Urban dynamics in the Flemish countryside: a comparative study on morphological patterns and local economy dynamics

The article examines two aspects of urbanisation in the rural areas of Flanders, the northern part of Belgium. On the one hand, the evolution of the built environment is studied in terms of built-up density and the corresponding morphological sprawl pattern, from the beginning of the 19th century up until now. On the other hand, the economy dynamics in the rural areas are investigated. This shift in economic activities can be seen as part of a broader urbanisation process, with aspects such as tertiarisation and broadening of agriculture. The main driving factors behind these transformations are discussed based on literature study. It becomes clear that urbanisation of the countryside is the combined result of economic, physical, cultural and political evolutions. The comparative study in eight case municipalities with different spatial characteristics maps the evolution of the built environment and continuity of the economic activities. Temporal and regional differences are analysed and related to more location-specific driving factors. The sprawl pattern seems to have a historical ground, whereas the difference in density is related to the evolution path. Regarding the local economy dynamics, no clear regional differences can be found. The professions and other business services category has the highest density. The amount of tertiary activities proves the importance of tertiarisation on the countryside. Both studied evolutions tend to change the open space profoundly. Therefore, insights are crucial in order to develop location specific policies

Land system science and sustainable development of the earth system: A global land project perspective

Land systems are the result of human interactions with the natural environment. Understanding the drivers, state, trends and impacts of different land systems on social and natural processes helps to reveal how changes in the land system affect the functioning of the socio-ecological system as a whole and the tradeoff these changes may represent. The Global Land Project has led advances by synthesizing land systems research across different scales and providing concepts to further understand the feedbacks between social-and environmental systems, between urban and rural environments and between distant world regions. Land system science has moved from a focus on observation of change and understanding the drivers of these changes to a focus on using this understanding to design sustainable transformations through stakeholder engagement and through the concept of land governance. As land use can be seen as the largest geo-engineering project in which mankind has engaged, land system science can act as a platform for integration of insights from different disciplines and for translation of knowledge into action

Modeling commuting systems through a complex network analysis: a study of the Italian islands of Sardinia and Sicily

This study analyzes the inter-municipal commuting systems of the Italian islands of Sardinia and Sicily, employing weighted network analysis technique. Based on the results obtained for the Sardinian commuting network, the network analysis is used to identify similarities and dissimilarities between the two systems

Enhancing urban analysis through lacunarity multiscale measurement

Urban spatial configurations in most part of the developing countries showparticular urban forms associated with the more informal urban development ofthese areas. Latin American cities are prime examples of this sort, butinvestigation of these urban forms using up to date computational and analyticaltechniques are still scarce. The purpose of this paper is to examine and extendthe methodology of multiscale analysis for urban spatial patterns evaluation. Weexplain and explore the use of Lacunarity based measurements to follow a lineof research that might make more use of new satellite imagery information inurban planning contexts. A set of binary classifications is performed at differentthresholds on selected neighbourhoods of a small Brazilian town. Theclassifications are appraised and lacunarity measurements are compared in faceof the different geographic referenced information for the same neighbourhoodareas. It was found that even with the simple image classification procedure, animportant amount of spatial configuration characteristics could be extracted withthe analytical procedure that, in turn, may be used in planning and other urbanstudies purposes

Actors and factors - bridging social science findings and urban land use change modeling

Recent uneven land use dynamics in urban areas resulting from demographic change, economic pressure and the cities’ mutual competition in a globalising world challenge both scientists and practitioners, among them social scientists, modellers and spatial planners. Processes of growth and decline specifically affect the urban environment, the requirements of the residents on social and natural resources. Social and environmental research is interested in a better understanding and ways of explaining the interactions between society and landscape in urban areas. And it is also needed for making life in cities attractive, secure and affordable within or despite of uneven dynamics.\ud The position paper upon “Actors and factors – bridging social science findings and urban land use change modeling” presents approaches and ideas on how social science findings on the interaction of the social system (actors) and the land use (factors) are taken up and formalised using modelling and gaming techniques. It should be understood as a first sketch compiling major challenges and proposing exemplary solutions in the field of interest

Probing the position of the Jakarta metropolitan area in global inter-urban networks through the lens of manufacturing firms

This paper presents an analysis of the position of the Jakarta metropolitan area (JMA) in global inter-urban networks. Our starting point is our aim to provide a more nuanced understanding of the JMA’s connectivity in world city networks (WCNs). To this end, we steer clear of top-down approaches, which tend to analyze cities in singular taxonomies of global prominence, and instead propose a framework that is attuned to the JMA’s contexts to provide an alternative and complementary reading of how the JMA has been inserted into the WCN. To this end, by drawing on the interlocking network model, which helps to proxy inter-urban networks based on the multi-locational operations of manufacturing firms, we examine the JMA’s network positionality on the global and national scales. The results provide evidence of the JMA’s global inter-city relations being strongly geared toward East Asian cities. In addition, the results suggest that the JMA cannot be detached from its national geography, as evidenced by its strong connections with cities located on the island of Java