Evaluating Spatiotemporal Distribution of Residential Sprawl and Influencing Factors Based on Multi-Dimensional Measurement and GeoDetector Modelling

Residential sprawl constitutes a main part of urban sprawl which poses a threat to the inhabitant environment and public health. The purpose of this article is to measure the residential sprawl at a micro-scale using a case study of Hangzhou city. An integrated sprawl index on each 1 km × 1 km residential land cell was calculated based on multi-dimensional indices of morphology, population density, land-use composition, and accessibility, followed by a dynamic assessment of residential sprawl. Furthermore, the method of GeoDetector modeling was applied to investigate the potential effects of location, urbanization, land market, and planning policy on the spatial variation of residential sprawl. The results revealed a positive correlation between CO2 emissions and residential sprawl in Hangzhou. There has been a remarkable increase of sprawl index on residential land cells across the inner suburb and outer suburb, and more than three-fifths of the residential growth during 2000–2010 were evaluated as dynamic sprawl. The rapid development of the land market and urbanization were noted to impact the spatiotemporal distribution of residential sprawl, as q-statistic values of population growth and land price ranked highest. Most notably, the increasing q-statistic values of urban planning and its significant interactions with other factors highlighted the effects of incremental planning policies. The study derived the policy implication that it is necessary to transform the traditional theory and methods of incremental planning.

Suburban Environment. East Naples Historical Transformations and Sustainability

This article retraces the late modern and contemporary history of East Naples through its environmental transformations. By the end of the eighteenth century, this marshy rural/suburban area hosted small urban agglomerations and many proto-industrial activities, deeply intertwined with agricultural production. During the nineteenth century, the area experienced its deepest transformations as a result of the three parallel processes of drainage, urbanisation and industrialisation. On the threshold of the twentieth century, East Naples became an industrial suburb, home to an uncontrollable residential sprawl interspersed with factories. This inchoate suburban mix has determined the area's unsustainability, leading to those hygienic deficits, environmental risks and economic and social complications that have plagued it to this day.

Changes in the urban climate parameters due to the anthropic factors. Case study: Suceava metropolitan area from Romania

<p>City of Suceava, located in the NE Region of Romania, is an attraction pole for the regional inhabitants through its commercial, academic and tourist functions. The city population increased from 114462 in 1992 to 122654 in 2018. The urban area suffered major modifications between 1990 and 2018 which transposed themselves in the values of the climatic elements.</p><p>The general objective of the study consists in the evaluation of the climatogen impact of the mutations occurred in the city’s demography, in the features of the active surface between 1990 (the period which followed immediately to the communist system) and 2018.</p><p>The working algorithm adopted consisted of: i) identification of modifications in the active surface structure, ii) identification of the land cover flows which determine the evolution of the artificial surfaces, iii) intersection of CORINE Land Cover sets, for the years 1990 and 2018, in ArcGis through the overlay technique, iv) obtaining a matrix of land cover categories, v) identification of the land cover flows according to the working technology implemented by the European Environment Agency, vi) highlighting the correlations between the modification of the artificial areas surfaces and the evolution of the climatic elements of Suceava’s atmosphere.</p><p>Results. There were identified three types of land cover flows specific to the artificial surfaces, caused by six types of processes. The biggest share is held by LCF2 (urban residential sprawl) represented by a single type of land cover flows, urban diffuse residential sprawl (lcf22) which cumulated an area of 861.74ha (2.12% of study area total). The second category shows the intraurban space conversion, defined LCF1 (urban land management) with the presence of two types of specific processes: urban development/infilling (lcf11) with a surface of 75.82ha (0.19% of the study area) and recycling of developed urban land (lcf12) with an area of 376.88ha (0.93% of study area). In the end, there was identified a small share of conversions which show the third category LCF3 (sprawl of economic sites and infrastructures) with a total of 284.66ha (0.70% of study area) and which contains three types of processes: sprawl of industrial and commercial sites (lcf31) with 129.09ha (0.32%), sprawl of airports (lcf34) with 10.27ha (0.03%) and construction (lcf37) with 145.3ha (0.36%). In total, the anthropic space from the study area was affected by conversions on a surface of 1599.1ha (3.93% of the total study area of 40685.73ha) for period 1990-2018. Meteorological data obtained from Suceava Weather Station (1961-2018) and from the urban meteorological stations SV1 and SV2 for the interval 2009-2019 were correlated by the statistics of conversions.</p><p>Conclusions. At Suceava suburban weather station temperature increased with 0,4°C in the decade 1991-2000, with 0,5°C in decade 2001-2010 and with 0,9°C more in decade 2011-2019. Only in the interval 2009-2019 with hourly data from all 3 stations, the urban-suburban thermal difference was of +1,7°C in the city's favour. If the increase of temperature from suburban is allocated to the regional heating, the urban-suburban thermal difference was attributed to the amplification of the city’s topoclimatic role per se.</p>

The Measurement of Suburban Sprawl: An Evaluation

We review and analyze how suburban sprawl has been conceptualized and measured in recent urban research. We find that indexes created to measure sprawl in metropolitan areas do so in three different ways. Some measures are based on residential population density, others specifically measure the extent of job or employment sprawl, and others consider sprawl a multidimensional land use phenomenon (and provide separate indexes for each dimension). Our analyses show that (1) most residential population density indexes reflect other dimensions of sprawl; (2) it is useful to think of metropolitan areas as positioned on two distinct dimensions of sprawl (i.e., centeredness and density–mixed land use); and (3) job sprawl and residential sprawl vary independently from each other. We provide recommendations regarding which sprawl measures are most appropriate for research applications.

The Fight for the West: A Political Ecology of Land Use Conflicts

The commoditization of natural resources in a global economic system and the territorialization practices of nation-states present formidable challenges to the sustainable use of natural resources. Likewise, certain environmental problems such as growth management and residential sprawl have proved intractable to our existing political processes. This case study of grazing and growth conflicts in Arizona demonstrates that intractable environmental problems may actually be emergent properties of complex systems, requiring new political approaches that foster collaboration and knowledge sharing between disputing stakeholders. One such collaboration in Arizona revealed that attempts to remove grazing from Arizona landscapes could actually be to the detriment of biodiversity, contrary to the expectations of grazing critics.