BACKGROUND Urban sprawl has the potential to influence cancer mortality via direct and indirect effects on obesity, access to health services, physical activity, transportation choices and other correlates of sprawl and urbanization. METHODS This paper presents a cross-sectional analysis of associations between urban sprawl and cancer mortality in urban and suburban counties of the United Sta...

Chinese cities are experiencing rapid urban expansion and being transformed into more dispersed urban form which necessitate the quantification of fine-scale intra-urban characteristics for sustainable urban development. We propose an integrated multi-level and multi-dimensional method to characterize urban sprawl and apply it to Wuhan, a typical metropolitan area in central China from 1996 to ...

In terms of locomotory posture, amphibians and lizards are considered to be sprawlers, mammals and dinosaurs are considered to be erect, and extant crocodilians are considered to be intermediate because they use the 'high walk', a semi-erect posture where the body is held half-way between the sprawling and erect grades during locomotion. In addition, crocodilians occasionally use a sprawling po...

There have been several studies advocating the need for, and the feasibility of, using advanced techniques to support decision makers in urban planning and resource monitoring. One such advanced technique includes a framework that leverages the use of remote sensing and geospatial information systems (GIS) in conjunction with cellular automata (CA) to monitor land use / land change phenomena li...

Today’s large metropolitan areas, from New York and London to Singapore and Tokyo, all comprise a multitude of interconnected centers: places, where our daily activities for employment, leisure and travel are highly concentrated. A deep and quantitative understanding of this urban spatial structure is of considerable importance for our contemporary sprawling cities, where it is ever-less obviou...

Urban expansion is a complex spatial transformation process over time. It converts various land-use types into urban lands, therefore gradually increase the size of urban areas. The research in simulation and prediction of urban expansion can provide us with two benefits: one, we would be able to grasp the pattern of the complex process of a city's expansion; and the other, we may be able to fo...

Whether a city develops toward a more compact or sprawling one may affect many aspects of urban environment, such as public and ecosystem health, greenhouse gas emissions, and quality of life. Using longitudinal data of Chinese cities during 2000-2010, we investigate the relationship between the compactness of urban growth, measured by average population density and several important indicators...

In last decades the spreading of new buildings, road infrastructures and a scattered proliferation of houses in zones outside urban areas, produced countryside urbanization with no rules, consuming soils and impoverishing the landscape. Such a phenomenon generated a huge environmental impact, diseconomies and a decrease in life quality. Although urban growth is perceived as necessary for a sust...