Spatio-Temporal Dynamics of Urban Growth in Latin American Cities : An Analysis Using Nighttime Lights Imagery
The impact of urban form on economic performance and quality of life has been extensively recognized. The studies on urban form have focused in developed countries; only a few cities in developing countries have been studied. This paper utilizes ni...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/360261547564934322/Spatio-Temporal-Dynamics-of-Urban-Growth-in-Latin-American-Cities-An-Analysis-Using-Nighttime-Lights-Imagery http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31170 |
| Summary: | The impact of urban form on economic
performance and quality of life has been extensively
recognized. The studies on urban form have focused in
developed countries; only a few cities in developing
countries have been studied. This paper utilizes nighttime
lights imagery and information on street networks,
automatically retrieved from OpenStreetMap, to calculate a
series of spatial metrics that capture different aspects of
the urban form of 919 Latin American and Caribbean cities.
The paper classifies these cities into clusters according to
these spatial metrics. It also studies the relationship
between the urban form metrics and some factors that can
correlate with urban form (topography, size, colony, and
economic performance) and performs a spatio-temporal
analysis of urban growth from 1996 to 2010. Among the
results, the paper highlights the identification of five
typologies of cities, the tendency of a group of cities to
grow at a steeper slope, some worrying cases of urban growth
over protected areas, and a trend toward increasing sprawl
in some Latin American and Caribbean cities. |
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