Measurement of Urban Sprawl for City Centers in Mosul District
Keywords:
urban sprawl, Mosul District, Al-Shura Center, Hammam Al-Alil Center, Al-Qayyarah CenterAbstract
City centers in the Mosul district witnessed urban expansion varying in area and degree of speed, with this expansion characterized by randomness. The study aimed to measure this urban expansion of city centers in the Mosul District, by employing advanced geographic techniques and relying on quantitative statistical methods, such as Pearson's degree of freedom and Shannon's entropy model, to demonstrate this expansion and determine its trends accurately.
The study reached detailed results about urban expansion from one center to another in the study area. For example, the center of Qayyarah achieved the highest degree of freedom of 9.59, which indicates the presence of large and rapid urban expansion in this center, which reflects a noticeable increase in population density and infrastructure. In contrast, the Shura center recorded the lowest degree of freedom of 0.87, which indicates limited and weak urban expansion in this center, perhaps as a result of geographical, economic, or social restrictions that hinder this expansion.
As for the entropy scale, the Hammam Al Alil Center achieved the highest entropy value of 0.09, which indicates a more diverse and widespread population distribution, which reflects an improvement in urban planning and the distribution of services and infrastructure. In contrast, the Shura center recorded the lowest entropy of 0.02, which reflects a less diverse and more concentrated population distribution, which may indicate a lack of balanced urban planning or the concentration of services in specific areas.
The study concluded that the largest centers of expansion are Qayyarah and Hammam Al-Alil, which show significant urban expansion and a diverse population distribution. While the least expanded is the Shura center, which suffers from limited urban expansion and unbalanced population distribution. These results highlight a large disparity in urban expansion between different city centers in Mosul District.
