Continuity of built-up areas as a criterion for delimitation of urban settlements

• Main Authors: Samo Drobne, Tadej Žaucer, Mojca Foški, Alma Zavodnik Lamovšek
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Association of Surveyors of Slovenia (Zveza geodetov Slovenije) 2014-03-01
• Series: Geodetski Vestnik
• Subjects: continuous built-up areas; morphological approach; distance between buildings; density of addresses; population density; actual land use; urban land use; urban settlements
• Online Access: http://www.geodetski-vestnik.com/images/58/1/gv58-1_drobne1.pdf

In this paper, we first discuss importance and need for studying the methodology of capturing actual land use. The term ‘urban land use’ is defined; the new term is introduced to replace the currently used terms of ‘construction land’ and/or ‘built-up land’. When studying urban land use and defining detailed categories, several factors and measures need to be considered, such as formal, functional and physiognomic, i.e. morphological, ones. In view of the large scale of such research, we focused here solely on the morphological measures for delimitation of urban settlements. The chosen morphological measures are discussed in greater detail in the Methodology section. Using the indicators of distance between structures, population density and density of house numbers, the measure of continuity of built-up areas is described, serving as a basis for the study on the test examples of three Slovenian cities (Maribor, Upper Gorenjska conurbation and Postojna).The results showed and confirmed the correctness of the working hypothesis, i.e. that the morphological measure is a necessary, but not a sufficient, requirement for the determination and delimitation of urban settlements from other basic land use types.