Rapid rise in urban sprawl: Global hotspots and trends since 1990

Abstract

Dispersed low-density development–“urban sprawl”–has many detrimental environmental, economic, and social consequences. Sprawl leads to higher greenhouse-gas emissions and poses an increasing threat to the long-term availability of many vital ecosystem services. Therefore, urban sprawl is in stark contradiction to the principles of sustainable land use and to the need for a sustainability transformation. This study presents the degree of urban sprawl on the planet at multiple spatial scales (continents, UN regions, countries, subnational units, and a regular grid) for the period 1990–2014. Urban sprawl increased by 95% in 24 years, almost 4% per year, with built-up areas growing by almost 28 km2 per day, or 1.16 km2 per hour. The results demonstrate that Europe has been the most sprawled and also the most rapidly sprawling continent, by 51% since 1990. At the scale of UN regions, the highest relative increases in urban sprawl were observed in East Asia, Western Africa, and Southeast Asia. Urban sprawl per capita has been highest in Oceania and North America, exhibiting a minor decline since 1990, while it has been increasing rapidly in Europe, by almost 47% since 1990. The study revealed a strong relationship between urban sprawl and the level of human development as measured by the Human Development Index (HDI). The results suggest that it will be important for a more sustainable future to find a better balance between a high quality of life and using land more sparingly. There is an urgent need to stop urban sprawl, since current regulations and measures in developed countries are apparently not effective at limiting it. Monitoring urban sprawl can serve to guide policy development such as the implementation of targets and limits and to evaluate the effectiveness of urban growth management strategies at mitigating urban sprawl.

Opinion Dynamics and the Inevitability of a Polarised and Homophilic Society

“…The presence of numerous tiny buildings in some cities contributes to higher sparseness, suggesting the need for nuanced approaches to address specific urban configurations. Increasing density in the core parts of the city and designing greenbelts may help maintain specific desirable properties of the urban form whilst conserving green spaces from being built over [76].…”

Ecosystem services potential is declining across European capital metropolitan areas

“…Urban expansion rates are reported to be higher than the respective population growth, indicating a dominating urban sprawling approach against compacted urban development 4 , 5 . For instance, the global average annual urban sprawl rates between 1990 and 2014 are almost ten times higher (4%) 6 than the global average urban population growth rate of the same period 3 . The processes of urban expansion result in land use land cover (LULC) alterations, which directly impact the ES provision capacities in metropolitan zones.…”

“…However, implementing ES and NBS principles is not an easy task, facing many socio-political challenges 17 , 18 . Nevertheless, securing the continuity of the ES provision, in the long run, is imperative, bearing in mind that Europe has been a hotspot of urban sprawl and land transformation trends during the last three decades 6 . Regions that include metropolitan territories of a broad development stages gradient and diverse socio-political backgrounds, like the European continent, are of great interest in enabling sensitive comparisons between the metropolitan development tendencies and the ES potential dynamics.…”

Urban delineation through a prism of intraday commute patterns

“…The paper is based on the commute data in the city of Brno. However, the rapidly rising urban sprawl (Behnisch et al, 2022 ) requires considering suburban commute. Big urban areas attract people from other areas: about 20% of the 4.7 million employees working in New York City live outside the city (Planning, 2019 ), and more than 20% of Europeans commute at least 90 min daily (Worx, 2018 ).…”