The Structure and Form of Urban Settlements - Remote Sensing of Urban and Suburban Areas - page 26

Fig. 2.5 Spatial distribution of Local Moran I for inhabitants per square kilometers
detailed and precise in spatial terms, very high resolution remote sensing images of
urban areas tell us rather little about urban lifestyles, unless supplemented by socio-
economic data. This chapter has set out some of the ways in which definitions of
sprawl may be based upon quantitative measures of urban infrastructure and qualita-
tive impressions of the way that urban policy evolves. An important challenge is to
augment such quantitative and qualitative measures with generalized indices of urban
lifestyle (e.g., sprawling low density settlements suggest suburban lifestyles). Today
there is no single urban “way of life” (if ever there was) and there is a need for a better
and more generalized understanding of lifestyles, since they may hold the key to
understanding how individual cities evolve and change within systems of cities.
Several challenges arise from the use of remote sensing in the analysis of
urban sprawl. More ways of fusing remotely sensed data (see Chapter 11) with
socioeconomic data are required so that the definition of different types of urban
morphology might be readily identified. The current state of the art is such that the