Characteristics of the residence-guided zone from land use ratio, building density and population density

Abstract

Local governments delineate residence-guided zones primarily based on population density. However, they tend to delineate these zones without taking the physical urban form into consideration sufficiently. To address the issues, Saitama prefecture, an empirical case study area, is represented as a set of 500m grid cells with population density data. These cells are classified into 10 types of physical urban form by cluster analysis and overlayed with residence-guided zones where physical urban form is quantified by land use ratio and building density. Results show that (1) grid cells with mixed building use, roads, and farmland (called the mixed farm and residential cluster) tend to be along the boundaries of residence-guided zones, and (2) focusing on residence-guided zones, population density in the mixed farm and residential clusters is significantly smaller than that in urban clusters.