Descripción, análisis y simulación del crecimiento urbano mediante tecnologías de la información geográfica. El caso de la Comunidad de Madrid

Abstract

Recently the significant changes in land use and land cover all over the world has been highlighted. Indeed, one of the most significant changes has been the disproportionate increase of artificial surfaces. In this regard, Madrid region has not been exempt of this process. In fact, this city is considered one of the hotspots of the European Union concerning urban development. This process is reflected by the rapid urbanisation of the last 10-15 years that changed more than 50,000 hectares of its territory to artificial surfaces between 1990 and 2000. As a consequence, it constitutes a new territorial model with serious problems of sustainability, within the framework of a weak urban planning. Thus, the main objective of the thesis is: to describe, analyze and simulate past and future urban dynamics of the Community of Madrid, using statistical analysis techniques, Multicriteria Evaluation (MCA) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). To achieve this objective, different statistical techniques to describe and analyze the dynamics of land use and urban growth were applied. Also, multicriterio techniques were used for simulation of urban growth. MCA is a technique that has not been widely used to simulate different scenarios. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis was performed in order to provide robustness and reliability to the result of the models simulation. The results reveal, in one hand, an uncontrolled urban growth occurred from 1990 to 2000. This growth has been mainly at the expense of agricultural and forest areas. In the other hand, it was also found that urban growth is related with some spatial factors, such as: accessibility to roads and urban areas; slope and altitude, among others. The models and scenarios developed in this study allowed to perform an analysis of the future urban growth patterns in the Community of Madrid from different perspectives. So, three different scenarios were simulated: business as usual, crisis, and innovation and sustainability. Thus, the results demonstrate the divergence presented by the business as usual scenario from European environmental and transport policies, generating considerable pressure on land and producing irreversible harm to the environment. Although a period of economic crisis maintains these trends at a minimum, this is due to the specific context of a crisis, rather than to consideration of environmental policies during the planning process. In this scenario, new patterns of urbanization and spatial and economic reorganization should emerge, focusing primarily at medium sized cities acting as regional centre. When innovation is considered as the driving force behind economic development and good practice in the planning process, positive and desirable effects are observed, directing the model towards greater economic and social development in the region, and minimizing adverse effects on the environment, due mainly to the inclusion of sustainability criteria in the planning process, less consumption of land for productive activities and recycling of urban land. Finally, in order to give robustness to the results of the models a sensitivity analysis (SA) was applied. This analysis allowed detecting the most important, influential and/or significant factors of the models, which are: land use; accessibility to roads, urban areas, mall and hospitals; protection of soils of higher productivity; the distance weighted by the most vulnerable population and greater purchasing power. It was also observed, from the cartography of the most frequent selected pixels, that the models show a high degree of robustness.