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Are you interested in how urban sprawl affects sustainable urban development?

Our summary today works with the article titled Urban sprawl and its impact on sustainable urban development: a combination of remote sensing and social media data from 2021 by Zhenfeng Shao, Neema S. Sumari, Aleksei Portnov, Fanan Ujoh, Walter Musakwa and Paulo J. Mandela, published in the Geo-Spatial information Science journal. Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how urban sprawl affects urban services. This article presents the case of Morogoro in Africa, and the results that sensing and population data can be useful for interpreting urban sprawl and access to urban services.

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Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today I will introduce a research paper by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original paper, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole paper. Stay tuned until because I will give you the 3 most important things and some questions which would be interesting to discuss with a special attention to Australian cities.

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Urban sprawl is one of the major outcomes of urbanisation. Urban sprawl generally refers to the unrestricted growth in many urban areas of housing, commercial development and roads over large expanses of land with little concern to urban planning. Currently, unprecedented urban population growth is the scape goat for urban sprawl within major cities worldwide. As the population of an urban centre increases, its needs for infrastructures, such as transportation, water, sewage and facilities, such as housing, commerce, health, schools and recreation increases, most often resulting in the phenomenon known as urban sprawl. This has become a popular topic in geoscience applications in various regions all around the world.

Recent technological advancements enable urban planners and managers to study and monitor urban conditions and growth. Remote sensing and Global Positioning Systems, also known as GPS, have increased the precision with which urban sprawl can be measured and analysed. With such solutions, deforestation, changes in cultivation, ecosystem and land use transformation patterns can be tracked through airborne and satellite remote sensing very precisely. Such data combined with socioeconomic surveys, social sensing data, censuses and other biophysical information can improve our understanding of land cover and use patterns and how and why change occurs. All this information is important to understand the needs and concerns of local stakeholders at a geographical location, or city.

From a sustainability context, the natural environment and its ecosystems are the delivery medium for all products and services that humans rely on for survival but with the dynamic change in climate, these services have since been altered in terms of effectiveness and quality assurance. Ecosystem services are the benefits that ecosystems provide for both human societies and the earth itself with reference to regulation, provision and cultural significance. These include provisioning services, such as food, water, timber and fibre, regulating services that affect climate, floods, disease, wastes and water quality, cultural services that provide recreational, aesthetic, and spiritual benefits, and supporting services such as soil formation, photosynthesis and nutrient cycling. Humans depend on these because they are vital for us.

Conversely, ecosystem disservices are perceived as negative effects of ecosystem degradation as a result of human activities. It is clearly necessary for planners and decision-makers to have a better understanding of the trade-offs between different development scenarios for sustainability. This study aims to integrate remote sensing satellite imagery and social media data for modelling location and direction of urban sprawl in the case of Morogoro, in order to identify urban sprawl in spatial and temporal patterns, and to determine the impact of urban sprawl on sustainable urban development and in particular ecosystem services for the city. Morogoro urban municipality has a current vision to have a community of people with highest standard of living and sustainable socio-economic development regime, and the authors used remote sensing and Twitter data to investigate the municipality developments in their quest.

Population size is a crucial entity for socio-economic development because it acts as a resource for labour provision during production as well as consumers of various products. Therefore, the size of the population is among the significant parameters for social, economic and environmental sustainability in any locality. The rapid expansion of Morogoro’s urban area has affected the surrounding ecosystem both in terms of land degradation, water supply and loss of agricultural land. Population and built up area growth collectively exert demand pressure on food, infrastructure and facilities, and to consumption of pristine forest, croplands, wetlands and other natural resources. Unfortunately, in reality critical infrastructure has not been able to keep up with rapid urbanisation in Morogoro, jeopardising the aim to create sustainability, in economic, social and environmental perspectives.

Overall, urban sprawl affects negatively the surrounding areas, resulting in ecosystem disservices. The increase in built-up areas resulted in massive road congestions, pollution, unsustainable land development and a decrease in public spaces and parks and increased pressure on public services. People are likely to experience health problems from pollution, and lack of cultural services due to the lack of public services. Indigenous people are especially in danger because the infrastructure is not there for them, but more importantly, urban growth make their livelihoods – agricultural lands – disappear. The built-up areas and deforestation also reduce the opportunity to combat climate change while endangering the land through soil erosion and the water supplies.

Urban expansion has had significant impacts on poverty, living conditions and environmental quality within the sprawl areas of the Morogoro urban municipality, and with that, ecosystem services supporting human and natural populations also declined. The authors suggested for example commercialising infrastructure provision, because this style of planning and regulation would lead to a planned and sustainable future that will be ecologically sensitive, support conservation and biodiversity and provide a safe habitation for urban dwellers.

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What was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Do you have any follow up question? Let me know on Twitter at WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the transcripts and show notes are available! Additionally, I will highly appreciate if you consider subscribing to the podcast or on the website. I hope this was an interesting paper for you as well, and thanks for tuning in!

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Finally, as the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. Urban sprawl generally refers to the unrestricted growth in many urban areas of housing, commercial development and roads over large expanses of land with little concern to urban planning.
2. Urban expansion has had significant impacts on poverty, living conditions and environmental quality within the sprawl areas of the Morogoro urban municipality, and with that, ecosystem services supporting human and natural populations also declined.
3. Planning and regulation need to lead to a planned and sustainable future that will be ecologically sensitive, support conservation and biodiversity and provide a safe habitation for urban dwellers.

Additionally, it would be great to talk about the following questions:

1. What do you think about urban sprawl? How does this phenomenon effect you?
2. What information about your urban area are you projecting through your social media use?
3. What ecosystem services are you using? Have you ever been conscious of such services?

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