Publication

Urban areas are key to sustainability, and understanding heterogeneity in urban landscapes is important for linking development patterns to ecological, economic, and social health. Here, we characterize the urban landscape for the purpose of revealing structural variations that affect sustainability. We develop a new language and classification schema for breaking down urban areas into sub-metropolitan land units that, unlike administrative boundaries, are based on objective measures of the built and natural environment and are comparable across and within urban areas. These units capture structural differences that population density does not. The classification schema offers a process-based characterization of urban landscapes-one where 'urban' is defined by the human and biophysical interactions mediated by the urban environment and complements existing land classification systems, like those based on land use and land cover. As an example, the schema is applied here to understand transportation behaviors-a particular urban process with wide-ranging implications for urban sustainability. Using GIS, satellite, and census spatial data, we apply the classification schema in 909 US urban areas, systematically clustering development with similar structural attributes linked to transportation behaviors. In this way, an urban area is divided into a collection of smaller landscapes, larger than individual households and smaller than census tracts, that are distinct in how they function. The study shows that characterizing the urban landscape in this way can distinguish between neighborhoods with different travel behaviors. Extensions of the schema can be used to monitor and manage urban systems towards sustainability, targeting spatial planning strategies to the micro-geographies where they would be most relevant.