Urbanization: A Global Change Issue

Abstract

Urbanization is a global issue. Virtually all of the world’s population growth over the next 30 years will be absorbed by urban areas. New applications, data and ideas are needed to meet the challenges of sustainable urban development. We need to understand the nature and dynamics of urban systems as basis to develop and implement effective interventions that seek to structure and guide urban development in its broadest sense. This paper provides an overview on recent contributions of remote sensing to support this complex task with manifold up-to-date and area-wide spatial information. We provide examples of multi-sensoral, multis-scale and multi-temporal applications for different scopes. Furthermore we show value-adding interdisciplinary applications to expand the scientific perspective as well as the basic necessity for transdisciplinary acceptance and collaboration with stakeholders.