A Novel approach to the Identification of Urban Sprawl Patches based on the Scaling of Geographic Space

This paper introduces a novel approach to identifying urban sprawl patches based on the statistics of blocks and natural cities under the principle of scaling of geographic space. Blocks are the minimum cycles decomposed from a road network and the important geographic elements in the process of urbanization. Scaling of geographic space refers to the phenomenon that small geographic objects are far more numerous than large ones. In this study, the measurements of block area, morphology and structure are found to demonstrate scaling property and follow heavy tailed distributions. Because of this, the mean values of these measurements can clearly divide all blocks into a twolevel hierarchical structure, of which each hierarchy represents different geographical implications. For instance, small blocks imply the urban area while large ones imply rural area. Based on these findings, an improved method is proposed to aggregate the small blocks into natural cities in Texas. We further identify the abnormal blocks inside the natural city of Dallas, Texas as sprawling blocks, which constitute what we call urban sprawl patches. Multiple levels of urban sprawl are classified by performing the above process iteratively. This approach provides a quantitative and natural way to assess urban sprawl in the context of the urban environment.