Monitoring urban sprawl in Germany: towards a GIS-based measurement and assessment approach

During the 1990s, the phenomenon of urban sprawl received growing attention in the international planning debate. However, a survey of the literature yields no agreement in terms of defining and measuring urban sprawl. The absence of a common understanding constrains the analysis of sprawl's causes, costs and non-monetary consequences as well as the formulation of planning strategies towards economically, ecologically and socially acceptable land use patterns. On this background, we present an indicator-based framework for the measurement and assessment of urban sprawl and the quantitative derivation of certain sprawl types described in this article. The GIS-based tool relies on the assumption that sprawl is a multidimensional phenomenon which can be measured only with a multiple-indicator approach. We introduce indicators that refer to three specific impact dimensions of urban sprawl (density, pattern and surface) and present single-indicator and aggregated maps for the whole territory of Germany. The article ends with some conclusions on how to effectively implement the model within the existing national and state land use monitoring approaches.