A Global Comparative Analysis of Urban Spatio-Temporal Dynamics During the Last Four Decades using Course Resolution Remote Sensing Data and GIS

In recent decades, regional and global ecosystems, earth climate, global diversity has been suffering from ever increased negative effects and pressures from rapid population growth and urban expansion. In this paper, global urban growth during the last four decades are analyzed quantitatively using satellite data and GIS. The Digital Chart of the World (DCW) urban layer represents the urban area in 1960s. The GLCNMO (Global Land Cover by National Mapping Organization) urban map by population density, nighttime lights and MODIS NDVI are used to extract the urban expansion in 2003. The result indicates that urban development has been dramatically increasing in the developing countries, expending more noticeably than in the previous decades and urban forms of developing countries are more compact and dense than their counterparts in Europe and North America.