1,721,163 research outputs found
Urban Transformations, Land-use, and Environmental Change: Quantitative Approaches for Territorial Data
No full textThis book provide interesting insights for the identification of socioeconomic, demographic and territorial factors that affect structural disparities in local economies. Urban development is the result of demographic dynamics at the local level, connected to socioeconomic factors, and of economic growth, whose fluctuations are particularly sensitive to the economic cycle in countries, such as the ones in the Mediterranean basin, characterized by greater informality of the sector and limited public/social housing. Our objective is to provide a contribution to sustainability planning, explaining the linkage between forms of urban development and economic growth, providing policy indications for integrated spatial planning, and for cohesion policies that may leverage social and economic competitiveness
Shaping Dimensions of Urban Complexity: The Role of Economic Structure and Socio-Demographic Local Contexts
No full textDiversification in urban functions—a key component of urban complexity—was analysed using Pielou’s evenness indexes for 12 socioeconomic dimensions (economic structure, working classes, education, demographic structure by age, composition of non-native population by citizenship, distribution of personal incomes, land-use, land imperviousness, building use, vertical profile of buildings, building age, construction materials) at a local spatial scale in the Athens’ metropolitan region, Greece. Urban and rural districts were found respectively the most and less diversified contexts, outlining a diversification gradient negatively associated with the distance from Athens. A canonical correlation analysis characterized local contexts with high and low diversification in socioeconomic functions. A spatially-explicit regression model finally demonstrates that local-scale complexity increases with urban concentration, population growth and average per-capita income. A multivariate analysis of individual dimensions of urban complexity is a promising tool to assess socioeconomic transformations in contemporary cities
Urban Growth, Economic Activities and Land-use structure: exploring latent sprawl in an Eastern Mediterranean city
No full textThe present study develops an Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA) with the aim to assess changes over time in the
distribution of selected uses of land in two Mediterranean urban regions (Rome and Athens) with different morphology
and economic functions. The study uses global and local Moran’s indexes of spatial autocorrelation to describe the land-use
structure observed in the two cities in mid-1970s and late-2000s, and debates on the divergent contribution of compact
growth and scattered urban expansion to changes in land use. The analysis identifies fringe landscapes as a key target for
urban containment policies in sprawling citie
Distance matters: Land consumption and the mono-centric model in two southern European cities
No full textThe mono-centric city model has been proposed to assess the relationship between urban morphology and land-use changes along the urban gradient. Although several studies have shown how compact cities are reorganizing towards a more dispersed morphology, indicators investigating the efficiency in the use of land were rarely used to test the assumptions of the mono-centric model. The present paper compares population dynamics and land-use changes between 1960 and 2010 in two European Mediterranean regions characterized by different morphology and socioeconomic structure. Two indicators of land-use changes have been analyzed in order to quantify the absolute and the per-capita surface areas of three basic uses of land (urban, agricultural, forest). Trends in absolute and per-capita indicators diverged in the two regions suggesting that city's structure influences long-term land-use and population dynamics. The present study contributes to the debate on urban forms indicating that the mono-centric model is associated with a lower per-capita land consumption rate compared to spatial structures that show deviations from mono-centricity. © 2014 Elsevier B.V
Urban growth, population, and recession: Unveiling multiple spatial patterns of demographic indicators in a Mediterranean City
No full textEstimating land degradation risk for agriculture in Italy using an indirect approach
No full textThis paper illustrates a two-step procedure for measuring land degradation (LD) risk in agriculture. The procedure estimated the potential costs of LD from a standard index of land sensitivity to degradation (ESAI) by calculating, over 784 local districts covering the entire Italian territory, a 'depletion factor' in relation to the agricultural value added. The procedure was based on changes in the ESAI (1990-2000) and ancillary variables (i.e., per capita value added, share of agriculture in the total production, and agricultural profitability). On average, the estimated costs of LD in Italy amounted to nearly 0.5% of the agricultural value added (which corresponded to 12€/ha of cultivated surface). These figures are comparable to those presented in the literature for regions with similar environmental conditions. This paper contains descriptions of the assumptions under which the proposed scheme works and comments on their empirical plausibility. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
Urban Transformations, Land-use, and Territorial Change Before and After Crisis: A Mediterranean Perspective
No full textPermanent monitoring of demographic and economic processes as potential drivers of sprawl is a crucial task for a sustainable regional development. However, a comprehensive analysis of the evolutionary dynamics of regional systems requires an in-depth investigation of (apparent and latent) spatial disparities in socioeconomic variables, under multifaceted conditions responding differently to economic expansion and recession. More specifically, this work, focused on Mediterranean regions which have undergone important changes in the economic base and in the demographic composition, aims to offer a contribute to the understanding of these complex issues
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