The settlement of P.T.E., the Multifunctional Centre to serve the Nautical and Technological District of North-East Sardinia, situated on a stretch of coastline north of the Gulf of Olbia, forces us to think about what kind of relationship could be established between the architecture and surrounding environment, strongly characterized on an urbanistic and landscape level. The extension of the productive area denotes the hard strokes of the intensive anthropization of the land, in one of the most beautiful and evocative places in the Gulf.

Urban footprint refers to the proportion of paved surface (built up, roads, etc.) with the reduction of other land use types in a region. Rapid increase in the urban areas is the major driver in landscape dynamics with the significant erosion in the quality and quantity of the natural ecosystems. The urban expansion process hence needs to be monitored, quantified and understood for effective planning and the sustainable management of natural resources.

Resumen

The emergence of GIS and the availability of high resolution geographic data have improved our ability to investigate the residential segregation in cities and to identify the temporal changes of the spatial phenomena. Using GIS, we have quantitatively and visually analyzed the correspondence between land-use distribution and Arab residential patterns and their changes in the period between 1983 and 2008 in five mixed Arab-Jewish Israeli cities. Results show a correspondence between the dynamics of Arab/Jewish residential patterns and the spatial distribution of various land-uses.

The present study assesses changes (1949-2008) in the structure of a Mediterranean urban area (Rome, Italy) in three phases (compact growth, medium-density growth, low-density growth) of its recent expansion which reflect different economic contexts at the local scale. Using a quantitative approach based on land-use indicators and landscape metrics, distribution and fragmentation of built-up areas were analyzed from high-resolution and diachronic digital maps covering the investigated area (1,500 km2).

Nowadays many seaside towns, economically based on marine tourism, need operations to reinvent and recovery their own image and to define a new strategy of urban development. The presence of the sea is of primary importance and it should be considered not only as an economic resource, but mainly as a strong element of identity that must interact with the urban landscape.

Resumen

Urbanization is undoubtedly a key driver
of development -- cities provide the national platform for
prosperity, job creation, and poverty reduction. But
urbanization also poses enormous challenges that one is
familiar with: congestion, air pollution, social divisions,
crime, the breakdown of public services and infrastructure,
and the slums that one billion urban resident's call
home. Urbanization is perhaps the single most important

Cities emerge from the spatial
concentration of people and economic activities. But spatial
concentration is not enough; the economic viability of
cities depends on people, ideas, and goods to move rapidly
across the urban area. This constant movement within dense
cities creates wealth but also various degrees of
unpleasantness and misery that economists call negative
externalities, such as congestion, pollution, and

Many developing countries display
remarkably high degrees of urban concentration that are
incommensurate with their levels of urbanization. The cost
of excessively high levels of urban concentration can be
very high in terms of overpopulation, congestion, and
productivity growth. One strand of the theoretical
literature suggests that such high levels of concentration
may be the result of restrictive trade policies that trigger

This paper examines the employment
growth of Indian districts from 2000 to 2010 in the
manufacturing and services sectors. Specialization and
diversity metrics that combine industries in both sectors
are calculated and related to subsequent job growth. The
analysis finds robust and consistent evidence that the
diversity of industries in the district across the two
sectors links to subsequent job growth. Somewhat

This paper documents a significant
impact of climate variation on urbanization in Sub-Saharan
Africa, primarily in more arid countries. By lowering farm
incomes, reduced moisture availability encourages migration
to nearby cities, while wetter conditions slow migration.
The paper also provides evidence for rural-urban income
links. In countries with a larger industrial base, reduced
moisture shrinks the agricultural sector and raises total