During the next three decades, the world population is expected to increase from 6.1 billion to 8.1 billion, with nearly all of this growth concentrated in urban areas (from 2.9 billion to 4.9 billion). While only 30% of the world population lived in urban areas in 1950, this has increased to 47% by 2000 and is expected to reach 60% by 2030, of which 80% (3.9 million) will be living in less dev...

This paper considers the implications of population growth and urbanization for climate change. It emphasizes that it is not the growth in (urban or rural) populations that drives the growth in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions but rather, the growth in consumers and in their levels of consumption. A signifi cant proportion of the world’s urban (and rural) populations have consumption levels that ...

Cities are centers of technology-based transformations and play pivotal role in economic procedures. Moreover, cities are the social, cultural pivots and center for political challenges either in peace or violence and war. Cities possess a distinguishing share in societies’ economic growth and development. Future of the development of the developing countries is concentrated in cities. Theref...

This study introduces space, transportation, and money into an economic growth model. Growth theory neglects the importance of transportation on economic growth and transportation economics fails to properly explain how changes in transportation conditions (such as technological improvement, infrastructure investment, and oil prices) affect long-term economic growth. By proposing a growth model...

This paper presents an empirical study of the effects of urban growth controls on the intercity commuting of workers. Growth controls (land use regulations that attempt to restrict population growth and urban sprawl) have increased housing prices and diverted population growth to uncontrolled cities. It has been suggested that resulting changes in local labour supply might stimulate intercity c...

For the foreseeable future, world population growth will be mainly concentrated in the cities of developing countries. According to the United Nations (2000), by the year 2030 the world’s population will exceed today’s total by 2.06 billion persons, and some 1.94 billion of these will be added to the urban areas of lowincome countries. By 2030, it is believed, all developing regions will have c...

Numerous studies have identified associations between the surface urban heat island (SUHI) effect (i.e., SUHI, hereinafter is referred to as UHI) and urban growth, particularly changes in land cover patterns. This research questions their causal links to answer a key policy question: If cities restrict urban expansion and encourage people to live within existing urban areas, will that help in c...

This paper explores the use of weighted space syntax models to contribute to the process of integrated urban planning for Jeddah as part of a major planning project in the Saudi Arabia. The Municipality of Jeddah commissioned the production of an integrated suite of planning documents. These plans coordinate Strategic, Sub-Regional, Structural and Local plans across a citywide region and aim to...

In this study we apply a spatial conditional logit model to determine factors influencing land cover change in three contiguous counties in West Georgia between 1992 and 2001 using point (pixel) based observations of land characteristics. We found that accessibility to population and population growth affect not only development of rural lands and transition between agricultural and forestry us...