%0 Journal Article
%T Urban Sprawl in the Mediterranean Urban Regions in Europe and the Crisis Effect on the Urban Land Development: Madrid as Study Case
%A Jaime D¨Şaz-Pacheco
%A Juan Carlos Garc¨Şa-Palomares
%J Urban Studies Research
%D 2014
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2014/807381
%X The middle of 2007 saw the beginning of a worldwide financial crisis that led to a sharp reduction in investment based on construction and urban development. This new situation is generating a new process, characterised by a slowdown that has almost reached a standstill when compared with the frenzied development of previous decades. In order to analyse these processes, this study examines urban land use changes and the urban growth rate and spatial dynamics of the metropolitan region of Madrid. The analysis has been carried out on a large scale between two periods (2000¨C2006 and 2006¨C2009) using a regional land use geodatabase. The results show the changes in the urban land use dynamics that took place over these two periods that could characterise the cities of Mediterranean Europe, where contrarily to the general pattern in Europe built-up areas are combining scattered built-up areas with new aggregated compact developments. 1. Introduction Intensification of urbanization across all regions of the globe, together with the greater ease of cartographic land use data handling through GIS and remote sensing techniques, have led to a proliferation of these kinds of studies in recent years. Analysis of urban expansion in cities in the developing world has become more and more frequent [1¨C5]. Likewise research on the rapid growth of Asian cities is becoming increasingly abundant (see [6, 7] or [8]). In Europe, the studies which deal with urban sprawl approaches are prevalent. In many cases, especially in Mediterranean regions, this kind of approach is habitually faced from a dualistic perspective, that is, transition from compact to more dispersed growth models, associated with phases of sprawl (see, e.g., [9¨C17]). Nevertheless, urban expansion is characterized by a high degree of complexity [18]. It does not occur in all regions at the same degree, at the same pace, or in the same way. Rather, it must be approached and understood taking into account specific geographical and historical contexts in which particular urban forms shape cities [19]. For this reason some authors note that difficulties that may arise when attempting to study urban growth based on concepts and, above all, indicators, from North American paradigms. Jiang et al. [8] observe that sprawl indices applicable elsewhere may not be directly applied to the Chinese context. In Mediterranean cities, Catal¨˘n et al. [19] have warned that urban trends do not necessarily follow the North-American model and outcomes may differ with respect to the situation found on the other side of the Atlantic.
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/usr/2014/807381/