Land Development, Human Land Use, and Urban Sprawl in Puerto Rico - An Island-wide Approach from Geotechnologies

"Urbanization is a subject of frequent attention in Puerto Rico, especially as it refers to sprawl, degradation of natural resources like forests, wetlands, and watersheds, and reduction of agricultural lands. Puerto Rico, with 9000 square kilometers and close to 4 million people, is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. It is also a "biodiversity hotspot". Island-wide analyses of urban development provide an opportunity for a comprehensive visualization and interpretation of the human-use of the landscape. We make use of geotechnologies and population census data, mapping the urban areas of the island, analyzing patterns of development and their relationships with topographic variables, identifying areas of urban-use and rural-use, and analyzing how people are distributed in the lands they occupy as an input for evaluating land consumption and urban sprawl. We found that 6% of the island is covered by high-density developments and 5% by low-density. While high-density occurs typically in the plains and at lowers elevations, low-density is distributed in a wider range of physiographic units, including plains, hills, and mountains. Urban-use areas, including developed and non-developed lands within urban centers, encompass 16% of the island. Two classes of Rural-use areas are reported: high and low rural population densities, representing 36% and 48% of the island respectively. We finally integrated population from the census at fine resolution, categorizing the urban cover in 5 levels of "degree of sprawl". We found that 50% of the urban areas of Puerto Rico are suffering from high levels of sprawl." [Abstract from Conference Program and Book of Abstracts]

[Concurrent Session I-D: Urban Sprawl]

[Presented at "Emerging Issues Along Urban/Rural Interfaces: Linking Science and Society", a conference held March 13-16, 2005 in Atlanta, GA (US)]