Urban sprawl: a planetary growth process?

Abstract

In this paper the urban expansion of cities in Spain and Mexico is analyzed. Using remote sensing technologies the land consumption is traced. Results suggest the existence of two models of land consumption: one based on historical urban tissues, characterized by high densities, and other based on low densities related to the contemporary paradigm of urbanization. In the last decades both models seems to converge, in such a process the land consumption is the dominant feature. Urban sprawl seems to be a process which was originally confined to industrialized countries, but now has reached other less developed territories. Both Spain and Mexico can be considered as such peripheries in their respective SW Europe and North America context.