Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 1973.

The issue of urban sprawl has been discussed extensively in planning circles over the past two decades. The result of sprawled cities is far-reaching. Some see it is a major contributor to air pollution and traffic congestion and it encourages development on prime agricultural land and floodplains. Others discuss the monetary implications of sprawl calculating costs of infrastructure, fuel and the time spent traveling. In South Africa, major urban areas have one important feature in common with this North American, Australian and British phenomenon- that urban growth has taken the form of dispersed residential accretion at the city edge, however, the reasons for sprawling urban areas in South Africa can be attributed to an intricate and complicated cultural and political history. Following a unique situation in South African urban areas, the Gauteng Provincial Government recognised the growing pressure to rectify the situation in order to achieve a more equitable urban environment to all its citizens. One of the initiatives proposed was the containment of urban growth inside the Province. The idea of a more compact urban environment held the promise of increased accessibility to urban opportunities, greater viability of public transport, as well as environmental advantages. Together with its three metropolitan municipalities, Gauteng province proved to be pioneer in initiating and implementing an “Urban Growth Management” approach (The Gauteng Urban Edge) in its urban areas, however, this approach remains widely debated and controversial throughout planning circles in South Africa. The study explores the reasons and rationales underpinning the implementation of a growth management approach as gathered from international literature, and whether these reasons were in fact informing the Gauteng Provincial government’s reasons for initiating an urban edge. It also considers the different tools and mechanisms available for urban growth management and how these tools and mechanisms and their respective objectives informed the idea behind an urban edge specifically. The study further reviews the opinions and ideas of role-players who were involved in delineating and implementing the urban edge and based on these factors, attempts to draw some conclusions on what could possibly have improved the process of initiating and implementing the Gauteng Urban Edge. Copyright / Dissertation (MT&RP)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Town and Regional Planning / unrestricted

<p> In this paper, empirical tests of a dynamic urban growth model are discussed. It is assumed that population change in any urban region is a function of the population size of the urban centres in the system and of the distances between them. A set of linear equations is simultaneously estimated by a least squares procedure. The parameters of the model; the equilibrium population of each urban region, the rate of natural increase, and the propensity to migrate between urban regions, are calculated from the regression coefficients. By estimating a series of equations at different times, a set of parameter estimates are obtained. The parameter estimates fluctuate erratically. Recommendations for further research include the redefinition of the model, and of the urban system. </p> / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

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The overall purpose of this study was to provide information concerning the comparative and competitive abilities of industries and regions within the State and to aid in understanding the changing levels and location of economic activity. Ninety-six counties of Virginia were clustered into eight homogeneous sub-regions by use of clustering analysis and stepwise multiple discriminant analysis. Growth rate differential analysis was performed for each of the eight study sub-regions. Industrial location patterns of the sub-regions of Virginia were examined in terms of location quotients and coefficients of specialization. It was found that the natural resources oriented industries such as agriculture, mining, food production, lumber production, and stone and clay production were highly represented in the rural sub-regions. Manufacturing as a whole was highly represented in the rural industrialized sub-regions; however, the weighted shares of the state total manufacturing employment in these sub-regions were not as great as that of the urban sub-region delineated in the study which showed relatively low representation of manufacturing. There was strong evidence that the manufacturing in the rural sub-regions was in general the rural-oriented manufacturing industries such as food, textile, apparel, stone and clay products, and furniture products. Urban oriented industries such as trade, transportation, contracted construction, services, finance and insurance and government were highly represented in the urbanized subregion. The opposite was true of the rural sub-regions. In the State of Virginia, most of the urban oriented industries were growing faster than the natural resources oriented industries such as agriculture, mining, lumber products, and food products. Unemployment was also declining in terms of percentage change during the 1960-1970 decade. At the sub-regional level, only the urbanized sub-region showed higher than State average growth in both employment and earnings. The other regions showed relative declines in both employment and earnings when compared to the State. Seven of the eight sub-regions of Virginia suffered comparative disadvantages in terms of industrial mixes showing declines in both employment and earnings. The urbanized region benefited from increases in employment and earnings due to both favorable industrial mix and wage structure. Urban oriented industries in general showed comparative abilities in urban areas, while the rural-oriented industries suffered comparative disadvantage in both urban and rural areas. Manufacturing, in general, enjoyed greater comparative abilities in rural areas than in urban areas. Performances of the sub-regions also showed similar trends as the comparative abilities of the regions. All of the sub-regions except the urban sub-region suffered relative declines in their shares of total state employment and earnings. Both rural and urban oriented industries in the urban sub-region showed successful performances, while most of the rural oriented industries suffered competitive disabilities in the rural regions expressed in terms of growth of employment and earnings. The employment projection for the year of 1980 showed that unless the present regional industrial mix for each of the regions is altered, the regional variation in employment growth would be greater during the 1970-1980 decade than in the 1960-1970 decade. / Ph. D.

This study examines the impact of the opportunity cost of urban land on urban growth. Based on prices, costs and productivity data on agricultural commodities at county levels, the opportunity cost of land was measured by the weighted revenue, cost, and government payment per acre of farm lands. Aggregating county data to metropolitan area levels, a panel data for 269 metropolitan areas from 1978-2000 were constructed. This study found that, as predicted by the theory, cities grow slower when revenue increases or cost decrease in the area. The impact of commodity program payment was also examined. Our results show that price shocks and agricultural subsidies do have an instantaneous impact on urban growth by a ecting the opportunity cost of urban land.

<p> </p><p>The aim of this paper is to analyse the urban development in Dubai by means of the fourquadrant model, presented by DiPasquale and Wheaton, which represents the market for real estate use and assets. The focus is on factors such as economic growth, access to oil, population growth and the incentive of the government to promote developments in Dubai, to study how they affect the real estate market. It is observed how all these factors contribute to the expansion of the construction sector and thereby the stock of space. However, because Dubai's economy is independent of the oil sector, access to oil is solely assumed to contribute to a higher amount of disposable capital and therefore does not have any upward pressure on the rent and the price level as the remaining factors.</p><p> </p>

La croissance explosive de la population sénégalaise a permis d’atteindre 13 millions d’habitants en 2009 contre 2 millions en 1950. La moitié de cette population, constituée largement de jeunes, vivent dans les zones urbaines comme Touba, Thiès et Saint Louis. Cet essor démographique a conduit à l’extension spatiale et la création de nouvelles centralités dans les villes sénégalaises. Il en résulte des paysages urbains et des fonctions très contrastés. Ce décalage fonctionnel et géographique a créé des besoins de mobilités très fortes.Dans les zones urbaines non planifiés et/ou éloignées des centres, les mobilités de proximité se développent par le biais de la marche à pieds et des transports hippomobiles. Alors que les déplacements menant vers les centres pour des motivations de travail, de commerce, d’études ou d’accès aux services divers se font essentiellement via les transports collectifs motorisés.De toute évidence, les relations entre transport et urbanisme sont ambivalentes. Si l’urbanisation précède le réseau de transport dans les quartiers périphériques, ailleurs, ils jouent un rôle majeur dans la structuration des espaces urbains notamment dans les centres historiques et le long des grands axes routiers.Pourtant, les transports informels opèrent en marge des règles pour satisfaire les besoins de mobilité des usagers à faible revenu. Ce qui rend ainsi éminent le rôle des pouvoirs publics dans la régulation des transports. / Senegal’s population grew in excess of 13 million people in 2009 from 2 million in 1950. The urban population growth led to the spatial extension and centralities of the cities. Half of the population, largely young, lives in urban areas like Touba, Thiès and Saint Louis. That gave a very contrasting urban landscapes and diverse urban functions. This shift has created very strong functional and geographical mobility needs. In urban unplanned areas and / or remote from centers, local mobility grew through walk and horse-drawn transport. Movements leading to the centers for reasons of work, commerce, education or access to various services abound via motorized transport.Clearly, the relationship between transport and urban planning are ambivalent. If urban development precedes the transport network in the suburbs, elsewhere, it plays a major role in the structuring of urban areas, especially in the historic centers and along major highways.Yet this informal transport is operating outside the rules, it meets the mobility needs of many low-income users. Thus, it is making prominent the role of the government to regulate the transports sector.

The catalyst for the urban growth of Skipton during the formative period of the modern town between 1865 and 1914 was indigenous investment and organisational change in cotton textiles in the aftermath of the Cotton Famine. Railway investment also played an important, although lesser part. The process was facilitated notably by the relaxation of policy on land tenure by the principal landowner and by the work of a well managed local authority. The resulting net in-migration, along with the internal redistribution of population necessitated by the extension of commercial and other services in the town centre, was accommodated by house building in clusters which were either aligned with or removed from the main factory sites. This gave rise to a distinctive pattern of social and spatial segregation, the distribution of which was governed principally by the need for factories to have access to water supplies for steam raising and condensing. Thus the canal corridor beyond the existing built-up area was subject to textile colonisation while wholly residential development was more closely associated with existing high status housing elsewhere. The study considers the processes involved in creating this pattern of development with particular reference to the values and activities of the principal decision-makers. It also discusses the resultant shift in power and influence from the principal landowner to the local authority and to industrial and commercial interests which increasingly were based outside the town. Arising from this a model of urban growth is proposed and tested against neighbouring small textile towns.