Spatio-Temporal Dynamics of Urban Growth in Latin American Cities : An Analysis Using Nighttime Lights Imagery

Duque, Juan C. ; Lozano-Gracia, Nancy ; Patino, Jorge E. ; Restrepo, Paula ; Velasquez, Wilson A.

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: SPATIAL ANALYSIS;    SATELLITE IMAGERY;    URBANIZATION;    REMOTE SENSING;    CLUSTER ANALYSIS;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-8702
RP-ID  :  WPS8702

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

The impact of urban form on economicperformance and quality of life has been extensivelyrecognized. The studies on urban form have focused indeveloped countries; only a few cities in developingcountries have been studied. This paper utilizes nighttimelights imagery and information on street networks,automatically retrieved from OpenStreetMap, to calculate aseries of spatial metrics that capture different aspects ofthe urban form of 919 Latin American and Caribbean cities.The paper classifies these cities into clusters according tothese spatial metrics. It also studies the relationshipbetween the urban form metrics and some factors that cancorrelate with urban form (topography, size, colony, andeconomic performance) and performs a spatio-temporalanalysis of urban growth from 1996 to 2010. Among theresults, the paper highlights the identification of fivetypologies of cities, the tendency of a group of cities togrow at a steeper slope, some worrying cases of urban growthover protected areas, and a trend toward increasing sprawlin some Latin American and Caribbean cities.