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- Title
Projecting Global Urban Area Growth Through 2100 Based on Historical Time Series Data and Future Shared Socioeconomic Pathways.
- Authors
Li, Xuecao; Zhou, Yuyu; Eom, Jiyong; Yu, Sha; Asrar, Ghassem R.
- Abstract
Improved understanding of the potential growth of urban areas at the national and global levels is needed for sustainable urban development. Current panel data analysis and local scale modeling are limited in projecting global urban area growth with large spatial heterogeneities. In this study, we developed country‐specific urban area growth models using the time series data set of global urban extents (1992–2013) and projected the future growth of urban areas under five Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). Our results indicate the global urban area would increase roughly 40–67% under five SSPs until 2050 relative to the base year of 2013, and this trend would continue to a growth ratio of more than 200% by 2100. The growth of urban areas under relatively unsustainable development pathways (e.g., regional rivalry SSP3 and inequality SSP4) is smaller compared to other SSPs. Although developing countries would remain as leading contributors to the increase of global urban areas in the future, they may exhibit different temporal patterns, that is, plateaued or monotonically increasing trends. This variation is primarily attributed to the compounding effect of the growth in population and gross domestic product. Our urban area data set presents a first country‐level urban area projection under the five SSPs, spanning from 2013 to 2100. This data set has a great potential to support various global change studies, for example, urban sprawl simulation, integrated assessment modeling for sustainable development goals, and investigation of the impact of urbanization on atmospheric emissions, air quality, and human health. Plain Language Summary: Improved understanding of the potential growth of urban areas at the national and global levels is highly needed for sustainable urban development. In this study, we developed country‐specific urban area growth models using the time series data set of global urban extents (1992–2013) and projected the future growth of urban areas under five Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). We found the global urban area would increase by roughly 40–67% under five SSPs until 2050 relative to the base year of 2013, and this trend would continue to a growth ratio of more than 200% by 2100. Although developing countries would remain as leading contributors to the increase of global urban areas in the future, they may exhibit different temporal patterns, that is, plateaued or monotonically increasing trends. Our urban area data set presents a first country‐level urban area projection under the five SSPs, spanning from 2013 to 2100. This data set has a great potential to support various global change studies, for example, urban sprawl simulation, integrated assessment modeling for sustainable development goals, and investigation of the impact of urbanization on atmospheric emissions, air quality, and human health. Key Points: We projected urban area growth until 2100 in each country by developing country‐specific urban growth modelsGlobal urban area would increase by 40–67% under five SSPs until 2050 with large variations among countriesThe generated data set is the first country‐level urban extents under five SSPs with potential use in studies of global environmental changes
- Subjects
CITIES &; towns; URBAN growth; SUSTAINABLE urban development; GLOBAL environmental change; TIME series analysis; POPULATION
- Publication
Earth's Future, 2019, Vol 7, Issue 4, p351
- ISSN
2328-4277
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1029/2019EF001152