Using remote sensing to compare urban growth in coastal and inland areas in the last 25 years: the case of Safor county (Valencia)

Abstract

The rapid urban development in coastal areas has generated the necessity of developing efficient tools to study the municipality growths with great accuracy. The availability of historical satellite images and their convenient processing have helped with its appliance in urbanism to study the pace and form of urban growth. In this paper, two Landsat images of 1984 and 2007 were used to study the evolution of municipalities in the inland and coast of the region of Safor in Valencia (Spain). Processing these data, the shapes of the urban areas were obtained. This concept is known as urban footprint.The spatial overlap of these areas allowed us to compute the direction and growth of the municipalities. In addition, several parameters related to the number, density, area and perimeter of urban areas were computed and represented by radar charts. Considering the data, it was observed that the urban growth in the coastal municipalities tends to join the inner patches with the coastal areas. On the other hand, the interior municipalities show dispersion of urban areas. The results of this study shows the potential of remote sensing for computing variables that define the morphology and growth of municipalities, which are necessary for further urban planning.