Building(s and) cities

This paper proposes a novel methodology for delineating urban areas based on a machine learning algorithm that groups buildings within portions of space of sufficient density. To do so, we use the precise geolocation of all 12 million buildings in Spain. We exploit building heights to create a new d...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Arribas-Bel, Daniel, García López, Miquel-Àngel|||0000-0002-0515-2922, Viladecans Marsal, Elisabet|||0000-0003-3722-2371
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2021
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:322043
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/322043
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.1016/j.jue.2019.103217
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Buildings
City size
Machine learning
Transportation
Urban areas
SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities
Descripción
Sumario:This paper proposes a novel methodology for delineating urban areas based on a machine learning algorithm that groups buildings within portions of space of sufficient density. To do so, we use the precise geolocation of all 12 million buildings in Spain. We exploit building heights to create a new dimension for urban areas, namely, the vertical land, which provides a more accurate measure of their size. To better understand their internal structure and to illustrate an additional use for our algorithm, we also identify employment centers within the delineated urban areas. We test the robustness of our method and compare our urban areas to other delineations obtained using administrative borders and commuting-based patterns. We show that: 1) our urban areas are more similar to the commuting-based delineations than the administrative boundaries but that they are more precisely measured; 2) when analyzing the urban areas' size distribution, Zipf's law appears to hold for their population, surface and vertical land; and 3) the impact of transportation improvements on the size of the urban areas is not underestimated.