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The evolution of built-up areas in Ghana since 1975
We use high resolution satellite data on the proportion of buildings in a 250x250 meter cell to study the evolution of human settlement in Ghana over a 40 year period. We find a strong increase in built-up area over time, mostly concentrated in the vicinity of roads, and also directly on the coast....
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8139467/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34019578 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250847 |
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author | Fafchamps, Marcel Shilpi, Forhad |
author_facet | Fafchamps, Marcel Shilpi, Forhad |
author_sort | Fafchamps, Marcel |
collection | PubMed |
description | We use high resolution satellite data on the proportion of buildings in a 250x250 meter cell to study the evolution of human settlement in Ghana over a 40 year period. We find a strong increase in built-up area over time, mostly concentrated in the vicinity of roads, and also directly on the coast. We find strong evidence of agglomeration effects both in the static sense—buildup in one cell predicts buildup in a nearby cell—and in a dynamic sense—buildup in a cell predicts buildup in that cell later on and an increase in buildup in nearby cells. These effects are strongest over a 3 to 15 Km radius, which corresponds to a natural hinterland for a population without mechanized transportation. We find no evidence that human settlements are spaced more or less equally either over the landscape or along roads. This suggests that arable land is not yet fully utilized, allowing rural settlements to be separated by areas of un-farmed land. By fitting a transition matrix to the data, we predict a sharp increase in the proportion of the country that is densely built-up by the middle and the end of the century, but no increase in the proportion of partially built-up locations. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8139467 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-81394672021-06-02 The evolution of built-up areas in Ghana since 1975 Fafchamps, Marcel Shilpi, Forhad PLoS One Research Article We use high resolution satellite data on the proportion of buildings in a 250x250 meter cell to study the evolution of human settlement in Ghana over a 40 year period. We find a strong increase in built-up area over time, mostly concentrated in the vicinity of roads, and also directly on the coast. We find strong evidence of agglomeration effects both in the static sense—buildup in one cell predicts buildup in a nearby cell—and in a dynamic sense—buildup in a cell predicts buildup in that cell later on and an increase in buildup in nearby cells. These effects are strongest over a 3 to 15 Km radius, which corresponds to a natural hinterland for a population without mechanized transportation. We find no evidence that human settlements are spaced more or less equally either over the landscape or along roads. This suggests that arable land is not yet fully utilized, allowing rural settlements to be separated by areas of un-farmed land. By fitting a transition matrix to the data, we predict a sharp increase in the proportion of the country that is densely built-up by the middle and the end of the century, but no increase in the proportion of partially built-up locations. Public Library of Science 2021-05-21 /pmc/articles/PMC8139467/ /pubmed/34019578 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250847 Text en © 2021 Fafchamps, Shilpi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Fafchamps, Marcel Shilpi, Forhad The evolution of built-up areas in Ghana since 1975 |
title | The evolution of built-up areas in Ghana since 1975 |
title_full | The evolution of built-up areas in Ghana since 1975 |
title_fullStr | The evolution of built-up areas in Ghana since 1975 |
title_full_unstemmed | The evolution of built-up areas in Ghana since 1975 |
title_short | The evolution of built-up areas in Ghana since 1975 |
title_sort | evolution of built-up areas in ghana since 1975 |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8139467/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34019578 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250847 |
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