The Evolution of Built-up Areas in Ghana since 1975
This paper uses high-resolution satellite data on the proportion of buildings in a 250x250 meter cell to study the evolution of human settlement in Ghana over a 40-year period. The analysis finds a strong increase in built-up area over time, mostly...
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| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2020
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/272701593624763184/The-Evolution-of-Built-up-Areas-in-Ghana-since-1975 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34029 |
| Summary: | This paper uses high-resolution
satellite data on the proportion of buildings in a 250x250
meter cell to study the evolution of human settlement in
Ghana over a 40-year period. The analysis finds a strong
increase in built-up area over time, mostly concentrated in
the vicinity of roads, and also directly on the coast. There
is strong evidence of agglomeration effects in the static
sense -- buildup in one cell predicts buildup in a nearby
cell -- and in a dynamic sense -- buildup in a cell predicts
buildup in that cell later on, and an increase in buildup in
nearby cells. These effects are strongest over a radius of 3
to 15 kilometers. No evidence is found that human
settlements are spaced more or less equally over the
landscape or along roads. By fitting a transition matrix to
the data, this paper predicts a sharp increase in the
proportion of the country that is densely built-up by the
middle and end of the century, but there is no increase in
the proportion of partially built-up locations. |
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