Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 2.9 A periurban village of Besançon, the original pattern ( a ), seven-step dilation isolates the
settlement from neighboring ones ( c ), corresponding to a distance of 28 m (French topographic
map), ( b )and( d ) show the extracted corresponding borders
on a statistical analysis of the cloud of points combining the different dimension
values for each commune. The method is based on bivariate Gaussian distributions;
such a model provides a powerful and nowadays standard tool for clustering (see
references in McLachlan and Peel 2000 ). Details are given in Thomas et al. ( 2008a ).
Finally, six morphological classes were retained. On average, it turned out that the
morphology of the built-up surfaces in Wallonia is strongly influenced by the history
of urbanization and the underlying processes: the history of the urban network, the
nineteenth-century urbanization leading to the Sambre-Meuse industrial corridor,
and the twentieth-century suburbanization spreading from Brussels and other cities
(including Luxembourg). Hence, surface area dimensions of old industrial areas
lie within the range of 1.58-1.84, whereas the boundary dimensions of the dilated
patterns lie between 1.68 and 1.75. Recent periurbanization has generated patterns
with low surface area dimensions of 1.39-1.57 and high boundary dimensions lying
between 1.76 and 1.87. These patterns are rather fragmented with respect to old
industrial cities and confirm the increasing preference of households for living in
semirural areas offering peace and quiet with pleasant landscapes, while still within
reach of urban amenities. In some sense, the morphological properties of periurban
Search WWH ::




Custom Search