Cities are not all the same, or at least their evolution isn’t, according to new research from the University of Colorado Boulder.
Cities are not all the same, or at least their evolution isn’t, according to new research from the University of Colorado Boulder.
These findings, out this week in Nature Communications Earth and Environment and Earth System Science Data, buck the historical view that most cities in the United States developed in similar ways. Using a century’s worth of urban spatial data, the researchers found a long history of urban size (how big a place is) “decoupling” from urban form (the shape and structure of a city), leading to cities not all evolving the same—or even close.
The researchers hope that by providing this look at the past with this unique data set, they’ll be able to glimpse the future, including the impact of population growth on cities or how cities might develop in response to environmental factors like sea level rise or wildfire risk.
“We can learn so much more about our cities about and urban development, if we know how to exploit these kinds of new data, and I think this really confirms our approach,” said Stefan Leyk, a geography professor at CU Boulder and one of the authors on the papers.
Read more at University of Colorado Boulder
Image: Washington, D.C. and surrounding area. (Credit: Johannes Uhl)
