A case study on the relation between city planning and urban growth using remote sensing and spatial metrics
Despite the unprecedented rate of urbanization around the world, information regarding land use plan-ning andmanagement is not updated frequently enough to accurately track this urban change. Inorder to monitor changes in theurbanenvironment, anunderstandingof the change inpatterns of urbandevelop-ment over time is becoming increasingly important. The objective of this study is to explore an approach for combining remote sensing and spatial metrics to monitor urbanization, and investigate the relation-ship between urbanization and urban land use plans. The study areas, consisting of the cities of Hanoi, Hartford, Nagoya and Shanghai, were examined using Landsat and ASTER data from 1975 to 2003. In this study a program based on the PLADJ spatialmetricwas undertaken toproduce urban growth maps. Then, FRAGSTATS was used to evaluate the characteristics of urban composition. The results showed that the urban core of Nagoya changed moderately over time. Shanghai had a high popul...