Title :

The morphology of built-up landscapes in wallonia (Belgium) : a classification using fractal indices

Author(s) :

Thomas, Isabelle [Auteur]
Center of Operation Research and Econometrics [Louvain] [CORE]
Department of Geography
Frankhauser, Pierre [Auteur]
Théoriser et modéliser pour aménager (UMR 6049) [ThéMA]
Biernacki, Christophe [Auteur]
MOdel for Data Analysis and Learning [MODAL]

Journal title :

Landscape and Urban Planning

Pages :

99-115

Publisher :

Elsevier

Publication date :

2008

ISSN :

0169-2046

English keyword(s) :

Fractal dimension
Built-up geometry
Pattern analysis
peri-urbanisation
Belgium

HAL domain(s) :

Sciences de l'Homme et Société/Géographie

English abstract : [en]

The spatial pattern of built-up areas within a NUTS-1 European region (Wallonia in Belgium) is analysed using fractal indices. Methodologically, this paper illustrates the usefulness of fractal indices in measuring built-up ...
Show more >The spatial pattern of built-up areas within a NUTS-1 European region (Wallonia in Belgium) is analysed using fractal indices. Methodologically, this paper illustrates the usefulness of fractal indices in measuring built-up morphologies, and also shows that clustering techniques have to be adapted for the non-Euclidean nature of the fractal measurements. An expectation maximisation algorithm (EM) combined with a Bayesian information criterion (BIC) is used. Empirically, we show that fractal indices partition the region into sub-areas that do not correspond to "natural landscapes" but result from the history of urbanisation. Urban sprawl seems to affect most communes, even the remotest villages: traditional (compact, ribbon, etc.) villages are transformed into more complex and heterogeneous shapes. These indices seem to be useful for characterising and understanding the built landscapes, as well as for modelling and planning urban realities.Show less >

Language :

Anglais

Popular science :

Non

Comment :

ACL

Collections :

• Laboratoire Paul Painlevé - UMR 8524

Source :

Harvested from HAL