The Morphology of African Cities
This paper illustrates how the capabilities of GIS and satellite imagery can be harnessed to explore and better understand the urban form of several large African cities (Addis Ababa, Nairobi, Kigali, Dar es Salaam, and Dakar). To allow for compara...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/502451481312733719/The-morphology-of-African-cities http://hdl.handle.net/10986/25810 |
| Summary: | This paper illustrates how the
capabilities of GIS and satellite imagery can be harnessed
to explore and better understand the urban form of several
large African cities (Addis Ababa, Nairobi, Kigali, Dar es
Salaam, and Dakar). To allow for comparability across very
diverse cities, this work looks at the above mentioned
cities through the lens of several spatial indicators and
relies heavily on data derived from satellite imagery.
First, it focuses on understanding the distribution of
population across the city, and more specifically how the
variations in population density could be linked to
transportation. Second, it takes a closer look at the land
cover in each city using a semi-automated texture based land
cover classification that identifies neighborhoods that
appear more regular or irregularly planned. Lastly, for the
higher resolution images, this work studies the changes in
the land cover classes as one moves from the city core to
the periphery. This work also explored the classification of
slightly coarser resolution imagery which allowed analysis
of a broader number of cities, sixteen, provided the lower cost. |
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