Europe's socio-economic disparities reflected in settlement patterns derived from satellite data

Abstract

Development across Europe is uneven. This inequality finds its expression e.g. in different settlement pattern characteristics. We assume that increased settlement concentration reflects economic benefits. For capturing these patterns across the continent, we analyze a binary settlement map derived from Earth observation data. From it, we detect urban nodes as anchor points of urban densification. We identify a network of cities when conjugation lines between these urban nodes feature high settlement density. Further, we map regions around connected urban nodes with high settlement densities. We assume that these identified regions belonging to a network of cities express beneficial economic development. We test this hypothesis by assigning the economic indicators `gross domestic product', `unemployment rate', and `household income per inhabitant' from Eurostat data sets to the identified regions belonging to a city network. We find economic advantages of these city network regions over other European regions.