Mapping Global Cities: GIS Methods in Urban Analysis

Author: Ayse Pamuk

Spatial thinking and analysis are essential for intelligent urban policymaking in a globally connected world. Urban planners need to understand how cities are organised and how residential patterns are shaped as a result of population and employment changes. Otherwise, they risk designing urban plans and policies that are unrealistic and exclusionary. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be usefully applied by planners to new urban development challenges in global metropolitan regions and megacities, particularly those where rapid demographic changes, including immigration, have spurred massive growth.

Mapping Global Cities: GIS Methods in Urban Analysis shows how the analysis of relevant data with GIS can provide a powerful new perspective in addressing urban research and policy questions, and it enhances our understanding and efforts in solving urban planning problems. Author Ayse Pamuk draws upon her extensive fieldwork experience in developing countries, over ten years of work as a university professor, and extends it in new ways by using the power of spatial analysis with GIS.

Part I of the book shows how analysts use GIS to explore global metropolitan regions, and provides an overview of spatial data used in GIS analysis. Part II shows how urban planners and policy makers use GIS, emphasising the issues of local government and social service delivery. Part III shows how researchers use GIS to analyse spatial patterns in metropolitan areas, including locating immigrant clusters with census data and comparing immigrant clustering patterns across metropolitan areas. The book's accompanying CD contains data and printable, step-by-step GIS exercises, including a self-directed project, that enable students and users to make maps and explore themes covered in the chapters.

Mapping Global Cities is an invaluable resource for urban studies and planning students, international development professionals, human settlement experts in the developing world, urban planning practitioners, as well as researchers and scholars concerned with housing and human settlements policy analysis.

Software Requirements: ArcView, ArcEditor, or ArcInfo 9 and the ArcGIS Spatial Analyst extension are required to complete the exercises contained on the book'?s CD. Earlier software releases are not compatible. The CD-ROM included with this book contains the data used in the exercises.