Process Of Urban Sprawl Research Articles

Evaluation of urban sprawl from space using open source technologies

Up to nowadays, satellite data have become increasingly available, thus offering a low cost or even free of charge unique tool, with a great potential for quantitative assessment of urban expansion and urban sprawl, as well as for monitoring of land use changes and soil consumption. This growing observational capacity has also highlighted the need for research efforts aimed at exploring the potential offered by data processing methods and algorithms, in order to exploit as much as possible this invaluable space-based data source.The work herein presented concerns an application study on the process of urban sprawl conducted with the use of satellite ASTER data. The selected test site is highly significant, being it a coastal zone (with the presence of sand and rocks) characterized by a fragmented ecosystem and small towns, with an increasing rate of urbanization and soil consumption. In order to produce synthetic maps of urban areas, ASTER images were classified using two automatic classifiers, Maximum Likelihood (MLC) and Support Vector Machines (SVMs) applied by changing setting parameters, with the aim to compare their respective performances in terms of robustness, speed and accuracy. All process steps have been developed integrating Geographical Information System and Remote Sensing, and adopting free and open source software.Results pointed out that the SVM classifier with RBF kernel was generally the best choice (with accuracy higher than 90%) among all the configurations compared, and the use of multiple bands globally improves classification. One of the critical elements found in this case study is given by the presence of sand and sand mixed with rocks. The use of different configurations for the SVMs, i.e. different kernels and values of the setting parameters, allowed us to calibrate the classifier also to cope with a specific need, as in our case, to achieve a reliable discrimination of sand from urban area.

Spatiotemporal dynamics of the urban sprawl in a typical urban agglomeration: a case study on Southern Jiangsu, China (1983–2007)

China has experienced urbanization at an unprecedented rate over the past decades. Against this background, this paper demonstrates the multi-level spatiotemporal urban sprawl process from 1983 to 2007 on the perspective of urban agglomeration with a case study in Southern Jiangsu. Based on a combination of eight rounds of satellite images from 1983 to 2007, the presented results suggest the following three main findings: (1) At the prefecture-city level, the urban sprawl in Southern Jiangsu has presented significantly divergent growth patterns, with more than half of this vast growth occurring in the Suzhou prefecture-level city. (2) At the county level, clear spatial differentiations exist in the direction of the urban sprawl. The centroids of all county seats in the Suzhou and Wuxi prefecture-level cities have an eastward tendency (Shanghai oriented), while those of the county seats in the Changzhou prefecture-level city tend to be westward (Nanjing oriented). (3) At the township level, two convergent groups have gradually formed over time; namely, the low density urban zone in the western hilly land and the high density urban zone around the three central downtown areas. The urban areas close to urban cores tend to merge, showing a high-density convergent growth pattern, as do the western and southwestern townships in Southern Jiangsu, showing a low-density convergent growth pattern. All of these findings may be valuable for researchers and local authorities in providing reference for regional coordinated growth, environmental management, and urban planning decision-making.

Land use/cover change detection and urban sprawl analysis in Bandar Abbas city, Iran.

The process of land use change and urban sprawl has been considered as a prominent characteristic of urban development. This study aims to investigate urban growth process in Bandar Abbas city, Iran, focusing on urban sprawl and land use change during 1956–2012. To calculate urban sprawl and land use changes, aerial photos and satellite images are utilized in different time spans. The results demonstrate that urban region area has changed from 403.77 to 4959.59 hectares between 1956 and 2012. Moreover, the population has increased more than 30 times in last six decades. The major part of population growth is related to migration from other parts the country to Bandar Abbas city. Considering the speed of urban sprawl growth rate, the scale and the role of the city have changed from medium and regional to large scale and transregional. Due to natural and structural limitations, more than 80% of barren lands, stone cliffs, beach zone, and agricultural lands are occupied by built-up areas. Our results revealed that the irregular expansion of Bandar Abbas city must be controlled so that sustainable development could be achieved.

Conflictos socioambientales: identificación y representación espacial. Estudio de caso en la ciudad de Río Cuarto (Argentina)

Fil: Galfioni, Maria de Los Angeles. Universidad Nacional de Rio Cuarto. Facultad de Ciencias Humanas. Departamento de Geografia; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas; Argentina

Expansão urbana e conflito ambiental: uma descrição da problemática do município de Mossoró, RN - Brasil

Os ambientes naturais são constantemente transformados e utilizados para os processos de expansão e urbanização, para a criação dos ambientes artificiais, com isso, ocorre nos solos urbanos fortes implicações sociais e ambientais que implicam diretamente para as situações de risco e vulnerabilidade. Com isso traz-se a importância de estudar, conceituar e caracterizar as relações do ambiente urbano, especificamente as do município de Mossoró (RN). É importante destacar que o município possui um grande potencial para o desenvolvimento econômico com a interação entre elementos de diversos setores econômicos, já que o mesmo nos últimos anos vem passando por um momento de grande dinamismo nos processos de ocupação do espaço urbano e consequentemente vários problemas e impactos decorrentes desse processo de expansão urbana. Onde se sugere o uso de políticas públicas e sociais, com maior efetividade em ações de monitoramento, fiscalização e punição a atividades e processos que possam comprometer a qualidade socioambiental do município, além da participação da sociedade, e ainda da necessidade de ser elaborado o zoneamento ecológico econômico do município que irá servir de instrumento de ordenação do território e auxilio ao planejamento

The Role of Methodology and Spatiotemporal Scale in Understanding Environmental Change in Peri-Urban Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

In recent decades, investigations of NPP (net primary production) or proxies here of (normalized difference vegetation index, NDVI) and land degradation in Sahelian West Africa have yielded inconsistent and sometimes contradicting results. Large-scale, long-term investigations using remote sensing have shown greening and an increase in NPP in locations and periods where specific, small scale field studies have documented environmental degradation. Our purpose is to cast some light on the reasons for this phenomenon. This investigation focuses on the south of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, a city undergoing rapid growth and urban sprawl. We combine long-term MODIS (moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer) image analysis of NDVI between 2002 and 2009, and by using high resolution satellite images for the same area and a field study, we compare trends of NDVI to trends of change in different categories of land cover for a selected number of MODIS pixels. Our results indicate a strong, positive association between changes in tree cover vegetation and trends of NDVI and moderate association between man-made constructions and trends of NDVI. The observed changes are discussed in relation to the unique processes of urban sprawl characterizing Ouagadougou and relative to their spatiotemporal scale.

Factors of urban sprawl in Bulgaria

Urban sprawl has become a topical urban issue first in North America and later in Western Europe. It turned into a major challenge to urban sustainability. However, sprawl in Western Europe has displayed many specific features different than that in North America and these features are related to the concrete circumstances in the two continents. The social, economic and urban situation in the new European democracies is also quite different and this inevitably has its impact on the forms of sprawl. One of the main characteristics of sprawl is that it is considered to be market-led. More precisely, a major factor is the lack of balance between market trends and planning policy that allows for the market players to determine the use of their plots in suburban locations with little reference to the public interests and issues of sustainability. As the countries in Eastern and South-eastern Europe have already made certain progress on their way to market society, the problems of sprawl were faced in these countries too. The goal of the paper is to apply widely accepted definitions of sprawl to the processes in the suburbs of Sofia and, thus, to assess whether these are processes of sprawl. It also aims to study the specific traditions and residential preferences of Sofia?s population in order to identify specific characteristics and aspects of the Bulgarian model. The findings of the paper confirm that Bulgaria?s capital Sofia is experiencing processes of urban sprawl, particularly in its southern suburban areas - in the foot of Vitosha Mountain. Next, these processes display strong regional characteristics. So far sprawl in Bulgaria is less intensive than that in Western Europe but also than that in the post-socialist countries in Central Europe and in Baltic states. Eventually, the urban forms of Bulgarian sprawl tend to be denser and with mix of single-family and multi-family residential types and mix of land uses.

Temporal trend of green space coverage in China and its relationship with urbanization over the last two decades

Irrespective of which side is taken in the densification-sprawl debate, insights into the relationship between urban green space coverage and urbanization have been recognized as essential for guiding sustainable urban development. However, knowledge of the relationships between socio-economic variables of urbanization and long-term green space change is still limited. In this paper, using simple regression, hierarchical partitioning and multi-regression, the temporal trend in green space coverage and its relationship with urbanization were investigated using data from 286 cities between 1989 and 2009, covering all provinces in mainland China with the exception of Tibet. We found that: [1] average green space coverage of cities investigated increased steadily from 17.0% in 1989 to 37.3% in 2009; [2] cities with higher recent green space coverage also had relatively higher green space coverage historically; [3] cities in the same region exhibited similar long-term trends in green space coverage; [4] eight of the nine variables characterizing urbanization showed a significant positive linear relationship with green space coverage, with ‘per capita GDP’ having the highest independent contribution (24.2%); [5] among the climatic and geographic factors investigated, only mean elevation showed a significant effect; and [6] using the seven largest contributing individual factors, a linear model to predict variance in green space coverage was constructed. Here, we demonstrated that green space coverage in built-up areas tended to reflect the effects of urbanization rather than those of climatic or geographic factors. Quantification of the urbanization effects and the characteristics of green space development in China may provide a valuable reference for research into the processes of urban sprawl and its relationship with green space change.

Assessment of hazards and risks for landscape protection planning in Sicily

Landscape protection planning is a complex task that requires an integrated assessment and involves heterogeneous issues. These issues include not only the management of a considerable amount of data to describe landscape features but also the choice of appropriate tools to evaluate the hazards and risks. The landscape assessment phase can provide fundamental information for the definition of a Landscape Protection Plan, in which the selection of norms for protection or rehabilitation is strictly related to hazards, values and risks that are found. This paper describes a landscape assessment methodology conducted by using GIS, concerning landscape hazards, values and risk. Four hazard categories are introduced and assessed concerning urban sprawl and erosion: landscape transformations by new planned developments, intensification of urban sprawl patterns, loss of agriculture land and erosion. Landscape value is evaluated by using different thematic layers overlaid with GIS geoprocessing. The risk of loss of landscape value is evaluated, with reference to the potential occurrence of the previously assessed hazards. The case study is the Province of Enna (Sicily), where landscape protection is a relevant issue because of the importance of cultural and natural heritage. Results show that high value landscape features have a low risk of loss of landscape value. For this reason, landscape protection policies assume a relevant role in landscapes with low-medium values and they should be addressed to control the urban sprawl processes that are beginning in the area.

Insights to urban dynamics through landscape spatial pattern analysis

Urbanisation is a dynamic complex phenomenon involving large scale changes in the land uses at local levels. Analyses of changes in land uses in urban environments provide a historical perspective of land use and give an opportunity to assess the spatial patterns, correlation, trends, rate and impacts of the change, which would help in better regional planning and good governance of the region. Main objective of this research is to quantify the urban dynamics using temporal remote sensing data with the help of well-established landscape metrics. Bangalore being one of the rapidly urbanising landscapes in India has been chosen for this investigation. Complex process of urban sprawl was modelled using spatio temporal analysis. Land use analyses show 584% growth in built-up area during the last four decades with the decline of vegetation by 66% and water bodies by 74%. Analyses of the temporal data reveals an increase in urban built up area of 342.83% (during 1973–1992), 129.56% (during 1992–1999), 106.7% (1999–2002), 114.51% (2002–2006) and 126.19% from 2006 to 2010. The Study area was divided into four zones and each zone is further divided into 17 concentric circles of 1km incrementing radius to understand the patterns and extent of the urbanisation at local levels. The urban density gradient illustrates radial pattern of urbanisation for the period 1973–2010. Bangalore grew radially from 1973 to 2010 indicating that the urbanisation is intensifying from the central core and has reached the periphery of the Greater Bangalore. Shannon's entropy, alpha and beta population densities were computed to understand the level of urbanisation at local levels. Shannon's entropy values of recent time confirms dispersed haphazard urban growth in the city, particularly in the outskirts of the city. This also illustrates the extent of influence of drivers of urbanisation in various directions. Landscape metrics provided in depth knowledge about the sprawl. Principal component analysis helped in prioritizing the metrics for detailed analyses. The results clearly indicates that whole landscape is aggregating to a large patch in 2010 as compared to earlier years which was dominated by several small patches. The large scale conversion of small patches to large single patch can be seen from 2006 to 2010. In the year 2010 patches are maximally aggregated indicating that the city is becoming more compact and more urbanised in recent years. Bangalore was the most sought after destination for its climatic condition and the availability of various facilities (land availability, economy, political factors) compared to other cities. The growth into a single urban patch can be attributed to rapid urbanisation coupled with the industrialisation. Monitoring of growth through landscape metrics helps to maintain and manage the natural resources.

Real estate function impact on its value exemplified by the city of Gdańsk

Spatial planning is connected with speculations in real estate market, which deepens the process of urban sprawl. Adequate land management supporting free market – both investment decision of businesses and location decisions of households – is necessary if amorphous city growth is to be prevented. A change, or even information about change in the local plan determines decisions in the real estate market. On the basis of the studies conducted it can be said that the factor causing the greatest value increment is the possibility of development. To assess the possible success of investment projects and the value of real estate it is important to identify the changes that have been occurring in the growth of urban areas and their suburban expansion; whether they follow a certain pattern and whether it is possible to foresee them. The article presents city growth stages and models as well as selected concepts of sustainable growth as a response to the adverse process of suburbanisation.

Urban sprawl simulation linking macro-scale processes to micro-dynamics through cellular automata, an application in Thessaloniki, Greece

This study addresses the issue of urban sprawl through the perspective of simulation modeling. CA model’s ability to simulate urban patterns and processes of urban expansion in a realistic way has been widely investigated, but the influence of macro-scale factors and processes has often been neglected. A CA-based model is proposed linking macro-scale processes to micro-dynamics in order to simulate the urban sprawl process. The model allocates new urban land in a disaggregated field of land units (cells) taking into account a) a wide range of demographic, accessibility, socioeconomic, environmental and urban planning data b) a set of local characteristics of cells and neighborhood interactions. The application of the model to real-world data is based on a multiple regression model quantifying the influence of macro-scale factors and on an automatic calibration process based on historical data where local coefficient scores for different areas are determined. An application in the urban agglomeration of Thessaloniki in Greece is presented, where the model is calibrated for the period 1990–2010 and is used to explore urban expansion until 2030. The conclusions force us to recognize the need for further research into the way CA-based integrated modeling could act as a land-use policy development tool.

A nagyváros szélén: A városi terjeszkedés térbeli társadalmi problémái

A tanulmány a városterjeszkedés problémáját vizsgálja mindenekelőtt nemzetközi kontextusban, amelyből kiderülnek a fejlett nyugati társadalmak nagyvárosi térségeinek belső társadalmi egyenlőtlenségei, azok modern formái, a felső- és középosztálybeliek, valamint a hátrányos társadalmi helyzetűek által lakott elővárosok társadalmi problémái. Ezt követően a tanulmány a budapesti várostérségben érzékelhető területi terjeszkedés folyamatát tárja fel, két konkrét empirikus vizsgálat segítségével leírja a város és a környék között ma jellemző ellentmondásokat, azok átalakulásait, a városkörnyéken létrejött magasabb státusú, valamint az alacsonyabb ökológiai és társadalmi pozíciójú települések dichotómiáit. Ezek szerint a fejlett városkörnyéki települések népességének magasabb a jövedelme, jobb az iskolázottsága, miközben a fejletlenebb városkörnyéki településeken élők kevésbé iskolázottak, alacsonyabb, illetve közepes a jövedelmük. A cikk bemutatja a város és a különböző fejlettségű környékbeli települések viszonyát, a városterjeszkedéssel összefüggő helyi konfliktusokat, a szuburbanizáció okozta ellentmondásokat, a kialakult viszonyt meghatározó folyamatokat is.

Sustainability achievements in building regulations. The example of Bologna

The urban development in the last decades has meant for most cities a significant increasing of land consumption and waste of natural resources. Despite the process of urban sprawl is now being reduced, there is an urgent need for corrective measures to qualify the existing town, according to more sustainable principles.The city of Bologna has recently developed new tools, in order to promote a social and economic growth without affecting the urban and environmental quality. This article aims to describe the achievements of the innovative requirements in the new Town Planning Building Regulations, to analyse their effect, in relation to the reduction of use of natural resources and the improvement of environmental quality of the interventions.

Soil Sealing in the Growing City: A Survey in Rome, Italy‡

This paper illustrates a procedure aimed at estimating diachronically soil sealing in suburban areas by using cartographical and statistical data. The procedure was applied (1949–2006) to the metropolitan area of Rome (Italy), a Mediterranean city with important land use changes observed during the last fifty years. A total of 1.477 random sites was chosen encompassing the entire investigated area (1.285 km2) and evaluated in terms of sealing condition in 1949, 1990, 1994, 2000, and 2006. Although resident population has been found quite stable since 1970s, the sealed surface area grew rapidly from 8% in 1949 to 26% in 2006. The sealing status of each site was found correlated to the distance from the city centre, while not correlated to the distance from the major roads, railways, and the boundaries of the neighbor protected area. These results suggest that soil sealing in Rome was associated to recent processes of urban sprawl which testify the slow transition from the semi-compact city to a more diffused urban agglomeration.

Cat-exclusion zones in rural and urban-fringe landscapes: how large would they have to be?

Context. The process of urban sprawl brings the human population and their domestic cats (Felis catus) in close contact with wildlife in areas that were previously remote, including reserves and conservation areas created to protect populations of vulnerable or threatened species. Various mitigation measures have been proposed, including devices designed to hinder cat hunting ability, desexing to reduce wandering and nuisance behaviours, containment at night or at all times and regulations governing cat ownership. Such regulations may aim to reduce cat densities by limiting the number of cats per household, or they may define zones around sensitive conservation areas where cat ownership is prohibited. Aims. The present study sought to establish the necessary size of cat-exclusion zones in rural and urban-fringe landscapes where vulnerable prey species may also reside. Methods. With GPS collars, we tracked 38 domestic cats at three sites (one rural, two urban fringe) where small reserves contained threatened lizard species. Key results. Home ranges (95% kernel density estimates) were considerably larger for cats at the rural site (0.3–69 ha) than at urban-fringe sites (0.35–19 ha at Kaitorete Spit and 0.2–9 ha at Otago Peninsula), and were larger at night than day. Resource selection ratios indicated avoidance of open areas with little cover, such as cultivated areas (farmland), tussock grassland and duneland, whereas sources of cover such as trees and buildings were preferred. Maximum distances moved and large variability between individual cats suggest buffers in rural landscapes would need to be at least 2.4 km wide, whereas those in urban-fringe habitat could be half as large. Conclusions. Despite significant home-range size differences exhibited by cats living in rural v. urban-fringe habitats, exclusion zones would need to be wide to account for considerable inter-cat variation in movement behaviour. Implications. The size of an effective cat-exclusion zone should represent the specific landscape, amount of residential development and substantial variability between individual cats.

Urbanization in India – Spatiotemporal analysis using remote sensing data

Urbanization is arguably the most dramatic form of irreversible land transformation. Though urbanization is a worldwide phenomenon, it is especially prevalent in India, where urban areas have experienced an unprecedented rate of growth over the last 30 years. In this uncontrolled situation, city planners lack tools to measure, monitor, and understand urban sprawl processes. Multitemporal remote sensing has become an important data-gathering tool for analysing these changes. By using time-series of Landsat data, we classify urban footprints since the 1970s. This lets us detect temporal and spatial urban sprawl, redensification and urban development in the tremendously growing 12 largest Indian urban agglomerations. A multi-scale analysis aims to identify spatiotemporal urban types. At city level, the combination of absolute parameters (e.g. areal growth or built-up density) and landscape metrics (e.g. SHAPE index) quantitatively characterise the spatial pattern of the cities. Spider charts can display the spatial urban types at three time stages, showing temporal development and helping the reader compare all cities based on normalized scales. In addition, gradient analysis provides insight into location-based spatiotemporal patterns of urbanization. Therefore, we analyse zones defining the urban core versus the urban edges. The study aims to detect similarities and differences in spatial growth in the large Indian urban agglomerations. These cities in the same cultural area range from 2.5 million inhabitants to 20 million (in the metropolitan region of Mumbai). The results paint a characteristic picture of spatial pattern, gradients and landscape metrics, and thus illustrate spatial growth and future modelling of urban development in India.

Regional development of Prague, and application of the four‐capital model to the issue of urban sprawl

AbstractThis paper is part of the Special Issue of European Environment devoted to the outputs of the EU SRDTOOLS project, which has developed and applied a new model of regional sustainable development evaluation. The paper demonstrates how the SRDTOOLS methodology has been practically applied for the case of Prague, and the constraints to application of the methodology that have arisen during its usage in real conditions. A significant part of the paper is devoted to exploring the regional strategic programming documents and the regional developmental objective review in terms of the four‐capital model. Subsequently, the process of urban sprawl has been selected to test deeply the methodology of trade‐offs, critical trends and thresholds. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Lock living: Urban sprawl in Mediterranean cities

“Lock living” refers to the importance of security design, consumed as a commodity, in the new suburban residential landscapes of Mediterranean cities. This article summarizes the process of urban sprawl that has developed in the cities of Southern Europe in recent decades. It presents the main consequences of this evolution, regarding changes in residential landscape. Mediterranean cities have been historically characterised by the archetypal image of density, urban complexity and social diversity. However, the increasing development of urban sprawl shows a very different urban scenario. Metropolitan spaces along the edges of the motorways and orbital ring roads are developing the type of residential landscape that was, until not so long ago, exclusively associated with the cities of the Anglo-Saxon urban tradition. New low-density residential areas show the proliferation of territories manifesting the same morphological criteria in different cities. From a cultural perspective, these standardised landscapes mean the production of residential areas designed on the basis of a thematization of the American suburb. This iconographic display dresses them up as private-urban-ecological-thematic paradises, as a residential landscape that becomes image more than territory and, in this sense, a commodity. This commodification process refers both to the residential space and the inhabitants’ lifestyles as the domestic landscape, created by private security, clearly shows.

On the Urban-Sprawl Processes in Urbanization Control Area

This paper deals with the urban-sprawl processes in “Urbanization Controle Area”, in order to study of land use restriction in agricultural area. The results are as follows; (1) The changing processes of agricultural land may be summarized as fig. 9. (2) Before changing, agricultural land was bought by farmers who wish to change land use. (3) These processes are mainly caused by housing demands of farmers’ and their sons’, and by farmers and developers to wish to develop.