Patterns of Urban Spatial Expansion in European Cities

Abstract

In representing urban sprawl, the decline in population and employment density from the city centre to the periphery has been identified as the main character associated with the spatial expansion of built-up areas. Urban spatial discontinuity, which occurs when the urban fabric includes built-up or green areas and a relevant share of vacant spaces, has gained recent attention. In this paper, we use Global Human Settlement Layer data to track urbanisation dynamics in European Functional Urban Areas (FUAs) from 1990 to 2014. We represent urban sprawl as the spatial expansion of FUAs associated with either or both declining population density and increasing built-up area discontinuity. We also consider the association with the demographic trends that have been described as the primary driver of urban spatial expansion. We use configural frequency analysis to explore the local association between the different characters of sprawl. We found evidence that urban sprawl effectively took differentiated forms across European FUAs. Even though FUAs have generally become less dense and more disperse, our results show that the extent of these phenomena appears to be more contained in recent years than in previous decades. Both elements of sprawl characterise FUAs with a shrinking population, confirming the decoupling of urban development policies and demographic trends in cities. The results call for better controlled urban development, favouring compact cities and subjecting land-use changes to a perspective of urban population growth.

Institutional Fragmentation and Urbanisation in the EU Cities

“…They found that declining density was the main characteristic of urban spatial expansion in Europe in both periods, although to different extents. Guastella et al (2019) reached the same conclusion based on an analysis of European FUAs for the period 1990-2014, adding that the sprawl characteristics of low density and high discontinuity are typical of small and shrinking cities in Europe. Salvati et al (2018) used explanatory statistical analysis to profile land consumption patterns of 155 metropolitan regions, matching land-use data with information about the socio-economic characteristics of the cities.…”

“…This means that cities in Europe and the United States (US) are no longer growing in height (and, then, compactly); instead, more and more land is being converted to accommodate new citizens. In addition, evidence from European cities shows that the density of urban settlements decreased, and their discontinuity increased, especially in small and medium-sized cities due to shrinking populations (Guastella et al, 2019). Many consider this growth unnecessary and the result of market or political inefficiencies (Downs, 2005): market fails to price the negative externalities on the environment, and local policymakers pay low attention to the issue of efficient land use.…”

Building up or spreading out? Typologies of urban growth across 478 cities of 1 million+

“…Budding outward growth is expected for North American cities as they are characterized by low-density, single-family sub-urbanization, but surprising for European cities which have long been conceived as 'compact' (Ewing 1997, Brueckner 2000. Similar to North America, slow paced urban expansion or budding outward growth is becoming a characteristic of European urbanization (Hoffmann-Martinot and Sellers 2005, Huang et al 2007, Guastella et al 2019). The spatial patterns of urban Europe have been changing for at least the past twenty-five years.…”

Governance fragmentation and urban spatial expansion: Evidence from Europe and the United States

“…Even in Europe, where cities are traditionally more compact, low-density and discontinuous urban development at the fringe has become the dominant trend of urban spatial expansion. Surprisingly, cities in which the population has been shrinking are also those in which the characteristics of urban sprawl are most marked (Guastella et al 2019). In light of the negative effects of urban sprawl on the agricultural and natural environment and the disconnection between urbanisation and demographic trends, the more stringent actions against land take are now part of the policy debate in Europe (EEA-FOEN 2016), not only the US.…”