Urban mega-structures of the twenty-first century: an assay for the identification and characterization of megalopolis

Abstract

Metropolitanization process has marked the twentieth century urban development. However, since 1950, there has been a real change of scale in this growth: the endless growth of metropolitan suburbs encouraged by the urban sprawl and the increasing urbanization of rural environments in the interstices between cities. This has not only linked previously isolated urban systems, but has generated new urban spaces characterized by increasing complexity, as well as by the unlimited expansion of urbanizing phenomenon. The Megalopolis, intuited in the early twentieth century by the precursor thinkers of contemporary urbanism, have come true.

The objective of the paper is to set up a methodology for the identification and preliminary characterization of megalopolis in the early twenty-first century. The recent publication of new global view of Earth's city lights by NASA gives the opportunity to develop methodologies of image analysis capable of identifying urban mega-structures on a planetary scale.