Dispersed low-density development–“urban sprawl”–has many detrimental environmental, economic, and social consequences. Sprawl leads to higher greenhouse-gas emissions poses an increasing threat the long-term availability of vital ecosystem services. Therefore, urban sprawl is in stark contradiction principles sustainable land use need for a sustainability transformation. This study presents de...

The process of suburbanization of Riyadh, a city of 4.5 million inhabitants, offers a unique situation in which the urban morphology of the city can be examined in light of socio-political and economic conditions. Central government ordinances helped create 'dysfunctional' sprawl by mandating big lots and over wide streets. Fifty percent of the city's urban plan of approximately 1,300 square ki...

Rapid urbanization on the coast of China has attracted much attention. The objective of this study was to explore the differences in dynamics and related driving forces between urban and rural settlements. Applying the quantitative method, we demonstrate that substantial heterogeneity in settlement growth, landscape pattern metrics, change, land sources and driving forces is exhibited across th...

China's urbanization is going into a fast development stage. This paper focuses on the recent evolution of an urbanized area - Sunan, the southern part of Jiangsu province in the Yangtze River Delta in China - by means of complementary approaches, especially different fractal and autocorrelation measures. The research shows that Sunan's urban clusters are becoming more and more homogenous and c...