Visualizing the Urban Development of Sydney (1971-1996) in GIS

This paper investigates ways of recording and visualizing the spatio-temporal trends of urban development in the Sydney metropolitan area from 1971 to 1996, which is an important component in modelling the urban development of metropolitan Sydney. Using GIS as a visualization tool, the paper first analyses the problems and quality of spatial data from different data providers. ABS census data are therefore selected to be used in this research. A fuzzy boundary criterion is defined to illustrate the physical urban extent of Sydney. Animations in both 2-D and 3-D are created for the visualization of Sydney’s urban development. Visualization shows that the urban area of Sydney had been developing largely in accordance with what was planned in the Sydney Region Outline Plan. West, southwest and south parts were major directions for this development. It also shows that this development had been supported by the transportation network and the relief. It is concluded that GIS is an important and useful technique both for the visualization of spatial data quality and consistency and for the visualization of urban development in space and over time.