Credit: Johannes Uhl
Cities are not all the same, or at least their evolution isn t, according to new research from the University of Colorado Boulder.
These findings, out this week in
Nature Communications Earth and Environment and
Earth System Science Data, buck the historical view that most cities in the United States developed in similar ways. Using a century s worth of urban spatial data, the researchers found a long history of urban size (how big a place is) decoupling from urban form (the shape and structure of a city), leading to cities not all evolving the same or even close.
The researchers hope that by providing this look at the past with this unique data set, they ll be able to glimpse the future, including the impact of population growth on cities or how cities might develop in response to environmental factors like sea level rise or wildfire risk.