Method of calculation of sprawl and free area used by Malta

Abstract

Urban sprawl may be defined as the spread of urbanisation into the countryside from designated urban areas. Paragraph 7.6 of the Structure Plan defines urbanisation as “the creation of new built up areas containing all or most urban uses: houses, shops, offices, factories, and all the built support facilities which these accumulate”. The nature and characteristics of the data available have determined the process to be followed in order to create a number of map data layers which through their area calculation would provide the figures needed to calculate the approximate total Built-up area in the whole of the Maltese Islands. The calculations were aimed to produce the necessary map data layers to calculate the built-up area figures for three years; 1990, 2000, 2004 and 2005.