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Journal Articles Journal of Geographical Systems Year : 2012

Comparing the fractality of European urban neighbourhoods: do national contexts matter ?

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to show that morphological similarities between built-up urban surfaces are greater across borders than within cities in Europe: living, architectural and planning trends are international. The spatial arrangement of built-up areas is analysed here by means of fractal indices using a set of 97 town sections selected from 18 European urban agglomerations. The fractal dimension is estimated by correlation techniques. Results confirm that morphological similarities are higher across countries/cities than within. Moreover, two types of fractal laws are considered: one uses the basic fractal scaling law; the other introduces a prefactor a that is often called a ''form factor'' in the fractal literature. Differences in the results obtained by both laws are explained empirically as well as theoretically, and suggestions are made for further measurements.

Domains

Geography

Dates and versions

halshs-00819251 , version 1 (30-04-2013)

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Isabelle Thomas, Pierre Frankhauser, Dominique Badariotti. Comparing the fractality of European urban neighbourhoods: do national contexts matter ?. Journal of Geographical Systems, 2012, 14 (2), pp.189-208. ⟨10.1007/s10109-010-0142-4⟩. ⟨halshs-00819251⟩
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