Models of Urban Land Use in Europe

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine available homogenous data on urban conversion of land in Western European countries and determine whether they are suitable to make an international comparison between land policies and management behaviour at the local level. This paper provides some results obtained from currently available information, but it stresses major data production criticalities which hinder the performance of comparable and reliable overall statistical studies. Conclusions stress the need for greater detail in the production of primary data on the features and magnitude of territorial urbanisation in Europe, as the EEA is doing for main cities. Moreover, this paper includes some remarks on the contents of the preliminary documents of EU soil directive. In particular, it focuses on the issue of urban transformation thresholds over time, a topic that has already been tackled by some northern European countries, however using techniques which cannot be applied as they are to all other countries.

A land-cover based urban dispersion indicator suitable for highly dispersed, discontinuously artificialized territories: The case of continental Portugal

“…This is basically because of its scale, since CLC includes small polygons in Urban Residential or Non-Urban areas that should be actually allocated to other classes (Diaz-Pacheco and Gutiérrez, 2014). A similar effect occurs in the Italian territory, also characterized by sprinkling, where Romano and Zullo (2013) described that the artificialized area estimated from regional land use maps is 60% higher than the results obtained from CLC. We therefore concluded that CLC-derived data are not suitable to analyse urban land cover changes in the Portuguese territory.…”

Supporting planning activities with the assessment and the prediction of urban sprawl using spatio-temporal analysis

“…Together with the development of tourism an excessive building up activity is taking place. The hope is that after what happened along the Adriatic coast and following the alarming results of many researches, including the present one, policy-makers may be encouraged to pursue sustainable tourism development (Romano and Zullo, 2013).…”

“…In last decades a lot of models have been proposed to analyse land use and land cover change (LUCC) (Romano and Zullo 2013;Koomen 2007;Perchinunno et al 2012;Modica et al 2012;Martellozzo 2012;Nolè et al 2014a;Nolè et al 2014b;Cerreta and Poli).…”

Long-term land-use changes in small/medium-sized cities. Enhancing the general trends and local characteristics

“…The characterization and explanation of land-use change trajectories in small and medium-sized cities act as managing scenarios for development strategies for cities and regional assets, as an ex ante condition for cohesion (Bandeira, Coelho, Sá, Tavares, & Borrego, 2011;Hersperger & Bürgi, 2009;Patacchini & Zenou, 2009;Pinhal, 2016;Romano & Zullo, 2013;Rounsevell et al, 2006). Deep changes in land use are common in these cities producing unbalanced occupation rates with complex interactions between environmental and socio-economic factors on land-use change (ET2050, ESPON, 2014;Fahmi, Hudalah, Rahayu, & Woltjer, 2014;Oueslati, Alvanides, & Garrod, 2015;Salvati & Sabbi, 2011;Verburg, Schot, Dijst, & Veldkamp, 2004).…”