Contemporary Spatial Analysis and Simulation of the Settlement Development of the Dresden City Region

Abstract

Spatial analysis and simulation is an essential part of plan-making. This article gives first some results of the application of a methodology developed by the author to analyse the urban form (spatial configuration of the land-use) of the Dresden city region. Using the geographical information system (GIS) ARC/INFO the author computed several metrics such as jaggedness degree, fractal dimension, gravitation measure, relative entropy, and density gradient to measure the degree of urban sprawl and identify the changes of his-torical land-use patterns of the Dresden city region for the years 1880, 1900, 1940, 1953, 1968, 1986, and 1998. The results indicate that contemporary urban growth is character-ised by dispersal and decentralised patterns. Today, there are many debates on how to confine urban sprawl and conserve agricultural land and other important environmentally sensitive areas. Therefore the author linked the spatial analysis to dynamic urban model-ling and developed a multi-layer cellular automata (CA) model to simulate different types of urban forms. This model is one of a new generation of urban simulation models designed underlying of the spatial analysis to help planners create and compare alterna-tive land-use policies: compact monocentric development, decentralized concentration, dispersed development.