Urban Sprawl: A Comprehensive Reference Guide

Abstract

The rapid urbanization has been increasing in mega-cities. It causes many effects in social, economic, or environmental aspect depending on context. The impact on urban development becomes one of visible effects that city planners pay attention to. The planners in U.S. and European cities awakened to initially study urban sprawl phenomenon, as well as a critical situation of haphazard development. Therefore, the urban sprawl theory was originated from western countries’ concept and generally referred in western context. However, this phenomenon occurs not only in western cities but Asian cities also encounter a similar situation. Although sprawl situation is similar in many cities, methodology to measure the extent of sprawl is various based on data source and cause of sprawl in different context that created unique indicators in different study areas. The lacking of earnest sprawl study leads to determination difficulties in urban development of Asian countries. Hence, it is necessary to learn and apply the comprehensive reference study of urban sprawl from western concept.