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International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XXXIX-B7, 2012 
XXII ISPRS Congress, 25 August — 01 September 2012, Melbourne, Australia 
DEFINING DENSITIES FOR URBAN RESIDENTIAL TEXTURE, THROUGH LAND USE 
CLASSIFICATION, FROM LANDSAT TM IMAGERY: CASE STUDY OF SPANISH 
MEDITERRANEAN COAST 
N. Colaninno**, J. Roca“, M. Burns“, B. Alhaddad® 
? CPSV, Centre of Land Policy and Valuations of the Department of Architectural Technology I at Universitat 
Politécnica de Catalunya, Barcelona Tech (UPC), Av. Diagonal 649, 08028 Barcelona, Spain. 
cpsv.info@upc.edu 
Commission VII, WG VII/4 
KEY WORDS: Land Use, Urban Patterns, Classification, Morphology, Planning, GIS, Landsat 
ABSTRACT: 
In the recent epoch, there has been considerable debate about the urban development along the European Mediterranean area, also 
undertaken by the European Authorities, and in particular regarding the role of spatial planning in order to improve sustainable 
trends of land use. Great transformations along the Spanish Mediterranean coast have generated considerable changes in the 
traditional structure of the landscape, far from the typical model of Mediterranean cities, and the rapidity of these modern dynamics 
has been a significant impact on the spatial patterns, also associated with the expansion of urban connections through the whole 
territory. The increase of large peri-urban areas, sprawled on the territory, and caused by uncontrolled, uncoordinated and unplanned 
growth, inevitably has brought the cancellation of clearly identifiable boundaries between the city and the rural areas. Spatial 
analysis, within quantitative geography and linked to the emerging field of regional science, represents a synthesis of urban and 
regional economics that is consistent with the complex sciences which dominate the simulation of urban form and functions. Most 
urban models deal with the city in terms of the location of its economic and demographic activities, but there is also a move to link 
such models to urban morphologies (Batty 2008). According with these concepts, the investigation, also supported by the use of 
technologies such as remote sensing and GIS, aims to complement the spatial analysis of regional development dynamics by 
classifying urban structures and quantifying some of main characteristics based on morphological features. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
1.1 Overview and motivations 
During the last decades, Spain has been undergoing important 
processes of urban growth, which has implied the consumption 
of large amounts of land, although the total population has 
hardly increased. This consequence has been very important 
along the coastal territory of Spanish Mediterranean side, where 
modern and actual dynamics of development are requiring new 
ways to analyze and quantify urban growth phenomena. Urban 
settlements, and their own formal characteristics, have to be 
wholly defined, being this basic information essential in spatial 
planning, in order to prepare the best practices apt to "respond" 
to the current challenges of territorial changes. How to extract 
and analyze information about residential settlements quickly 
and objectively is the foundation of the studies about economic 
and social development. The improvement of remote sensing 
technology provides a rapid tool for acquiring such information 
quickly (Chen et al. 2010). Quite a lot of useful techniques 
based on remote sensing technologies and methodologies for 
automatic classification of urban landscape have been 
developed, but there is still a challenge to find a generalized 
and objective methodology to be applied in different situations 
and geographical contexts. The use of automatic processes 
requires the reduction, as much as possible, of subjective 
interpretations and arbitrary interventions of analysts. 
  
1.2 General objectives 
The investigation aims to find a relative fast and objective 
methodology to extract impervious areas on large landscapes 
and define different types of urban models, depending on 
morphological characteristics of land occupation. The work 
pretend to strengthen the idea that new technologies can really 
support all the process of planning both in the detection phase 
than in the analysis, and in order to support all the decisions 
which bring the final drafting of spatial plans. 
1.3 Specific objectives 
First pursued result is the classification of several land cover 
categories along the Mediterranean side of Spain, through the 
use of satellite imagery and remote sensing techniques. It will 
be place emphasis on the impervious areas. After that we 
pretend to improve a methodology for automatic categorization 
of different typologies of urban texture, depending on their 
physical characteristics and based on a set of indicators such as 
size, shape, density and fragmentation of the urban settlements. 
Final result will be the automatic classification of three main 
morphological models of urban fabric: continuous, 
discontinuous, and scattered. It will be achieved by using 
statistical techniques such as factorial and cluster analysis. 
* Architect and PhD candidate in Urban and Architectural Management and Valuations at UPC, Universitat Politecnica de 
Catalunya, Barcelona Tech. Researcher at the LMVC, Virtual City Modelling Lab of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, 
Av. Diagonal 649, 4* pl. 08028 Barcelona, Spain. 
nicola.colaninno@gmail.com 
Tel: 0034 934011933. E-mail: nicola.colaninno@upc.edu