Morphological and Fractal Characteristics of City Road Networks from Philippine Metropolitan Regions
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5614/jpwk.2022.33.3.6Keywords:
Fractal dimension, Philippine cities, road networks, urban complexity, spatial metricsAbstract
City road networks evolve from the fundamental need to connect various locations and to subdivide available space, especially in large urban areas. No two cities are exactly the same, however, and the differences manifest themselves in the layout of roads across their geographical regions. In this work, the fractal dimensions of urban roads from the three major metropolitan regions of the Philippines were investigated, along with the distributions of dimensionless spatial metrics for characterizing roads and road-bounded blocks. The dimensionless metrics reveal the commonalities, particularly the road and block motifs found in the urban road network tapestry. On the other hand, the fractal dimensions hint at the difference in levels of urbanization of the various cities and municipalities, which are considered subject to geographical constraints. This research adds to the growing literature with a complexity perspective on urban systems by reporting on an archipelagic road network data set. From a practical perspective, this work is deemed to be a useful first step towards an even deeper quantitative analysis of these regional economic centers and its insights may be used for drafting effective policy measures for management and further development.
Downloads
References
Ahmed, N. O., El-Halafawy, A. M. & Amin, A. M. (2019). A critical review of urban livability. European Journal of Sustainable Development, 8(1), 165-165.
Alstott, J., Bullmore, E. & Plenz, D. (2014). Powerlaw: a Python package for analysis of heavy-tailed distributions. PloS one, 9(1), e85777.
Anderson, P. W. (1972). More is different: broken symmetry and the nature of the hierarchical structure of science. Science, 177(4047), 393-396.
Arcaute, E., Hatna, E., Ferguson, P., Youn, H., Johansson, A. & Batty, M. (2015). Constructing cities, deconstructing scaling laws. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 12(102), 20140745.
Asian Development Bank (ADB). (2019). Asian Development Outlook 2019 Update: Fostering Growth and Inclusion in Asia?s Cities Technical Report (Mandaluyong: Asian Development Bank).
Barthelemy, M., Bordin, P., Berestycki, H. & Gribaudi, M. (2013). Self-organization versus top-down planning in the evolution of a city. Scientific Reports, 3(1), 1-8.
Batista, G. N., Ficher, S., Leita?o, F. and de Franc?a, D. A. (2006). Brasilia: A Capital in the Hinterland. In: Gordon, D. (ed.) Planning Twentieth Century Capital Cities. London, UK: Routledge.
Batty, M. & Longley, P. A. (1994). Fractal Cities: A Geometry of Form and Function. London, UK: Academic Press.
Batty, M. (2000). Less is more, more is different: complexity, morphology, cities, and emergence. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 27(2), 167-168.
Batty, M. (2005). Cities and Complexity: Understanding Cities with Cellular Automata, Agent-Based Models, and Fractals, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Berghauser Pont, M., Stavroulaki, G., Bobkova, E., Gil, J., Marcus, L., Olsson, J., Sun, K., Serra, M., Hausleitner, B., Dhanani, A. & Legeby, A. (2019b). The spatial distribution and frequency of street, plot and building types across five European cities. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 46, 1226?1242.
Bettencourt, L. M., Lobo, J., Helbing, D., Knert, C. & West, G. B. (2007). Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(17), 7301-7306.
Bettencourt, L. M. (2013). The origins of scaling in cities. Science, 340(6139), 1438-1441.
Bobkova, E., Marcus, L., Berghauser Pont, M., Stavroulaki, I. & Bolin, D. (2019). Structure of plot systems and economic activity in cities: Linking plot types to retail and food services in London, Amsterdam and Stockholm. Urban Science, 3(3), 66.
Bribiesca, E. (2008). An easy measure of compactness for 2D and 3D shapes. Pattern Recognition, 41(2), 543-554.
Chen, Y. (2013). Fractal analytical approach of urban form based on spatial correlation function. Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, 49, 47-60.
Cirunay, M. T. & Batac, R. C. (2018). Statistical signatures of the spatial imprints of road network growth. International Journal of Modern Physics C, 29(10), 1850099.
Cirunay, M.T. & Batac, R.C. (2018b). Scaling of urban properties for Philippine cities, Proceedings of the Samahang Pisika ng Pilipinas 36, SPP-2018-PB-26. Retrieved from: https://proceedings.spp-online.org/article/view/SPP-2018-PB-26
Cirunay, M.T. & Batac, R.C. (2020). Shapes of Road-Bounded Blocks as Indicators of Degree of Urbanization. In: Panos, A. CCS2020 - Conference on Complex Systems 2020 - Book of Abstracts, pp. 84. Online: Conference on Complex Systems 2020 (CCS2020).
Cirunay, M. T., Soriano, M. N. & Batac, R. C. (2020). Preserved layout features embedded in road network development. Journal of Physics: Complexity, 1(1), 015004.
Cirunay, M.T. & Batac, R.C. (2021). Spatial Signatures of Road Network Growth for Different Levels of Global Planning, Complex Systems 30(3), 273-296.
Clauset, A., Shalizi, C. R. & Newman, M. E. (2009). Power-law distributions in empirical data. SIAM Review, 51(4), 661-703.
Commission on Audit (COA). (2019). 2019 Annual Financial Report for Local Government - Volume I. Retrieved from: https://www.coa.gov.ph/download/1991/2019/27677/2019-annual-financial-report-for-the-local-government-volume-i.pdf
Courtat, T., Gloaguen, C. & Douady, S. (2011). Mathematics and morphogenesis of cities: A geometrical approach. Physical Review E, 83(3), 036106.
Depersin, J. & Barthelemy, M. (2018). From global scaling to the dynamics of individual cities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(10), 2317-2322.
Frankhauser, P. (1998). Fractal geometry of urban patterns and their morphogenesis. Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society, 2(2), 127-145.
Foroutan-pour, K., Dutilleul, P. & Smith, D. L. (1999). Advances in the implementation of the box-counting method of fractal dimension estimation. Applied Mathematics and Computation, 105(2-3), 195-210.
Gell-Mann, M. (2002). What is Complexity? In: Curzio, A.Q., Fortis, M. (Eds.) Complexity and Industrial Clusters. Contributions to Economics. Physica-Verlag HD.
Hillier, B. & Hanson, J. (1984). The Social Logic of Space. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hillier, B., Penn, A., Hanson, J., Grajewski, T. & Xu, J. (1993). Natural movement: Or configuration and attraction in urban pedestrian movement. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 20(1), 29-66.
Hillier, B. (1996/2007). Space is the Machine: A configurational theory of architecture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lmer, S., Gehlsen, B. & Helbing, D. (2006). Scaling laws in the spatial structure of urban road networks. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 363(1), 89-95.
Lobo, J., Bettencourt, L. M., Strumsky, D. & West, G. B. (2013). Urban scaling and the production function for cities. PLoS One, 8(3), e58407.
Loo, B. P. & Tang, W. S. (2019). ?Mapping? smart cities. Journal of Urban Technology, 26(2), 129-146.
Louf, R. & Barthelemy, M. (2014). A typology of street patterns. Journal of The Royal Society Interface, 11(101), 20140924.
Makse, H. A., Havlin, S. & Stanley, H. E. (1995). Modelling urban growth patterns. Nature, 377(6550), 608-612.
Mandelbrot, B. B. (1982). The Fractal Geometry of Nature. New York: WH Freeman.
Masucci, A. P., Smith, D., Crooks, A. & Batty, M. (2009). Random planar graphs and the London street network. The European Physical Journal B, 71(2), 259-271.
Masucci, A.P., Stanilov, K. & Batty, M. (2013). Limited Urban Growth: London?s Street Network Dynamics since the 18th Century. PLOS ONE, 8(8), e69469.
Murcio, R., Masucci, A. P., Arcaute, E. & Batty, M. (2015). Multifractal to monofractal evolution of the London street network. Physical Review E, 92(6), 062130.
Masucci, A. P. & Molinero, C. (2016). Robustness and closeness centrality for self-organized and planned cities. The European Physical Journal B, 89(2), 1-8.
National Economic Development Authority (NEDA), Philippines. (2017). Philippine Development Plan 2017-2022. Chapter 3, pp. 37. Retrieved from https://pdp.neda.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Chapter-03.pdf
Nguyen, H. H., Desbenoit, B. & Daniel, M. (2014, October). Realistic road path reconstruction from GIS data. In Computer Graphics Forum (Vol. 33, No. 7, pp. 259-268).
OpenStreetMap (OSM) (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.openstreetmap.org
Orden, A., Flores, R. A., Faustino, P. & Samson, M. S. (2020). Measuring OpenStreetMap building footprint completeness using human settlement layers. In: Minghini, M., Coetzee, S., Juhz, L., Yeboah, G., Mooney, P. & Grinberger A.Y. (eds.),
Proceedings of the Academic Track At the State of the Map 2020 Online Conference.
Paraskevopoulos, Y & Bakogiannis, E. (2022). Exploring the urban types of built density, network centrality, and functional mixture in the city of Athens. Proceedings of the 13th Space Syntax Symposium, 468.1-468.25
Peitgen, H. O., Jgens, H., Saupe, D. & Feigenbaum, M. J. (1992). Chaos and Fractals: New Frontiers of Science (Vol. 7). New York: Springer.
Penn, A., Hillier, B., Banister, D. & Xu, J. (1998). Configurational modelling of urban movement network. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 25, 59-84.
Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) (2015). 2015 Census of Population, Report No. 3 ? Population, Land Area, and Population Density. Quezon City, Philippines: Philippine Statistics Authority. Retrieved from https://www.psa.gov.ph/sites/default/files/_POPCEN%20Report%20No.%203.pdf
Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). (2020). 2020 Census of Population and Housing (2020 CPH). Retrieved from https://psa.gov.ph/content/2020-census-population-and-housing-2020-cph-population-counts-declared-official-president
Porta, S., Latora, V., Wang, F., Rueda, S., Strano, E., Scellato, S., ... & Latora, L. (2012). Street centrality and the location of economic activities in Barcelona. Urban Studies, 49(7), 1471-1488.
Puente, I., Gonzez-Jorge, H., Martez-Schez, J. & Arias, P. (2013). Review of mobile mapping and surveying technologies. Measurement, 46(7), 2127-2145.
Sherrington, D. (2010). Physics and complexity. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 368(1914), 1175-1189.
Smart, N., Eisenman, T. S. & Karvonen, A. (2020). Street tree density and distribution: An international analysis of five capital cities. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 8, 562646.
Smyth, R., Mishra, V. & Qian, X. (2008). The environment and well-being in urban China. Ecological Economics, 68(1-2), 547-555.
Stum, H. H. (1996). River meandering as a self-organization process. Science, 271(5256), 1710-1713.
Strano, E., Nicosia, V., Latora, V., Porta, S. & Barthemy, M. (2012). Elementary processes governing the evolution of road networks. Scientific Reports, 2(1), 1-8.
Strano, E., Giometto, A., Shai, S., Bertuzzo, E., Mucha, P. J. & Rinaldo, A. (2017). The scaling structure of the global road network. Royal Society Open Science, 4(10), 170590.
Sweet, M. (2011). Does traffic congestion slow the economy?, Journal of Planning Literature, 26(4), 391-404.
Thinking Machines Data Science (n.d.). Mapping the gaps in OpenStreetMap [Visualization]. Retrieved from https://mapthegap.thinkingmachin.es
Uhl, J. H., Leyk, S., Chiang, Y. Y. & Knoblock, C. A. (2022). Towards the automated large-scale reconstruction of past road networks from historical maps. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 94, 101794.
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2019). World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision (ST/ESA/SER.A/420). New York: United Nations. Retrieved from https://population.un.org/wup/Publications/Files/WUP2018-Report.pdf
Vernon, C. (2006). Canberra: Where Landscape Is Pre-eminent. In: Gordon, D. (Ed.) Planning Twentieth Century Capital Cities. London, UK: Routledge.
Wang, H., Luo, S. & Luo, T. (2017). Fractal characteristics of urban surface transit and road networks: Case study of Strasbourg, France. Advances in Mechanical Engineering, 9(2), 1687814017692289.
Wigmore, L. (1972). Canberra: History of Australia?s National Capital (2nd ed.). Canberra, Australia: Dalton Publishing Company.
World Bank (2015). Philippine Economic Update: Making Growth Work Better for Small Business [Country Report]. Report No. 99648-PH. Philippines: The World Bank Group in the Philippines.
Xie, F. & Levinson, D. (2007). Measuring the structure of road networks. Geographical Analysis, 39(3), 336-356.
Xu, C., Fang, S., Long, N., Teng, S., Zhang, M. & Liu, M. (2015). Spatial patterns of distinct urban growth forms in relation to roads and pregrowth urban areas: Case of the Nanjing metropolitan region in China. Journal of Urban Planning and Development, 141(1), 04014015.
Yin, C. & Shao, C. (2021). Revisiting commuting, built environment and happiness: New evidence on a nonlinear relationship. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 100, 103043.
Zhang, H. & Li, Z. (2012). Fractality and self-similarity in the structure of road networks. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 102(2), 350-365.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Manuscript submitted to JRCP has to be an original work of the author(s), contains no element of plagiarism, and has never been published or is not being considered for publication in other journals. The author(s) retain the copyright of the content published in JRCP. There is no need for request or consultation for future re-use and re-publication of the content as long as the author and the source are cited properly.
