Measuring and mapping
"Before we can put a stop to urban sprawl, it's important to understand how to reliably measure it," says Concordia geography professor Jochen Jaeger, co-author of a recent joint European Environment Agency / Federal Office for the Environment report.
"To do that, we developed a metric called Weighted Urban Proliferation -- or WUP. It takes into account how much of an area is built up, the spatial dispersion of the built-up areas, and how many people live or work in a given place."
Once Jaeger and his co-authors had developed the WUP method, the research team combed through detailed data sets on 32 European countries to map out general trends and pinpoint problem areas.
They found that large parts of Europe are affected by urban sprawl, with the lowest levels in Iceland and the highest in the Netherlands and Belgium.
At a more granular level, sprawl is most pronounced in wide rings around city centres, along large transport corridors and along coastlines. The lowest levels of sprawl are mainly associated with mountain ranges or remote areas -- hence Iceland's ranking.
"This is the first report to provide a comparable measurement of urban sprawl for all EU and European Free Trade Association countries. It clearly shows that the rate of sprawl is increasing, and confirms there is an urgent need for action," says Jaeger.