Atlas of Urban Expansion

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Without the valued assistance of many individuals and organizations, the creation of this Atlas would have been impossible. Their contributions to the study of urban expansion over numerous years deserve lasting acknowledgment.

An earlier study in 2004–2005 leading to the creation of this new edition of the Atlas involved the collection and analysis of satellite imagery and census data in the global sample of 120 cities. It was supported by a grant from the Research Committee of the World Bank to the Transport and Urban Development Department of the Bank and resulted in a publication titled The Dynamics of Global Urban Expansion (Angel, et al., 2005). We are grateful to Christine Kessides of the department for helping us obtain this grant. We are also grateful to Deborah Balk of the Center for International Earth Sciences Information Network (CIESIN) of Columbia University for providing the census maps and data for the sample of cities. The team that worked on this phase of the study included Shlomo Angel, Stephen Sheppard, and Daniel Civco as principal investigators, assisted by Jason Parent, Anna Chabaeva, Micah Perlin, Lucy Gitlin, and Robert Buckley.

This earlier study of the sample of 120 cities continued with a second set of studies in 2009–2012 involving the creation of a set of metrics for measuring urban spatial structure and a python script for calculating these metrics with ArcGIS software. These studies included the collection, geo-referencing, and digitizing of maps at 20–25 year intervals for the 1800–2000 period for a representative sample of 30 cities; the statistical modeling of the results of all the phases; the preparation of several working papers as well as papers in peer-reviewed journals; the drafting of the Lincoln Institute’s Policy Focus Report titled Making Room for a Planet of Cities (Angel, S. et al., 2011); and the preparation and publication of two companion volumes: the Atlas of Urban Expansion (Angel, S. et al., 2012) and Planet of Cities (Angel, S. 2012). Work on these studies was undertaken by Shlomo Angel, Jason Parent, Daniel Civco, and Alejandro Blei. All work on these studies benefited from the generous support of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the direct assistance of Gregory K. Ingram, its president, and Ann LeRoyer, its director of publications at the time.

The Atlas of Urban Expansion—2016 Edition was undertaken by a partnership of three institutions, the NYU Urban Expansion Program at the Marron Institute of Urban Management and the Stern School of Business of New York University, The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. The authors are most grateful to Professor Paul Romer, the director of the Marron Institute, and to Brandon Fuller, its assistant director, for their enthusiastic support and encouragement of this work in all its phases, and to Dean Peter Henry of the Stern School for his strong backing of the NYU Urban Expansion Program. The authors would also like to acknowledge the strong commitment and unrelenting support for this work by Dr. Joan Clos, the executive director of UN-Habitat, and to his able staff, particularly Dr. Eduardo Moreno, the director of research at UN-Habitat. The authors would also like to acknowledge the consistent support and enduring commitment to the work on the new Atlas by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, its president, George W. McCarthy, and his associates, Armando Carbonell and Anthony Flint.

Work on the universe of cities benefited from the collaboration with the United Nations Population Division. The authors are grateful to François Pelletier and Patrick Gerland of the division for their assistance in assembling the universe of cities. We are also grateful to Kytt McManus and Erin Doxsey- Whitfield of the Center for International Earth Sciences Information Network (CIESIN) of Columbia University for their patience and assistance in providing the census maps and data for the sample of cities. We would also like to thank Cai Jianming, Professor at the Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences and University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Douglas Webster, Professor of East Asian Urbanization, School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, Arizona State University, as well as Lin Jing, Phd Candidate at the Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences & University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, for their support in gathering the data set for the Chinese cities included in the universe of cities

Work on the Atlas was undertaken by teams at New York University, the University of Connecticut, the Mahatma Education Society in Mumbai, India, and at the gvSIG Association in Valencia, Spain.

Professor Shlomo Angel of New York University led the teams and directed the Atlas project with the able assistance of Alejandro Blei who managed the work on the Atlas, coordinated the data collection, calculated metrics, experimented with maps, and checked the quality of results. Nicolás Galarza Sanchez was responsible for the creation of the universe of cities. Patrick Lamson-Hall supervised the classification and digitizing work at the Urban Expansion Observatory at the Mahatma Education Society with the able assistance of Manuel Madrid of the gvSIG Association in Valencia. He was also responsible for putting together the maps and metrics for Volume 2 of the Atlas. All worked together to define and test maps and metrics, and to formulate and test the procedures for creating them. Dr. Kevin Thom was responsible for ensuring that the sample of cities was representative of the universe of cities.

Achilles Kallergis and Dr. Pritha Gopalan, who managed the Land and Housing Survey in the global sample of cities, provided useful inputs in discussions as well. Kelly Miller provided valuable administrative support for our work on the atlas. The authors are also grateful for the dedication of Victor Lee, Sahith Reddy Mekala, Diego Riaño Posada and Paula Santa Rosa, who participated as research assistants at several stages of the project.

Professor Daniel Civco at the University of Connecticut led the student team that classified Landsat imagery, and created new animations for the expansion of the representative sample of 30 cities from 1800 to 2014 with the assistance of Rachel Qian Lei. He was assisted in the classification of Landsat imagery by James Hurd and Anna Chabaeva. Dr. Jason Parent was instrumental in creating the python script for processing the classifications and in transforming them into the maps and metrics in the Atlas.

Work on the classification of Landsat imagery was greatly facilitated by analysts at the Urban Expansion Observatory created by the Atlas research team at the Mahatma Education Society in Mumbai, India. The authors wish to thank Dr. K.M. Vasudevan Pillai, founder and CEO of MES and Professor Priam Pillai, the president of the university, for his active collaboration and persistent support of the work of the Observatory. Sharad Shingade, Suman Kumar, Farhan Patel and Archana Sidawakar supervised the work on the classifications, which was mainly undertaken by Jyoti Waghmare, Saikat Maiti, Kalpana Pardeshi, Sagar Gawade, M. Dhananjayan, Nithin Mankar,, S.Rashmita Patro, Akshara P. Byju, Saidalavi, M.R. Rajamohan, Salmanul Faris, Poonam Patel, Jyoti Tirodkar, G. Yognandham, Ravi Choksi, Sanjeev Kumar, Jothirnanth Sai, Abishek Saikia, Shreyas Bhogtre, Janhavi Mane, Suchita Mitra, Ankur Purohit, Rameshwar Hembram, Piter Biswas, Shivani Patel, Bageshree Hedaoo, Manuel Madrid of the gvSIG Association and James Hurd of the University of Connecticut trained the analysts and Patrick Lamson-Hall supervised their work, assisted by Pritika Hingorani of the Infrastructure Development Finance Corporation in Mumbai. These supervisors and analysts were also responsible for digitizing 10-hectare locales in the expansion areas of the 200 cities in the global sample.

Work at the gvSIG Association in Valencia, Spain was supervised by Óscar Martínez, managed by by Manuel Madrid, and consisted mainly of digitizing 10-hectare locales in the areas in the 200 cities in the global sample developed before 1990, as well as on the areas developed in five different time periods in a group of 30 cities where historical data on urban expansion is available. Manuel Madrid was ably assisted by Irene Laborda, Tracy M. Méndez, Paqui Mercadé, David Tesías, Rubén Llorens and Miguel García.