A Quantitative Approach to Characterizing the Changes and Managing Urban Form for Sustaining the Suburb of a Mega-Urban Region: The Case of North Cianjur

Mega-urban development in Monsoon Asia has a relatively similar pattern, which leads to the formation of Mega-Urban Region (MUR). Such urban development potentially threatens sustainability as it vastly expands to encroaching rural areas. North Cianjur has been experiencing urban expansion from its surrounding metropolitan areas of Jakarta and Bandung that leads to the formation of urban sprawl and many other environmental problems. In this case, spatial characterization based on a quantitative and objective approach is urgently needed to provide better insight into the development of the mega-urban region’s suburb. This study proposed a quantitative and objective approach which was developed based on a quantitative zoning method. This study aims to characterize the region affected by urban expansion and urban form dynamics in North Cianjur using spatial clustering and spatial metrics approaches. The results showed that North Cianjur has four different zones consisting of two urban zones, a peri-urban zone, and a rural zone. Furthermore, the dynamics of urban forms in North Cianjur showed a trend of a more compact form in the urban zones while outside the urban zones it has become more sprawled and dispersed. This implies that spatial planning policies are incapable of containing and managing the massive expansion forces which were coming from Jakarta metropolitan, Bandung metropolitan, as well as Cianjur urban zones itself. Thus, the quantitative zoning method could enhance spatial planning, as different zones of urban–rural typology and urban from in the mega-urban suburb can be defined as a base for developing more specific effort in managing land-use changes. This approach could be adopted by other regions which have similar characteristics.