Abstract
The contribution intends to explore a new method to perimeter and identify urban areas based on a percolation model. Starting from the analysis of the road network and its nodes, through the application of some percolation measures it allows to identify different levels of urban agglomeration. The centrality of the road network is considered the primary indicator for understanding the urban agglomeration pattern. The simulation is applied to whole Italy. The simulation results are then compared with data from other sources of map** urban regions, such as satellite lights and the degree of urbanization from the JRC GHSL. The correspondence between these map**s and the one obtained with the percolation model is analyzed and the rank-size distribution of the “natural cities” thus obtained is observed. The purpose of the contribution is to find and experiment a spatial searching method that allows us to identify the different shapes and sizes of contemporary settlement, regardless of the definitions that can be derived from administrative boundaries. The hypothesis is that the conurbations of contemporary settlement tend to merge and fragment in a dynamic process of continuous evolution, caused by the fact that urban limits follow flows and networks, without regard for historical administrative boundaries.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Batty, M.: Defining cities. In: Batty, M. (ed.) Inventing Future Cities. MIT Press, Cambridge (2018)
Alexander, C.: A City is Not a Tree. Sustasis Press/Off. The Common Books (2017)
Kostof, S.: The City Shaped. Little, Brown and Company (1991)
Cristelli, M., Batty, M., Pietronero, L.: There is more than a power law in Zipf. Sci. Rep. 2(1), 1–7 (2012)
Jiang, B., Jia, T.: Zipf’s law for all the natural cities in the United States: a geospatial perspective. Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci. 25(8), 1269–1281 (2011)
Jiang, B., Yin, J., Liu, Q.: Zipf’s law for all the natural cities around the world. Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci. 29(3), 498–522 (2015)
Lin, H.X., Huang, J.C., Chen, Y.Q.: The identification of developmental pattern of urban agglomerations in china based on GIS. Iwemse, 663–671 (2018)
Loibl, W., et al.: Characteristics of urban agglomerations in different continents: history, patterns, dynamics, drivers and trends. In: Ergen, M. (ed.) Urban Agglomeration, BoD Books, pp. 29–63 (2018)
Cottineau, C., et al.: Defining urban clusters to detect agglomeration economies. Environ. Plan. B Urban Anal. City Sci. 46(9), 1611–1626 (2019)
Batty, M.: Hierarchy in cities and city systems. In: Pumain, D. (ed.) Hierarchy in Natural and Social Sciences. Methodos Series, vol. 3, pp. 143–168. Springer, Dordrecht (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4127-6_7
Batty, M., Longley, P.A.: Fractal Cities: A Geometry of Form and Function. Academic Press, London (1994)
Batty, M., **e, X.: Self-organized criticality and urban development. Discrete Dyn. Nat. Soc. 3, 109–124 (1999)
Tannier, C., et al.: A fractal approach to identifying urban boundaries. Geogr. Anal. 43(2), 211–227 (2011)
Eeckhout, J.: Gibrat’s law for (all) cities. Am. Econ. Rev. 94(5), 1429–1451 (2004)
Chen, H.P.: Commuting and land use patterns. Geogr. Environ. Model. 4(2), 163–173 (2000)
Holmes, T.J., Lee, S.: Cities as six-by-six-mile squares: Zipf's law? In: Glaeser, E.L. (ed.) The Economics of Agglomerations. University of Chicago Press, Chicago (2009)
Rozenfeld, H.D., et al.: The area and population of cities: new insights from a different perspective on cities. Am. Econ. Rev. 101(5), 2205–2225 (2011)
Fang, C., Yu, D.: Urban agglomeration: an evolving concept of an emerging phenomenon. Landsc. Urban Plan. 162, 126–136 (2017)
Howard, E.: To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform. Routledge, London (2009)
Geddes, P.: Cities in Evolution. Norgate & Wiliams, London (1915)
Christaller, W.: Central Places in Southern Germany. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs (ed or.: 1933) (1966)
Shen, Y.: Understanding Functional Urban Centrality. University College London, London (2017)
Zipf, G.K.: Human Behavior and The Principle of Least Effort. Addison-Wesley, Cambridge (1949)
Batty, M.: The size, scale, and shape of cities. Science 319(5864), 769–771 (2008)
Hellervik, A., Nilsson, L., Andersson, C.: Preferential centrality - a new measure unifying urban activity, attraction and accessibility. Environ. Plann. B 46(7), 1331–1346 (2019)
Kalpana, L.D.C.H.N., et al.: A novel approach to measure the pattern of urban agglomeration based on the road network. Int. J. Sustain. Dev. Plan. 16(2), 251–262 (2021)
Jayasinghe, A., Sano, K., Abenayake, C., Mahanama, P.: A novel approach to model traffic on road segments of large-scale urban road networks. MethodsX 6, 1147–1163 (2019)
Zhang, S.: Classification of urban land use based on graph theory and geographic information system. Ingénierie des Systèmes d’Information 24(6), 633–639 (2019)
Hellervik, A., Nilsson, L., Andersson, C.: Preferential centrality - a new measure unifying urban activity, attraction and accessibility. Environ. Plann. B Urban Anal. City Sci. 46(7), 1331–1346 (2019)
Arcaute, E., et al.: Cities and regions in Britain through hierarchical percolation. R. Soc. Open Sci. 3(4), 150691 (2016)
Vaughan, L., Hillier, B.: The city as one thing. Prog. Plan. 67(3), 205–230 (2007)
Herega, A.: Some applications of the percolation theory: brief review of the century beginning. J. Mater. Sci. Eng., 409–414 (2015)
Masucci, P.A., Arcaute, R., Hatna, E., Stanilov, K., Batty, M.: On the problem of boundaries and scaling for urban street networks. J. R. Soc. Interface. 12(111), 20150763 (2015)
Piovani, D., Molinero, C., Wilson, A.: Urban retail dynamics: insights from percolation theory and spatial interaction modelling (2017). ar**v:1703.10419
Dematteis, G., Bonavero, P.: Il sistema urbano italiano nello spazio unificato europeo. Il Mulino, Bologna (1997)
Römer, R.A.: Percolation, renormalization and quantum hall transition. In: Hoffmann, K.H., Schreiber, M. (eds.) Computational Statistical Physics, pp. 279–294. Springer, Heidelberg (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-04804-7_17
Malik, S., Tariq, F., Awan, Y: Urbanization and transforming urban form of Asian cities-cases of Bangkok, Tokyo & Mumbai. Int. J. Eng. Res. Mech. Civ. Eng. (IJERMCE) 2(6) (2017)
Imre, A.R., Jan, B.: The Minkowski-Bouligand dimension and the interior-to-edge ratio of habitats. Fractals 14(1), 49–53 (2006)
Mandelbrot, B.B.: The fractal geometry of nature. Am. J. Phys. 51(3) (1983)
Falconer, K.: Fractal Geometry: Mathematical Foundations and Applications. Wiley, New York (2004)
Schubert, E., Sander, J., Ester, M., Kriegel, H.P., Xu, X.: DBSCAN revisited, revisited: why and how you should (still) use DBSCAN. ACM Trans. Database Syst. (TODS) 42(3), 19 (2017)
Wang, H., Zhou, C., Li, L.: Design and application of a text clustering algorithm based on parallelized K-means clustering. Revue d’Intelligence Artificielle 33(6), 453–460 (2019)
Brenner, N., Schmid, C.: Towards a new epistemology of the urban? City 19, 2–3, 151–182 (2015)
Soja, E.W.: Regional urbanization and the end of the metropolis era. In: Bridge, G., Watson, S. (eds.) The New Blackwell Companion to the City. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford (2011)
OECD: Redefining “Urban”: A New Way to Measure Metropolitan Areas. OECD Publishing, Paris (2012)
Balducci, A., Curci, F., Fedeli, V. (eds.): Post-Metropolis Territory: Looking for a New Urbanity. Routledge, London, New York (2017b)
Arshad, S., Hu, S., Ashraf, B.N.: Zipf’s law and city size distribution: a survey of the literature and future research agenda. Phys. A Stat. Mech. Appl. 492, 75–92 (2018)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Lombardini, G. (2024). Percolation Model to Capture Urban Coalescence («Natural Cities»). The Case of Italy. In: Marucci, A., Zullo, F., Fiorini, L., Saganeiti, L. (eds) Innovation in Urban and Regional Planning. INPUT 2023. Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, vol 467. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-54118-6_48
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-54118-6_48
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-54117-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-54118-6
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)