Background

Since the year 2007 there is an equal share of people living in cities and in rural areas. The process of urbanisation may still be increasing in industrial nations, however, the process of the extreme dynamic of growth of the megacities of the North has been declining since the middle of the twentieth century. By contrast there is still a strongly increasing growth of urban areas. At large that means that the number of megacities will continue to rise. Nowadays we speak of 39 megacities worldwide of which 28 are located in developing countries. more

Methodology

Different levels of consideration constitute a high challenge in complex aggregations of mega-urban centres. The examination of the whole area or the mostly large administrative units do not provide a differentiated image, while the complexity on the smallest level – for example single buildings, is not controllable anymore. For the understanding of the system of mega urban centres it is hence necessary to classify the large agglomeration areas in smaller units. For that reason repetitive micro structures, such as single types of buildings and their contiguous surface broachings, will be merged into groups with respectively uniform and homogenous characteristics. more

Aims

The goal of this project is the development of a concept for the acquisition of dynamic processes in fast growing urban areas and megacities. The so far developed concept is supposed to contribute to achieve a controllability of the urban development in highly dynamic agglomeration areas. The reference medium water and respectively the vulnerability of the complex system megacity as to the resource water takes centre stage in the analysis. more

Findings

Alltogether the concept of urban unit is good to be applied in Guangzhou, since the above described morphological city structure consisting of settlement and working areas of different phases of the urbanisation process makes a good definition and delimitation of urban units possible. more