Variations in development of exurban residential landscapes: timing, location, and driving forces

Residential land-use expansion, an important component of urban sprawl, has a variety of drivers and environmental implications. The goal of this article is to address the timing, location, and mechanisms of different types of residential development. Using land-parcel data and aerial imagery taken between 1950 and 2000 for eight townships in southeastern Michigan, we sampled and classified polygons (854 in total) of four residential types. Socioeconomic characteristics were collected from US census data at the township level and assigned to sample polygons based on the township in which they fell. We then applied survival analysis to achieve the above goal. We found that (1) the development rates varied between residential types over time and (2) the evolution of these types can be explained by different factors. Differentiating such residential types and their associated time-variant patterns usefully sheds light on environmental effects of residential land-use expansions in exurban areas.