Urban expansion and its impact on urban agriculture – remote sensing based change analysis of Kizinga and Mzinga Valley – Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

Urban agriculture is a phenomenon that can be observed world-wide, particularly in cities of devel-oping countries. It is contributing significantly to food security and food safety and has sustained livelihood of the urban and peri-urban low income dwellers in developing countries for many years. Population increase due to rural-urban migration and natural, coupled with formal as well as infor-mal urbanization are competing with urban farming for available space and scarce water resources. A multitemporal multisensoral urban change analysis over the period of 25 years (1982-2007) was performed in order to measure and visualize the urban expansion along the Kizinga and Mzinga valley in the South of Dar es Salaam. Airphotos and VHR satellite data were analyzed by using a combination of a composition of anisotropic textural measures and spectral information. The study revealed that unplanned built-up area is expanding continuously and vegetation covers and agricultural lands decline at a fast rate. The validation showed that the overall classification accuracy varied depending on the database. The extracted built-up areas were used for visual in-terpretation mapping purposes and served as information source for another research project. The maps visualize an urban congestion and expansion of nearly 18% of the total analyzed area that had taken place in the Kizinga valley between 1982 and 2007. The same development can be ob-served in the less developed and more remote Mzinga valley between 1981 and 2002. Both areas underwent fast changes where land prices still tend to go up and an influx of people both from rural and urban areas continuously increase density with the consequence of increasing multiple land use interests.

Space-time analysis of the urban-rural grafient in the metropolitan area of Madrid and ist surroundings -Guadalajara and Toledo.

According to UN provisions in the period from 2007 to 2050 world population will grow up to 9200 million people. In fact, for the first time in history, in the year 2008 world urban population became higher than rural population. The increase of urban areas and their transport infrastructures has influenced agricultural land use due to their irreversible change, especially when they remain as periurban vacant land, losing their character and identity. In the Europe of the nineties, the traditional urban-rural gradient, characterized by a neat contact between both land types, has become so complex that it has change to a gradient in which it is difficult to separate urban and rural land uses. [Antrop 2004]. A literature review has been made on methodologies used for the urban-rural gradient analysis. One of these methodologies was selected that integrates ecological characterization based on the use of spatial metrics and geographical characterization based on spatial components. Cartographical sources used were Corine Land Cover at 1: 100000 scale and the Spanish Land Use Information System at 1:25000 scale. Urban-rural gradient paradigm is an analysis methodology, coming from landscape ecology, which enables to investigate how urbanization provokes changes in ecological patterns and processes into landscape. [Hahs and McDonnell 2006].The present research adapt this methodology to study the urban-rural gradient in the outskirts of Madrid, Toledo and Guadalajara. Both scales (1:25000 and 1:100000) were simultaneously used to reach the next objectives: 1) Analysis of landscape pattern dynamics in relation to distance to the town centre and major infrastructures. 2) Analysis of landscape pattern dynamics in the fringe of protected areas. The paper presents a new approach to the urban-rural relationship which allows better planning and management of urban áreas.

Shopping malls and neoliberal trends in Southern European cities: Post-metropolitan challenges for urban planning policy

Whilst shopping malls have been explored at length by critical urban studies, there has been little exploration of their role in restructuring the practice of urban and spatial planning. This article uses the shopping mall as an object of study in the light of the neoliberal trends and post-metropolisation in Southern Europe, with the aim of exploring challenges for urban governance and planning practice and with a focus on the role of the ongoing economic crisis. A threefold exploratory framework – the ‘lost-in-time scenario’, the ‘messianic mall model’ and the ‘(im)mature planning explanation’ – is used to make sense of the local versions of shopping mall development in Lisbon (Portugal) and Palermo (Southern Italy). According to findings, we highlight the clash between the multi-scalar nature of shopping malls and the dominance of the municipal scale in regulatory planning frameworks, and the risk that shopping mall development (at least in Southern Europe) may replicate uneven development patterns, reproducing the pre-conditions of the crisis without helping to overcome it.

The Land use and urban development impacts of beltways : final report /

Mode of access: Internet.

The Land use and urban development impacts of beltways : executive summary /

"October 1980."

The Land use and urban development impacts of beltways guidebook /

"DOT-P-30-80-39"--Cover.

Comparison of rural and urban attitudes to the conservation of Asian elephants in Sri Lanka: empirical evidence

There has been little study of economic and general attitudes towards the conservation of the Asian elephant. This paper reports and analyses results from surveys conducted in Sri Lanka of attitudes of urban dwellers and farmers towards nature conservation in general and the elephant conservation in particular. The analyses are based on urban and a rural sample. Contingent valuation techniques are used as survey instruments. Multivariate logit regression analysis is used to analyse the respondents' attitudes towards conservation of elephants. It is found that, although some variations occurred between the samples, the majority of the respondents (both rural and urban) have positive attitudes towards nature conservation in general. However, marked differences in attitudes toward elephant conservation are evident between these two samples: the majority of urban respondents were in favour of elephant conservation; rural respondents expressed a mixture of positive and negative attitudes. Overall, considerable unrecorded and as yet unutilised economic support for conservation of wild elephants exists in Sri Lanka. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.