Toward a New Urban Cycle? A Closer Look to Sprawl, Demographic Transitions and the Environment in Europe

Abstract

Urban growth is a largely debated issue in social science. Specific forms of metropolitan expansion—including sprawl—involve multiple and fascinating research dimensions, making mixed (quali-quantitative) analysis of this phenomenon particularly complex and challenging at the same time. Urban sprawl has attracting the attention of multidisciplinary studies defining nature, dynamics, and consequences that dispersed low-density settlements are having on biophysical and socioeconomic contexts worldwide. The present commentary provides a brief overview on nature and implications of the latent relationship between sprawl, demographic dynamics, and background socio-environmental contexts with special focus on Europe. Empirical evidence supports the idea that spatial planning should cope more effectively with the increasing environmental and socioeconomic exposure of European regions to sprawl and demographic transitions, being progressively far away from a traditional urban cycle with sequential waves of urbanization, suburbanization, counter-urbanization, and re-urbanization. Growing socio-ecological vulnerability of metropolitan regions was evaluated based on a literature review demonstrating how a better comprehension of the intimate linkage between long-term demographic dynamics and urban cycles is necessary to inform fine-tuned policies controlling sprawl and promoting a sustainable management of peri-urban land.

The Impact of Urbanization on Land: A Biophysical-Based Assessment of Ecosystem Services Loss Supported by Remote Sensed Indicators

“…These findings are in line with the demographic dynamics model of wealthier countries proposed since the late 1980s [77]. Indeed, whereas compact urban growth has been frequently associated with population increase and economic development, which is typical of most of the European countries after World War II [5], the advanced economies have been characterized in the last decades by the outward expansion of low-density settlements [78,79], often occurring in fertile agricultural areas [9,80]. Other research studies dealing with the impact of urbanization on ES have confirmed losses of stored carbon, agricultural production, habitat quality, and flood mitigation in developing urban areas [25,81,82], also leading to land reclamation and deforestation in rural areas [82].…”

“…Compact and dispersed patterns of urban expansion [1,2] are a global phenomenon and are one of the most important factors in landscape change [3,4]. Starting from the 20th century, the increasing demand for land to be used for buildings and infrastructures led to greater urbanization of previously natural and agricultural areas [5], making urbanization a major cause of land consumption. More generally, land consumption can be considered to be the change from non-artificial land cover to artificial land cover, with a distinction having to be made between permanent consumption (due to permanent artificial land cover, such as concrete or asphalt) and non-permanent consumption (due to reversible artificial land cover or soil alteration processes, such as, soil compaction in construction sites or excavations in quarries) [6,7].…”

Sustainable Urban Agriculture as Functional Hybrid Unit—Issues of Urban Resilience

“…In the context of the forecast development directions for contemporary pro-environmental solutions [2], re-urbanization leads to formulating an innovative approach in shaping urbanized areas, namely, to regenerative design [53][54][55][56][57][58]. The issues related to blue and green infrastructure, presented in the above studies, form part of regenerative design and sustainable urban agriculture concepts.…”

“…Re-urbanization is characterized by increasing the importance of the central city areas (after a period of intensive suburbanization and de-urbanization) [1][2][3][4][5][6]. This occurs due to the creation of comfortable conditions for the re-development of the residential function, as a result of which the population of downtowns increases.…”

An Analysis of the Effects of Development-Restricted Areas on Land Price Using Spatial Analysis

“…Thus, greenbelt policies have focused on preserving open space and controlling urban growth [3]. Currently, many greenbelt plans are being created all over the world to protect and conserve agricultural and natural spaces to cope with increasing urban sprawl [4][5][6][7][8][9].…”