Financial capitalism has driven profound changes in urban land use patterns in Majorca, at the Balearic Islands (Spain). This archipelago is a major tourist destination located in the Mediterranean basin, with 4,492 km2 of surface area, 1,113,114 inhabitants and 12,316,399 tourists (2011), of whom 29.9% came from Germany, 24% from the UK and 19% from the rest of Spain. Neoliberal state regulation has favored the elite’s financial interests in the real estate sector through transport megaproject investment and lifting regional planning restrictions which prevented urban growth.

Globalisation and urbanisation trends in developing countries present both opportunities for growth and development on one hand while contributing to the complex myriad challenges of managing urbanisation on the other hand. Cities and urban areas play a critical in the development of a country. They provide platforms that incorporate intense combination of economic, cultural and political factors of a country or region. Nairobi city is Kenya’s economic capital and is a major economic hub in Africa.

Cities and Urban Areas play a crucial role as engines of development as well as centers of connectivity, creativity, innovation, and as service hubs for the surrounding areas. Kenya has experienced unprecedented urban growth. At independence the urban population was about 8%. This had grown to be about 40% by 2015. It is projected that by year 2030 at least half of the Kenyan population will be urbanized. The rapid rate of urbanization exerts increased pressure on authorities to meet the needs of growing urban populations.

The story of urbanization in Kenya should be one of cautious optimism. As an emerging middle-income country with a growing share of its population living in urban areas and a governance shift toward devolution, the country could be on the verge of a major social and economic transformation. How it manages its urbanization and devolution processes will determine whether it can maximize the benefits of its transition to a middle-income country.

Urban structural units (USUs) are work (or similar) units in urbanized areas. In this study, USUs based on urban land use and land cover were used to explain and compare urban ecological conditions within Beijing. This study focused on the spatial pattern of land use for different USUs in urban areas. The results showed that 453 USUs belong to 12 primary USUs and to 38 different secondary USUs. The percentage of built-up area was highest in those regions with hotels, and lowest in areas with cemeteries.

The patterns of urban sprawl over a 20-year period presented in the study indicate unplanned development in the urban agglomerations of Ranchi, Jamshedpur and Dhanbad. The visual interpretation of Landsat (1986, 1991, 1996 and 2001) and IRS-P6 (2005) was used to map land use/land cover and analyse urban sprawl. The saturation of urban areas within municipal limits, along with pressure from the growing population, resulted in the densification of the core urban areas within Dhanbad and Jamshedpur.

Soil sealing has been regarded as a key environmental problem since sealed soils lose several of their functions determining a reduction in land productivity and quality. Unfortunately, the analysis of changes in land-use carried out through the use of traditional data sources allows a relatively rough estimation of this phenomenon. The aim of this paper is to illustrate a procedure quantifying over time the soil sealing rate at the country scale. Italy was chosen as the study area due to its spatially-complex urbanization patterns.

Population of two cities in Pakistan has already crossed the 10-million figure and for the rest of the areas in the country populations are also increasing rapidly. Urbanization has boosted the use of energy in the cities and so is greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions but the ground situation as to the extent, vulnerability, past trends and future scenarios are not unveiled for the cities of Pakistan. Dearth of data in Pakistan is a huge hindrance to the investigation of energy use and actual GHG emissions.

After the industrial revolution, urban growth has been increasing, especially with technological advances. Urbanization is accelerating environmental pollution and also affects climate significantly because of land use or land cover changes. In this study, the Hydrological Simulation Program-Fortran (HSPF) model developed by the United States Environment Protection Agency (USEPA) is used for modeling the impervious areas of Eskişehir which is located in the Porsuk Stream Watershed in Inner Anatolia, Turkey.

During the past two decades or so, rural population in Africa has increased slowly while urban population has grown dramatically. The hugely increased urban demand for cereals and pulses (which produce crop residues for livestock) and for livestock products is now the main force stimulating mixed farming systems in the semiarid and subhumid areas of subSaharan Africa. Grazing land has diminished, crop residues are becoming a more important element in raising livestock and fattening penned livestock has become profitable.

We developed a cost-based methodology to assess the value of forested watersheds to improve water quality in public water supplies. The developed methodology is applicable to other source watersheds to determine ecosystem services for water quality. We assess the value of forest land for source water mitigation of total organic carbon (TOC) through the use of linked watershed and reservoir simulation models and cost-based valuation economics. Watershed modeling results indicated that expected urbanization will increase TOC loads to Converse Reservoir (Mobile, AL).