Cities the world over are highly fragmented. The fragmentation of the built-up area cities by the open spaces interpenetrating them is a key attribute of urban-sprawl, and sprawl as fragmentation, as distinct from sprawl as lower-density development, is now a universal feature of cities. Using satellite images and census data for 1990 and 2000 for a global sample of 120 cities, we find that cit...

The field of urban ecology has seen a major expansion in the last two decades. As the world rapidly urbanizes, human settlements constitute one of the few ecosystems on earth that are significantly increasing in their extent. As a result, interest from both the scientific community and society at large has turned its attention to the functioning of cities and their impacts on larger regions, gl...

Accelerating urbanization has been viewed as an important instrument for economic development and reducing regional income disparity in some developing countries, including China. Recent studies (Bloom et al. 2008) indicate that demographic urbanization level has no causal effect on economic growth. However, due to the varying and changing definition of urban population, the use of demographic ...

Electronic cities result from the implication of information and communication technology (ICT) in the contemporary era. Significant ICT development and internet network expansion as well as the need of urban management to new ideas in managing cities lead us toward a new strategy called "electronic cities". The current study aims at investigating the Electronic Cities' Strategic Plan...

African cities face immense challenges over the coming decades. As countries urbanize, African cities must maintain service provision for rapidly increasing populations, yet with limited resources. In particular, urban food systems must be able to cope with regional food shortages and catalyze (or at least enable) the distribution of food from diverse sources in order to ensure that the cost of...

Regional ecosystems have been greatly affected by the rapid expansion of urban areas. In order to explore the impact of land use change on net primary productivity (NPP) in rapidly developing cities during the current urbanization process, we quantified land use change in Liaoning province between 2000 and 2010 using net primary productivity as an indicator of ecosystem productivity and health....

This paper examines the spatial structures of commercial real estate buildings (Offices, Retails) in four Chinese cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou. In contrast to previous studies, this paper focused on the changes of the spatial pattern by involving the time variables to categorize the buildings into 3 time periods (Before 1995, 1996-2005, and 2006-2015). The research questio...

growing population and increasing urbanization has led to the expansion of informal settlements. informal settlements in developing countries, more than other urban tissues are exposed to various risks and natural disasters. this type of settlements, often develop and spread without regard to natural hazards, with no specific plan and no attention to regulations. expansion of informal settlemen...