Growth in urban extent and allometric analysis of West African cities

Pradeep Adhikari*, Kirsten M. de Beurs

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

21 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Urban area expansion is happening at much faster rates in Asian and African cities than elsewhere in the world. This study uses multi-temporal Landsat images to map the urban extent of six small to large cities in West Africa at four different time steps from the early 1970s–2010. The selected cities are Kumasi of Ghana, Daloa of Cote d’Ivoire, Abuja and Kano in Nigeria, Kindia of Guinea, and Ouagadougou of Burkina Faso. All cities revealed significant urban growth in both urban area and population; however, it was apparent that there was a lot of variability in urban area development. Exponential urban growth rates in the cities were measured as ranging between 0.026 and 0.077, with allometric scaling factors matching those of other countries.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)105-124
Number of pages20
JournalJournal of Land Use Science
Volume12
Issue number2-3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 20 Jan 2017
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • allometric analysis
  • Landsat
  • urban built-up
  • Urban extent
  • urban scaling
  • West Africa

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