PREDICTION OF URBAN GROWTH BASED ON ACCESSIBILITY USING GIS CA INTEGRATED APPROACH

Abstract

Recently, less developed countries (LDCs) witnessed unprecedented rapid spontaneous urban growth rate coupled with fast population growth, leading to: distort the national strategic plans, more fiscal burden, inadequate urban planning intervenes, irrelevant urban policies, threaten the sate-strategic crops, pollution, traffic congestion, informality notion, high population densities...etc. Although, developed countries (DCs) face similar issues but handle differently, as modern technologies of computing are heavily integrated into urban planning process. Thus, the thesis suggests integrated approach using IDRISI: Land Change Modeler (LCM) with Geographic Information System (GIS) to simulate the current urban growth status and hence predict its future growth (2050) with emphases on accessibility to existing urban areas and\or accessibility to roads network as two driving variables of urban growth in the case study.