Abstract
The objective of this paper is to show that morphological similarities between built-up urban surfaces are greater across borders than within cities in Europe: living, architectural and planning trends are international. The spatial arrangement of built-up areas is analysed here by means of fractal indices using a set of 97 town sections selected from 18 European urban agglomerations. The fractal dimension is estimated by correlation techniques. Results confirm that morphological similarities are higher across countries/cities than within. Moreover, two types of fractal laws are considered: one uses the basic fractal scaling law; the other introduces a prefactor a that is often called a “form factor” in the fractal literature. Differences in the results obtained by both laws are explained empirically as well as theoretically, and suggestions are made for further measurements.
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Notes
This freeware program has been developed by Frankhauser, Vuidel and Tannier and may be downloaded on the website (http://www.fractalyse.org/). The original version of this software has been developped in the frame of the French research program “Ville émergente” financed by the PUCA (Plan Urbanisme–Construction–Architecture).
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Thomas, I., Frankhauser, P. & Badariotti, D. Comparing the fractality of European urban neighbourhoods: do national contexts matter?. J Geogr Syst 14, 189–208 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10109-010-0142-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10109-010-0142-4