Urban sprawl is now a common and threatening phenomenon in Europe, severely affecting environmental and economic sustainability. An analytical characterization and measurement of urban sprawl are required to gain a better understanding of the phenomenon and to propose the possible solutions. Traditional factor analysis techniques, especially Principal Component Analysis and Factor Analysis, have been commonly used. In this paper, we additionally test Independent Component Analysis with the aim to obtain a multidimensional characterization of the sprawl phenomenon. We also use Bayesian Factor Analysis to obtain a single (unidimensional) measuring index of sprawl, which also allows us to obtain the uncertainty of the inferred index, in contrast to traditional approaches. All these techniques have been applied to study the phenomenon of urban sprawl at the municipality level in Valencia, Spain using a wide set of variables related to the characteristics and patterns of urban land use.

In Europe, especially in the Valencian Community, Spain, the growth of cities in the last few decades has brought with it a major paradigm change, shifting from a compact to a sprawling urban model. Although it is known about its important environmental, social, and economic effects, there is no clear and unequivocal measurement of the impact of urban sprawl on municipal spending. The impact of the sprawling city on public finances and on the cost of local public services is clearly one of the conditioning factors that should be assessed when making urban development decisions. Based on a measurement of the sprawling city, our aim is to calculate the effect of urban sprawl on the local administration’s expenditure and particularly on the cost of basic public municipal services. These are obtained through a statistical model with cost functions that can assess the increase in spending prompted by urban sprawl for municipal current expenditure. The proposed model is novel in the field of urban planning and is based on a Bayesian hierarchical model with the ability to include modeling constraints among the expenditures variables and handle missing values accurately. With this paper, we show that urban sprawl has a significant and positive effect on the unit cost of local public services, which results in an inefficient urban growth model from the economic point of view. The effect is not transferred homogeneously to the budget. There are spending items that are more sensitive to urban sprawl like expenditure on security and public transportation and community wellbeing, which primarily covers waste collection, elimination, and treatment; sanitation, and water supply and distribution; road cleaning; and public lighting.

Urban expansion is a phenomenon that has been observed since the mid-20th century in more developed regions. One aspect of it is the urban development of holiday resorts with second homes that generally appeared following world political stabilisation. This residential expansion has often happened with scarce control, especially in its early stages, allowing areas to be occupied that are not so suitable in terms of the environment, culture and landscape, not to mention the very geological risks of flooding, earthquakes and landslides. Indeed, the risk of landslides for buildings occupying land in zones at such risk is not a matter solely attributable to the geomorphological characteristics of the land itself, nor is it simply a question of chance; it is also due to its management of such land, generally because of a lack of specific regulations. This study aims to lay down objective criteria to find how suitable a specific local entity's risk management is by looking at the evolution of its urban development procedures. It also aims to determine what causes the incidence of landslide risk (geomorphology, chance, land management, etc.) and finally to suggest control tools for the public bodies tasked with monitoring such matters.

This paper proposes a method of valuing the stock of residential buildings in Spain as the first step in assessing possible damage caused to them by natural hazards. For the purposes of the study we had access to the SIOSE (the Spanish Land Use and Cover Information System), a high-resolution land-use model, as well as to a report on the financial valuations of this type of building throughout Spain. Using dasymetric disaggregation processes and GIS techniques we developed a geolocalized method of obtaining this information, which was the exposure variable in the general risk assessment formula. Then, with the application over a hazard map, the risk value can be easily obtained. An example of its application is given in a case study that assesses the risk of a landslide in the entire 23 200 km2 of the Valencia Autonomous Community (NUT2), the results of which are analysed by municipal areas (LAU2) for the years 2005 and 2009.

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The foundation of the city of Valencia was created by the Romans on an island formed by the River Turia, strategically located between Carthago Nova (Cartagena) and Tarraco (Tarragona), and is directly connected to the sea. This raises the question of how the elements of access to the city came about and how the river and its bridges might have affected its evolution. This article delves into the study of the origins of the city, with a time frame that extends into the 11th century, the time at which an event took place that confirms one of the major changes in the city’s urban morphology: when it stopped being an island. The intrinsic relationship that exists between bridges and main communication routes as fundamental elements to the access of an island is the driving force behind this article, which is based on research, until now undone, on the existence and construction of the first bridges in the city of Valencia and their influence on the city’s subsequent development. This paper will start by studying the founding and location of this city and will then analyze the communication routes existing at the time. It will also study the communication routes that were created later and how all of them were forced to cross a fluvial accident, the River Turia. For this purpose, the number of bridges built until the city ceased to be an island have been identified, and analyses of their typology, location and who was responsible for them has been carried out to study how they may have affected the normal flow and evolution of the riverbed and their possible influence on the city’s development.