Characterizing landscape patterns in urban-rural interfaces

Due to new urbanization patterns, where cities’ edges are becoming increasingly difficult to delimit, a better understanding of urban-rural gradients has become a key issue for urban planning. These interstitial territories are characterized for being highly heterogeneous, with hybrid and complex dy...

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Main Authors: Paola Ortiz-Báez, Pablo Cabrera-Barona, Jan Bogaert
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2021-03-01
Series:Journal of Urban Management
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2226585621000030
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author Paola Ortiz-Báez
Pablo Cabrera-Barona
Jan Bogaert
author_facet Paola Ortiz-Báez
Pablo Cabrera-Barona
Jan Bogaert
author_sort Paola Ortiz-Báez
collection DOAJ
description Due to new urbanization patterns, where cities’ edges are becoming increasingly difficult to delimit, a better understanding of urban-rural gradients has become a key issue for urban planning. These interstitial territories are characterized for being highly heterogeneous, with hybrid and complex dynamics and -due to their landscape ambiguity and rapid transformation-frequently lack of clear regulations. Through calculation and analysis of landscape metrics in high resolution satellite images, this study proposes a novel and accurate method to identify urbanization patterns. It was applied to the urban-rural gradient of the Metropolitan District of Quito (MDQ), an Andean city. After analyzing five land use/land covers in six transects, results suggest that the MDQ presents patterns of urban diffusion and coalescence. The diffusion starts at the urban core and expand to rural parishes where some emerging traditional settlements merge, constituting a complex pattern of urbanization. Also, significant levels of fragmentation were identified for the vegetation cover in periurban areas, threatening the territory environmental sustainability. Finally, a multivariate cluster analysis was developed, evidencing five main tendencies of urbanization patterns. This knowledge can be particularly useful for urban planning in terms of reducing randomness in urban development processes. This paper proposes and tests an analytical approach which could be applied to other Latin-American cities, where urban expansion patterns remain unknown.
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spelling doaj.art-47b7e8d63a164ddfbae0f4479120f7ce2022-12-21T19:46:18ZengElsevierJournal of Urban Management2226-58562021-03-011014656Characterizing landscape patterns in urban-rural interfacesPaola Ortiz-Báez0Pablo Cabrera-Barona1Jan Bogaert2Biodiversity and Landscape Unit. Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech. University of Liège, Belgium; Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Central University of Ecuador, Ecuador; Corresponding author. Biodiversity and Landscape Unit. Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech. University of Liège, Belgium.Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO), EcuadorBiodiversity and Landscape Unit. Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech. University of Liège, BelgiumDue to new urbanization patterns, where cities’ edges are becoming increasingly difficult to delimit, a better understanding of urban-rural gradients has become a key issue for urban planning. These interstitial territories are characterized for being highly heterogeneous, with hybrid and complex dynamics and -due to their landscape ambiguity and rapid transformation-frequently lack of clear regulations. Through calculation and analysis of landscape metrics in high resolution satellite images, this study proposes a novel and accurate method to identify urbanization patterns. It was applied to the urban-rural gradient of the Metropolitan District of Quito (MDQ), an Andean city. After analyzing five land use/land covers in six transects, results suggest that the MDQ presents patterns of urban diffusion and coalescence. The diffusion starts at the urban core and expand to rural parishes where some emerging traditional settlements merge, constituting a complex pattern of urbanization. Also, significant levels of fragmentation were identified for the vegetation cover in periurban areas, threatening the territory environmental sustainability. Finally, a multivariate cluster analysis was developed, evidencing five main tendencies of urbanization patterns. This knowledge can be particularly useful for urban planning in terms of reducing randomness in urban development processes. This paper proposes and tests an analytical approach which could be applied to other Latin-American cities, where urban expansion patterns remain unknown.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2226585621000030Urban-rural gradientLandscape patternsLandscape metricsUrban expansionMultivariate clustering
spellingShingle Paola Ortiz-Báez
Pablo Cabrera-Barona
Jan Bogaert
Characterizing landscape patterns in urban-rural interfaces
Journal of Urban Management
Urban-rural gradient
Landscape patterns
Landscape metrics
Urban expansion
Multivariate clustering
title Characterizing landscape patterns in urban-rural interfaces
title_full Characterizing landscape patterns in urban-rural interfaces
title_fullStr Characterizing landscape patterns in urban-rural interfaces
title_full_unstemmed Characterizing landscape patterns in urban-rural interfaces
title_short Characterizing landscape patterns in urban-rural interfaces
title_sort characterizing landscape patterns in urban rural interfaces
topic Urban-rural gradient
Landscape patterns
Landscape metrics
Urban expansion
Multivariate clustering
url http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2226585621000030
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AT janbogaert characterizinglandscapepatternsinurbanruralinterfaces