. Supervised maximum likelihood classification mapped the land cover for the CoT from 1984 to 2015 using archival Landsat TM, ETM+ and OLI datasets. Post-classification change detection techniques coupled with landscape metrics helped to assess and quantify trends and patterns of urban sprawl. Change detection and analysis revealed that over the 31 years of study between 1984 and 2015 there was an increase in built-up areas in the CoT by 109% between 1984 and 2015. Landscape metrics confirmed also the increase in built-up areas in the CoT.

Quantification of the land use/land cover dynamics and the degree of urban growth goodness for sustainable urban land use planning in Addis Ababa and the surrounding Oromia special zone

Uncontrolled urban growth and haphazard land developments are one of the crucial problems in Addis Ababa and the surrounding Oromia special zone causing environmental degradation and rural-urban land base conflicts. This is mostly because of the rapidly increasing built-up area that conquered large tracts of natural green spaces and prime agricultural lands. The research compared the land use-land cover (LULC) change, demographic dynamic, the sprawling patterns and the degree of built-up growth goodness. Methodologically, the study applied a multi-step geospatial and statistical modeling techniques, and it also employed the Shannon entropy index and the degree of freedom to measure the sprawling pattern and the degree of goodness of urban growth. Accordingly, the dynamic LULC change index identified the built-up area as the most dynamic land cover type and the intensity index depicted that a large part of the area was on the high-speed urban expansion level. Moreover, this study approved that the effects of the sprawling pattern have strong momentum to push the region’s built-up dynamics than the population increase and it also confirmed that a prevalence of high built-up sprawling and bad urban growth conditions. Therefore, the study lay emphasis on an integrated urban-regional planning and management approach and quantifying the built-up intensity, sprawling and the degree of urban growth goodness as a tool to control the LULC dynamics and enhancement of a rational decision on sustainable urban growth planning and management.

Integration of GIS and statistical approach in mapping of urban sprawl and predicting future growth in Midnapore town, India

The spatial expansion of cities appears as an accelerated phenomenon and known as urban sprawl. Usually, the exertion of creating smart growth and sustainable growth becomes in curb because urban sprawl is an unplanned and haphazard growth of urban areas. Therefore, planners should be accurately investigate the trend, patterns and directions of urban growth for sustainable management. This study highlights the existing pattern of the urban sprawl of Midnapore town from 1991 to 2017, using the Normalized Difference Built-up Index and Shannon’s entropy and simulated urban growth of 2030 by Markov chain model. Without overlooking the proviso of scientific urban research, an intensive field survey had been done to find out spatial determinants of urban expansion. Four hypotheses have been selected and factor analysis was applied with the multiple regression analysis to find out the factors of urban growth. Comparatively low land price, distribution of reclaimed land, the benefit of open space in the urban fringe and an opportunity of income are major factors of urban growth. Finally, the potential strategies have been proposed for sustainable management and conservation of the local environment.

Uneven urban-region sprawl of China’s megaregions and the spatial relevancy in a multi-scale approach

As a global phenomenon, megaregions are now and will continue to be the main form of urbanization, especially in developing countries including China. Although megaregions have been viewed as the most powerful formation to accelerate urbanization, the unprecedented regional growth and the uneven urban-region sprawl between different cities are emerging as critical problems. Despite many concerns about rapid regional growth from social and economic perspectives, not much is known about the multi-scale dynamic of urban-region sprawl in terms of land use. In this study, we examined the two most important megaregions of China, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region (B-T-H) and the Yangtze River Delta region (Y-R-D), to understand their urban-region sprawl patterns and the relevancy of multiple spatial scales among different types of cities. The analysis included directly identifying the developed land from remotely sensed data collected between 1980 and 2010. The results showed that (1) at the regional scale, although both megaregions expanded rapidly during 1980–2010, the obvious difference existed in their regional sprawl patterns. The sprawling rate of Y-R-D was obviously higher than that of B-T-H, implying the megaregions implemented quite different development strategies. (2) At the city scale, both the dominant and non-dominant cities within the megaregions had distinct contributions to the regional sprawl of the mega cities. The greatest contribution from the dominant cities was the fast expansion of the main urban areas; the greatest contribution of the non-dominant cities was the fast rural sprawl. Overall, the varied spatial differences in the regional sprawl of China’s megaregions highlight that sustainable regional development requires multi-scale joint development plan management, not only considering the synergy of cities with different sizes, but also the synergy between urban and rural areas.

Fast Identification of Urban Sprawl Based on K-Means Clustering with Population Density and Local Spatial Entropy

As urban sprawl is proven to jeopardize the sustainability system of cities, the identification of urban sprawl is essential for urban studies. Compared with previous related studies which tend to utilize more and more complicated variables to recognize urban sprawl while still retaining an element of uncertainty, this paper instead proposes a simplified model to identify urban sprawl patterns. This is a working theory which is based on a diagram interpretation of the classic urban spatial structure patterns of the Chicago School. The method used in our study is K-means clustering with gridded population density and local spatial entropy. The results and comparison with open population data and mobile phone data verify the assumption and furthermore indicate that the accuracy of source population data will limit the precision of output identification. This article concludes that urban sprawl is mainly dominated by population and surrounding unevenness. Moreover, the Floating Catchment Area (FCA) local spatial entropy method presented in this research brings about an integration of Shannon entropy, Tobler’s first law of geography and the Moore neighborhood, improving the spatial homogeneity and locality of Batty’s Spatial Entropy model which can only be used in a general scope.

Spatiotemporal patterns of urban sprawl and its relationship with economic development in China during 1990–2010

Given the fact that China has been experiencing rapid urbanization since the 1980s, limited empirical research has analyzed the spatial patterns of urban land expansion across Chinese cities using national data sets. This article attempts to explore evidence of urban sprawl and its relationship with levels of economic development using novel geospatial data on urban area boundaries and development densities for all Chinese cities. Different from existing studies, we used a decomposition approach to examine the differences between the 1990 urban boundaries and their newly developed suburbs (1990–2010) in population density and road intersection density, two key characteristics of urban sprawl. The main results show that Chinese cities have experienced dramatic increases in built-up areas but substantial decreases in development densities in the newly urbanized areas in comparison to their inner city counterparts, signifying concrete evidence of urban sprawl. Moreover, results from regression analyses indicate that a city's economic development level was positively related to urban land expansion after controlling for confounding factors, largely due to the nature of China's land-centered urbanization and economic development strategies. Findings from this article can help raise awareness about the staggering reality of urban land expansion across Chinese cities and urge urban planners and policymakers to tighten their rural-to-urban land conversion systems and curb urban sprawl.

A time series of urban extent in China using DSMP/OLS nighttime light data.

Urban extent data play an important role in urban management and urban studies, such as monitoring the process of urbanization and changes in the spatial configuration of urban areas. Traditional methods of extracting urban-extent information are primarily based on manual investigations and classifications using remote sensing images, and these methods have such problems as large costs in labor and time and low precision. This study proposes an improved, simplified and flexible method for extracting urban extents over multiple scales and the construction of spatiotemporal models using DMSP/OLS nighttime light (NTL) for practical situations. This method eliminates the regional temporal and spatial inconsistency of thresholding NTL in large-scale and multi-temporal scenes. Using this method, we have extracted the urban extents and calculated the corresponding areas on the county, municipal and provincial scales in China from 2000 to 2012. In addition, validation with the data of reference data shows that the overall accuracy (OA), Kappa and F1 Scores were 0.996, 0.793, and 0.782, respectively. We increased the spatial resolution of the urban extent to 500 m (approximately four times finer than the results of previous studies). Based on the urban extent dataset proposed above, we analyzed changes in urban extents over time and observed that urban sprawl has grown in all of the counties of China. We also identified three patterns of urban sprawl: Early Urban Growth, Constant Urban Growth and Recent Urban Growth. In addition, these trends of urban sprawl are consistent with the western, eastern and central cities of China, respectively, in terms of their spatial distribution, socioeconomic characteristics and historical background. Additionally, the urban extents display the spatial configurations of urban areas intuitively. The proposed urban extent dataset is available for download and can provide reference data and support for future studies of urbanization and urban planning.

Appraisal of Opportunities and Perspectives for the Systematic Condition Assessment of Heritage Sites with Copernicus Sentinel-2 High-Resolution Multispectral Imagery

Very high-resolution (VHR) optical satellite imagery (≤5 m) is nowadays an established source of information to monitor cultural and archaeological heritage that is exposed to hazards and anthropogenic threats to their conservation, whereas few publications specifically investigate the role that regularly acquired images from high-resolution (HR) satellite sensors (5–30 m) may play in this application domain. This paper aims to appraise the potential of the multispectral constellation Sentinel-2 of the European Commission Earth observation programme Copernicus to detect prominent features and changes in heritage sites, during both ordinary times and crisis. We test the 10 m spatial resolution of the 3 visible spectral bands of Sentinel-2 for substantiation of single local events—that is, wall collapses in the UNESCO World Heritage site of the Old City of Aleppo (Syria)—and for hotspot mapping of recurrent incidents—that is, the archaeological looting in the archaeological site of Apamea (Syria). By screening long Sentinel-2 time series consisting of 114 images for Aleppo and 57 images for Apamea, we demonstrate that changes of textural properties and surface reflectance can be logged accurately in time and space and can be associated to events relevant for conservation. VHR imagery from Google Earth was used for the validation and identification of trends occurring prior to the Sentinel-2 launch. We also demonstrate how to exploit the Sentinel-2 short revisiting time (5 days) and large swath (290 km) for multi-temporal tracking of spatial patterns of urban sprawl across the cultural landscape of the World Heritage Site of Cyrene (Libya), and the three coastal ancient Greek sites of Tocra, Ptolemais, and Apollonia in Cyrenaica. With the future development of tailored machine learning approaches of feature extraction and pattern detection, Sentinel-2 can become extremely useful to screen wider regions with short revisiting times and to undertake comparative condition assessment analyses of different heritage sites.

URBAN LANDSCAPE DYNAMICS FOR QUANTIFYING THE CHANGING PATTERN OF URBANISATION IN DELHI

Ongoing rapid pace of population growth and accelerating urbanisation have transformed urban and rural landscapes in the National Capital Region of India. To understand the changing ecology of Indian urban systems, it is essential to quantify the spatial and temporal patterns of urbanisation with the way it is transforming the characteristics of sub-urban and rural areas. The current paper uses Urban Landscape Analysis Tool (ULAT) to compute the changing patterns of urban sprawl in Delhi, India. Classified images having three classes namely Urban, Water and Others are utilised to extract the degree of urbanisation, which in turn reclassified into urban sub-classes called built-up, suburban built-up, rural built-up, open land and water. Area corresponds to each urban sub-class when plotted temporally provides significant information about the nature and type of urban sprawl. This paper also helps to identify the name of different suburban and rural areas changed and became the part of urban ecosystem in last two decades in Delhi.

Spatial patterns of logistics facilities in Gothenburg, Sweden

In recent years, the location of logistics facilities, in particular with regard to “logistics sprawl,” has emerged as a topic in the literature that is, a process of spatial decentralisation of logistics facilities in large metropolitan areas. The aim of this paper is to look at logistics sprawl patterns in the Gothenburg metropolitan area, in the south-west of Sweden. Looking at a medium-size monocentric urban region that is also a major port gateway for the country, this study provides novel elements in the study of locational patterns of freight facilities in metropolitan areas. It also provides an opportunity to identify the role of freight in planning, land use and zoning policies. A literature review is carried out on the issues of freight and logistics facilities locational patterns. A quantitative analysis is proposed, using data from Swedish statistics about the number of establishments with a NACE code related to logistics, as well as an original method providing a “cleaned” and more comprehensive dataset. We look at data at two different scales, one metropolitan and one regional, for years 2000 and 2014, as to enable a comparative and diachronical analysis. Logistics sprawl is measured by the average distance of warehouses to their common centre of gravity. Finally, interviews with transport and logistics providers as well as real estate investors and public agencies in the region, add qualitative information on the relative importance of different location factors related to logistics facilities and the issues raised. Logistics sprawl in Gothenburg occurs in specific ways, and differently at the two geographical levels of analysis.

The social context of U.S. built landscapes

In this paper, we present a quantified, GIS-based analysis of the relationship between urban morphological patterns and racial, ethnic, and household characteristics. We want to understand how the built landscapes of American cities differ in sociological terms—for example, are some more prone to racial concentration or prevalence of particular family types? Since many built landscape types are relatively recent and rapidly growing, this analysis can inform current debates about sprawl and inequality. We examined six diverse U.S. metropolitan regions: Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, Las Vegas, Portland, and Sacramento, joining census block data with built landscape patterns mapped in GIS through aerial imagery analysis. We find that a large portion of our six metropolitan regions consists of patterns that can be characterized as sprawl—patterns that are often manifestations of a desire for separation. This separation has significant equity implications because resources—services, amenities, schools, parks, tax base, etc.—are not evenly distributed. Further, two of our patterns (Rural Sprawl and Upscale Enclave), which are growing rapidly and most often occur on the urban fringe, have the least diverse demographics across all six metro areas. These landscapes are also by far the least dense, leading to a range of negative environmental impacts. Older built landscape types (Urban Grids, Rectangular Block Grids, and Degenerate Grids) are denser and relatively diverse. These have lower rates of occupancy in most urban areas, indicating an opportunity to house additional residents in relatively well-located, well-connected, and diverse central portions of metropolitan regions.

The Role of Public Land Use Planning in Facilitating Conservation on Private Land

The provision of landscape-level public goods, such as scenery or adequate wildlife habitat, requires coordination amongst many landowners whose private decisions can, in the aggregate, produce outcomes with which they themselves are unhappy. This has certainly been the case in the US state of Vermont, where a strong public preference for landscape conservation has been frustrated by a sprawling pattern of development. This paper uses a case study from one Vermont town to illustrate how problems of collective action can stand in the way of conservation of private land. The case study focuses on a community-wide survey investigating the need for landowner education and the relative importance of various incentives for conservation on private land. Results suggest that education may not be what is most needed and that when making conservation decisions, it matters to many landowners what their neighbors are doing. The practical implication is that it might be more effective to work with neighboring landowners in groups than to expect unilateral action to result from educational outreach. This paper concludes by suggesting the need to situate private land conservation in the context of community land use planning.

Modeling Urban Sprawl Patterns of the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo based on Cellular Automata

Resumo O objetivo deste trabalho foi modelar os padrões da expansão urbana da Região Metropolitana de São Paulo (RMSP) por meio da modelagem espacial, baseando-se em autômatos celulares (CA, do inglês: Cellular Automata). Para tanto foram utilizados dados do perímetro urbano referentes aos períodos de 1881, 1905, 1929, 1949, 1974 e 2005 para a construção de quatro modelos de expansão urbana. Esses modelos levam em consideração a combinação de variáveis as quais representam o estado inicial da célula (urbana ou não urbana), o número de células vizinhas classificadas como urbanas e o número de células vizinhas classificadas como não urbanas. Um modelo em particular, cuja configuração considera a combinação do estado inicial da célula com o número de células vizinhas classificadas como urbanas, apresentou o melhor desempenho (isto é, 94% de acertos). Na sequência, uma previsão de ocupação do território para 2030 foi avaliada por esse modelo, destacando-se tanto padrões de expansão urbana orientados por infraestruturas, como processos de ocupação urbana em áreas impróprias. Em síntese, esse estudo demonstrou que a metodologia empregada pode servir como ferramenta nos processos de planejamento urbano.

ANALYZING THE VELOCITY OF URBAN DYNAMIC OVER NORTHEASTERN CHINA USING DMSP-OLS NIGHT-TIME LIGHTS

Abstract. Stable night-time lights (NTL) data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Operational Line-scan System (DMSPOLS) can serve as a good proxy for anthropogenic development. Here DMSP-OLS NTL data was used to detect the urban development status in northeastern China. The spatial and temporal gradients are combined to depict the velocity of urban expanding process. This velocity index represents the instantaneous local velocity along the Earth’s surface needed to maintain constant NTL condition, and has a mean of 0.36 km/yr for northeastern China. The velocity change of NTL is lower in the urban center and its near regions, and the suburbs show a relatively high value. The connecting zones between satellite cities and metropolis have also a rapid rate of NTL evolution. The dynamic process of urbanization over the study area is mainly in a manner of spreading from urban cores to edges. The rank size of the velocity for the prefectures is analyzed and a long tail distribution is found. The velocity index can provide insights for the future pattern of urban sprawl.

Multi-order urban development model and sprawl patterns: An analysis in China, 2000–2010

Characterization of urban development and sprawl patterns is essential for integrative urban planning and regional sustainability. However, classical frameworks often do not provide adequate synthetic information about temporal urban development and spatiotemporal sprawl dynamics because the individual processes are treated separately. This paper provides a multi-order urban development (MUD) model for urban development characterization along with a framework for quantifying the relationships of certain urban development indicators and sprawl patterns using Hoeffding’s independence and Spearman’s rank-order correlation at multiple (national, regional, provincial, inland/non and local metropolitan) levels. A case study in major cities across China during 2000–2010 indicates that the MUD model is able to quantify the spatial variations in urban development across multiple temporal periods, and the relationships between urban development and sprawl patterns are discussed for the different levels. The provided method, framework, and findings from this study can potentially benefit integrative urban planning in China and other developing countries.

Measuring Moran's I in a Cost-Efficient Manner to Describe a Land-Cover Change Pattern in Large-Scale Remote Sensing Imagery

Detection and analysis of a land-cover change pattern from remotely sensed imagery have gained increasing research interests in recent years. A number of spatial statistics and landscape pattern metrics have been explored for this purpose. Moran's index (Moran's I) of spatial autocorrelation is one such spatiostatistical measure, which has been proved to be useful in characterizing the land-cover change, especially in Landsat data. However, since the Moran's I estimation needs to deal with spatial weight between each pair of spatial data objects, it becomes almost unfeasible to apply Moran's I in the case of large-scale remote sensing data, containing several millions of pixels. This paper proposes a method for computing Moran's I in the Hadoop MapReduce framework and thereby helps in describing spatial patterns in large-scale remotely sensed data. The contributions of the work include: 1) the exhaustive description of the Mapper and Reducer implementation for cost-effective estimation of Moran's I, and 2) the computational complexity analysis of the respective algorithms. Furthermore, two case studies have been presented, considering both the rook case and the queen case of spatial contiguity. Case Study 1 demonstrates the computational efficiency of the proposed implementation, and Case Study 2 illustrates an application of Moran's I in describing the urban sprawling pattern in two large spatial zones in Kolkata, India.

BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS ON QUANTIFYING URBAN SPRAWL IN ASSESSING A COMPREHENSIVE MEANING OF SPRAWL : A REVIEW

After more than half century has passed, urban sprawl remains as one of the most important and unresolved matters in the urban development process. This paper adopts “Bibliometrics Analysis” technique, which is a statistical analysis of scientific publications to review the studies on urban sprawl from the year 1996 till 2015 in order to identify the fundamental issues and problem of urban sprawl. This method allows the researcher to review the literature of topic of interest critically, not only based on national and international networks but includes the multi-disciplinary fields of science and technology relating to urban planning. The publications on urban sprawl were retrieved from the two largest scientific databases namely Scopus and ScienceDirect. The sampling of publications was based on the “Most Cited Articles” indicator. The findings on urban sprawl issues and problems are presented in four categories, which are the lack of consensus in defining urban sprawl, unavailability of method to quantify urban sprawl, access to data and tools, and varying urban sprawl patterns based on area. The findings of this study provide the gap for future research on urban sprawl.

BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS ON QUANTIFYING URBAN SPRAWL IN ASSESSING A COMPREHENSIVE MEANING OF SPRAWL : A REVIEW

After more than half century has passed, urban sprawl remains as one of the most important and unresolved matters in the urban development process. This paper adopts “Bibliometrics Analysis” technique, which is a statistical analysis of scientific publications to review the studies on urban sprawl from the year 1996 till 2015 in order to identify the fundamental issues and problem of urban sprawl. This method allows the researcher to review the literature of topic of interest critically, not only based on national and international networks but includes the multi-disciplinary fields of science and technology relating to urban planning. The publications on urban sprawl were retrieved from the two largest scientific databases namely Scopus and ScienceDirect. The sampling of publications was based on the “Most Cited Articles” indicator. The findings on urban sprawl issues and problems are presented in four categories, which are the lack of consensus in defining urban sprawl, unavailability of method to quantify urban sprawl, access to data and tools, and varying urban sprawl patterns based on area. The findings of this study provide the gap for future research on urban sprawl.

Beyond the ‘Mediterranean city’: socioeconomic disparities and urban sprawl in three Southern European cities

ABSTRACTSwimming pools are together an exemplificative outcome of urban sprawl and an indicator of socio-spatial polarizations in metropolitan regions. A comparative analysis of the spatial distribution of pools in three Mediterranean cities (Barcelona, Rome and Athens) provides an alternative reading of recent urbanization in southern Europe, questioning the supposed homogeneity in socioeconomic patterns and processes across the region. In the present study, the socio-spatial structure underlying dispersed urban expansion in these three cities was studied using 53 background indicators at the spatial scale of municipalities. Four indicators were proposed to study variability in the spatial distribution of pools. Relevant differences between cities were observed in the density of pools, reflecting heterogeneous patterns of dispersed urbanization and class segregation: socioeconomic polarization in Athens, settlement scattering and social mix in Rome and a more balanced socio-spatial structure in Barcelona. The spatial distribution of pools in the three cities was found associated with different socioeconomic factors, outlining the role of spatial disparities between high-income and low-income neighbourhoods, the diverging economic base and place-specific attributes. Results from Barcelona, Rome and Athens case studies provide contrasting views of the relationship between class segregation and the local socioeconomic context. The resulting patterns of sprawl reflect distinct urban models belying the supposed homogeneity of the ‘Mediterranean city’ archetype.

Latent sprawl patterns and the spatial distribution of businesses in a southern European city

The relocation of businesses beyond the consolidated city is an important aspect of recent urbanization trends. With economic restructuring driven by suburbanization and counter-urbanization, Southern European metropolitan areas experienced distinct growth patterns compared with north-western Europe. The present study assesses the impact of recent changes in the spatial distribution of businesses on land-use structure, sprawl trends and land consumption in a Mediterranean urban region (Athens, Greece) with the aim to identify economic drivers of sprawl and to inform urban containment strategies. Businesses showed two distinct localization patterns: manufacture, publishing and transport companies, construction and hotels were concentrated in urban municipalities; real estate, finance, high-tech, telecommunication, mining and energy enterprises settled preferentially in suburban municipalities. Dispersed urban expansion mainly reflects the spatial relocation of economic activities with high returns on capital to cheaper land. High-tech enterprises and finance/real estate businesses dominated the economic structure of municipalities with sprawled settlements. Policies securing economic development and a land-saving spatial structure are increasingly required to work towards integrated measures promoting semi-compact metropolitan poles and containing deregulated urban expansion.