Integrating Remote Sensing/GIS Methods in Housing Analysis

Abstract

This paper develops a methodology for integrating Remote Sensing and GIS techniques to identify low income informal homestead subdivisions (AKA colonias) in peri-urban areas of US metropolitan areas. Unlike their self-build counterparts in Latin American cities, housing production is self-managed (trailers and manufactured homes), situated on poorly or un-serviced lots. Now that we have begun to understand the logic and rationale underpinning their existence, and know where (spatially), and what (physical) “footprints”, to look for, this paper will present data for central Texas in order to report on the methodology adopted to identify and quantify these peri-urban settlement phenomena