Theories, Models and Observations of Urban Spatial Expansion: Patterns, Drivers, Impacts and Vulnerabilities of Future Urban Worlds

Future urbanization is underpinned by explosive population growth and the projected slowing and eventual ending of that growth by roughly the end of the century. Much, if not all global population growth will occur in the world’s cities. UNDESA projections suggest that urban population will increase by over 2.5 billion by 2050, and total urban area may more than double well before then.

Urban growth patterns over the next 3 to 5 decades will have profound long-term consequences. Urbanization involves investments in infrastructure and buildings that tend to be durable, and difficult or costly to change. That is, building roads, residential and commercial buildings, water supply, waste water and utility systems and other infrastructures can institutionalize consumption patterns for long periods and structure how urban residents interact with environmental change across scales, including that for climate. Macro and micro patterns of urban form can have major impacts on urban energy consumption, livability, and the general sustainability of human settlements. The quality of spatial growth of our cities will help to identify the contours of challenges and opportunities to address multiple environmental risks.

Our current understanding of the potential for future urban growth and its impacts is limited by the uncertainty generated by the rapidly changing context of development itself. The relationships associated with urban growth patterns that were true throughout the last several decades cannot be dependably projected forward, as we shift to a non-anecdotal world. Urban analysts have responded this high level of future uncertainty through, at least, two alternative types of investigations. Those that observe, identify and describe current patterns and relationships backgrounded by an understanding of the dynamics of contemporary driving forces of change and those that embrace uncertainty by attempting to describe a number of alternative plausible futures, which identify a range of outcomes.

We invite both types of studies, which focus on urban spatial growth from three perspectives: 1) The identification and description of current trends in spatial patterns of urban change and their environmental impact and vulnerabilities through observation; 2) The exploration of the range of spatial planning and governance strategies that created these patterns, and potential strategies to structure growth in more sustainable ways and 3) spatial modeling of future urban growth patterns and subsequent impacts and vulnerabilities. Papers at varying geographic scales from the metropolitan level to the global will be considered.

Potential papers might examine: 

• Observed spatial patterns of urbanization and associated environmental impacts

• Drivers of spatial urbanization patterns

• Processes and patterns of periurbanization

• Models of potential future spatial urban growth

• Comparative studies of different models of urban spatial expansion

• Studies that examine the quality of spatial urban growth

• Urban spatial patterns associated with adaptation and mitigation to environmental risk

• Examinations of potential systemic disruptors to urbanization patterns