IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envirb/v45y2018i1p180-201.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Automated delimitation of urban areas comprising small-sized towns – Comparison of two methodologies applied to mainland Portugal

Author

Listed:
  • Rita Nicolau
  • Cristina Cavaco

Abstract

At European level, the different methodologies used for the classification of urban areas rely on the spatial allocation of population to 1 km 2 grid cells, failing therefore to identify small-sized settlements that play an important role in urban systems mostly composed by small towns, such as the Portuguese. This paper reports the development of alternative methodologies which overcome the problem stated, successfully enabling the automated recognition and delimitation of small-sized urban settlements – the prime goal of this work. Two alternative methodologies (A and B) were developed and later compared. The settlements identified by A are clusters of census tracts, previously classified using an urban–rural typology proposed by the authors. In B an adaptation of the Urban Morphological Zones methodology published by the European Environment Agency was used, whereby settlements are clusters of specific Land Use/Land Cover classes combined with the urbanised areas defined by Municipal Master Plans.

Suggested Citation

  • Rita Nicolau & Cristina Cavaco, 2018. "Automated delimitation of urban areas comprising small-sized towns – Comparison of two methodologies applied to mainland Portugal," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 45(1), pages 180-201, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envirb:v:45:y:2018:i:1:p:180-201
    DOI: 10.1177/0265813516668856
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0265813516668856
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0265813516668856?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. TANNIER, Cécile & THOMAS, Isabelle & VUIDEL, Gilles & FRANKHAUSER, Pierre, 2011. "A fractal approach to identifying urban boundaries," LIDAM Reprints CORE 2297, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. François Sémécurbe & Cécile Tannier & Stéphane G. Roux, 2019. "Applying two fractal methods to characterise the local and global deviations from scale invariance of built patterns throughout mainland France," Journal of Geographical Systems, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 271-293, June.
    2. Szymon Czyża & Karol Szuniewicz & Iwona Cieślak & Andrzej Biłozor & Tomasz Bajerowski, 2023. "An Analysis of the Spatial Development of European Cities Based on Their Geometry and the CORINE Land Cover (CLC) Database," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(3), pages 1-21, January.
    3. , 2019. "A roundtable discussion: Defining urban data science," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 46(9), pages 1756-1768, November.
    4. Qi Zhou & Lei Guo, 2018. "Empirical approach to threshold determination for the delineation of built-up areas with road network data," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(3), pages 1-25, March.
    5. Lafourcade, Miren & Blaudin de Thé, Camille & Carantino, Benjamin, 2018. "The Carbon `Carprint' of Suburbanization: New Evidence from French Cities," CEPR Discussion Papers 13086, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Fleur Visser, 2014. "Rapid mapping of urban development from historic Ordnance Survey maps: An application for pluvial flood risk in Worcester," Journal of Maps, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(2), pages 276-288, April.
    7. Hiroyuki Usui, 2023. "Cost-Efficient Urban Areas Minimising the Connection Costs of Buildings by Roads: Simultaneous Optimisation of Criteria for Building Interval and Built Cluster Size," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 23(1), pages 65-96, March.
    8. Alessandro Araldi & Giovanni Fusco, 2019. "From the street to the metropolitan region: Pedestrian perspective in urban fabric analysis," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 46(7), pages 1243-1263, September.
    9. Chen, Yanguang & Feng, Jian, 2012. "Fractal-based exponential distribution of urban density and self-affine fractal forms of cities," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 45(11), pages 1404-1416.
    10. Dan Wang & Liang Kong & Zhongsheng Chen & Xia Yang & Mingliang Luo, 2022. "Physical Urban Area Identification Based on Geographical Data and Quantitative Attribution of Identification Threshold: A Case Study in Chongqing Municipality, Southwestern China," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-18, December.
    11. Chen, Yanguang & Huang, Linshan, 2019. "Modeling growth curve of fractal dimension of urban form of Beijing," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 523(C), pages 1038-1056.
    12. António Dinis F. Santos & Duarte Valério & J. A. Tenreiro Machado & António M. Lopes, 2019. "A fractional perspective to the modelling of Lisbon’s public transportation network," Transportation, Springer, vol. 46(5), pages 1893-1913, October.
    13. Chong Zhao & Yu Li & Min Weng, 2021. "A Fractal Approach to Urban Boundary Delineation Based on Raster Land Use Maps: A Case of Shanghai, China," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(9), pages 1-21, September.
    14. Thomas Leduc, 2023. "Coupled use of isovists and wavelets for street intersection pattern determination," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 50(5), pages 1361-1374, June.
    15. Chen, Yanguang, 2022. "Normalizing and classifying shape indexes of cities by ideas from fractals," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    16. Bala, Alain Pholo & Peeters, Dominique & Thomas, Isabelle, 2014. "Spatial issues on a hedonic estimation of rents in Brussels," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 104-123.
    17. Chen, Yanguang & Wang, Yihan & Li, Xijing, 2019. "Fractal dimensions derived from spatial allometric scaling of urban form," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 122-134.
    18. Lü Ye & Yanguang Chen & Yuqing Long, 2023. "Exploring the Relationship between Urbanization and Ikization," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(12), pages 1-17, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envirb:v:45:y:2018:i:1:p:180-201. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.