Wider urban zones: use of topology and nighttime satellite images for delimiting urban areas

Andrea Spinosa ()
Additional contact information
Andrea Spinosa: Sapienza Università di Roma

Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft, 2022, vol. 42, issue 2, No 3, 159 pages

Abstract: Abstract In the literature on the definition of urban areas, the methodological approaches are divided into formalist (aggregation by density thresholds) and functionalist (aggregation by commuting quotas). This paper proposes a mixed approach, in which the territorial density threshold from the lower-level administrative unit is combined with the brightness of nighttime satellite imagery, intended as a proxy variable for the functional links. The objective is to attain a method for the delimitation of urban areas, to be used by various States and Regions across the world in an iterative procedure, for the delimitation of urban areas as connected topological spaces. This represents an independent method, compared to the various standards adopted by national and regional statistics bureaus, which allows comparing the infrastructural, economic, and social data of different cities in the world. Such cities are hence described in terms of the “real” dimension of the urban areas, partially correcting the bias related to the adoption of administrative perimeters as a “fact” when local authorities make decisions regarding them.

Keywords: Urban area; Metropolitan area; Nighttime map; Image processing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10037-022-00169-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jahrfr:v:42:y:2022:i:2:d:10.1007_s10037-022-00169-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10037

DOI: 10.1007/s10037-022-00169-y

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft is currently edited by Thomas Brenner and Georg Hirte

More articles in Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft from Springer, Gesellschaft für Regionalforschung (GfR) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().