Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Urbanization Using GIS and Remote Sensing in Developing Countries

Dear Colleagues,

The international statistics show that the global urban population will increase up to 66% of the total by 2050. The United Nations (UN) projection shows that urbanization will be faster in Asian and African countries than on other continents. In the future, rapid urbanization will bring severe environmental and socio-economic problems such as land degradation, loss of urban ecosystem services, urban heat islands, air pollution, flooding, health, urban poverty, crimes and violence, and traffic congestion. Thus, sustainable urban development has become a widely discussed concept in various disciplines such as geography, engineering, economics, politics, and sociology, among others. Sustainable urban development is viewed as a way of preventing, reducing and mitigating the environmental and socioeconomic negative impacts associated with urbanization, notwithstanding its positive impacts (i.e., social and economic improvement of livelihoods). Hence, capturing the spatial–temporal variation of urbanization patterns will help to introduce proper sustainable urban planning in developing countries, especially for Asian and African cities.

During the last two decades, many researchers have focused on the urbanization pattern and process in developing countries. In this context, the scarcity of the spatial data has been an obstacle to studying the urbanization quantitatively, especially in Asian and African cities. The use of remote sensing data and geographical information systems (GIS) techniques can be used to overcome the above limitations. The data such as land use and land cover, land surface temperature, population density, and energy consumption can be extracted based on remote sensing in various spatial and temporal resolutions, and GIS techniques can be used to analyze the urbanization patterns and also to predict future patterns. Thus, the link between urbanization and sustainable urban development has increasingly become a principal issue in efforts to design and develop sustainable cities at the local, regional, and global levels.

In this Special Issue, we focus on the spatiotemporal analysis of urbanization using GIS and remote sensing in developing countries, with a special concern for future urban sustainability in Asia and Africa. We will contribute to this Special Issue through research papers, case studies, conceptual or analytic reviews, and policy-relevant articles that will help achieve sustainability in urban cities in Asia and Africa.

Prof. Dr. Yuji Murayama
Dr. Matamyo Simwanda
Dr. Manjula Ranagalage
Guest Editors

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