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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....

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Fafchamps, Marcel, Shilpi, Forhad
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
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
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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.
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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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