How to Define a New Metropolitan Area? The Case of Quito, Ecuador, and Contributions for Urban Planning

Abstract

The Metropolitan Area of Quito has experienced exponential growth in recent decades, especially in peri-urban sectors. The literature has described this process as “urban sprawl”, a phenomenon that is changing the landscape by increasing land consumption and forming conurbations with the nearest populated centers. This article proposes a new, broader and more complex metropolitan structure for the metropolis of Quito, the linking of neighboring and conurbed areas to the form a new metropolitan area based on the case study of the Metropolitan District of Quito (DMQ). This new metropolitan area identification considers the interpretation of satellite images and the classification of land uses, highlighting the main urban growth areas located outside, but contiguous to the administrative limit of the DMQ, over a period of 19 years (1998 to 2017), the demographics analysis, particularly the densification of new urban peripheral areas close to the DMQ border and the mobility links of population, goods and services between human settlements that allows the configuration of urban corridors and the integration of the territory. The main findings evaluated are the need to evaluate urban planning strategies aimed at sustainable development.

Advancing Data for Street-Level Flood Vulnerability: Evaluation of Variables Extracted from Google Street View in Quito, Ecuador

“…As the results demonstrated, many of the sample points where no drains were spotted are along the periphery of the city. This is consistent with the nature of urban sprawl in Latin American cities [69], [70] and informal settlements in fast growing urban areas such as Quito. Similarly, the spatial distribution of buildings with a higher number of floors were found to be associated with proximity to the city center.…”

Enhancing disaster risk resilience using greenspace in urbanising Quito, Ecuador

“…Urban expansion is changing Quito's exposure to natural hazards including landslides, floods, volcanic activity, and earthquakes (Chatelain et al, 1999;Hall et al, 2008;Carmin and Anguelovski, 2009;Valcárcel et al, 2017). Quito's urban area now exceeds the current Metropolitan District of Quito (DMQ) administrative boundary (Bonilla-Bedoya et al, 2020a;Salazar et al, 2021). Therefore, in this study, we define two separate areas of interest (AOIs): (1) a "land cover AOI" for mapping land cover change, which encompasses the core urban area of Quito, and (2) a "city AOI" for mapping greenspace, which includes the administrative level 3 parishes of Quito, Cumbaya, Llano Chico, Calderon (Carapungo), Conocoto, Zambiza,and Nayón (Figs.…”

“…According to Sierra (2009), the role of greenspace in the borders of the city was first designed to create recreational and patrimonial landscapes from 1940s onwards and later, in the 1970s and 1980s, to incorporate environmental, city growth control, and risk mitigation properties. In the last 30 years, there has been municipal and community interest in the recovery of ravines for recreational activities and improving citizens' quality of life by implementing nature-based solutions alongside urban development; however, its realisation and impact have been small at the city scale, instead confined to planning-stage pilot projects such as in the San Enrique de Velasco district in the northwest of Quito (Salmon et al, 2021).…”

“…Bonilla-Bedoya et al, 2020b; 2020; Valencia et al, 2020). Cross-comparisons are complicated by the use of different study areas since Quito's urban area now exceeds the designated metropolitan district boundary, which has prompted investigations to create a new district area (Salazar et al, 2021). By comparing our urban classification (year 2020) to that of Bonilla-Bedoya et al (2020b) (year 2016) within the same area of interest, we find urban areas of 213 and 210 km 2 respectively, which indicates classification consistency using EO data despite different methodological approaches.…”

Renewable Energy Utilization and Environmental Pollution Control in the New City Area Mamminasata Metropolitan, Indonesia

“…The development of the new metropolitan city area is an effort made to meet the needs of the population for housing, facilities and infrastructure as well as service infrastructure (Salazar et al, 2021). Controlling environmental pollution in the new city area will require efforts to optimize the use of renewable energy Zahedi et al, 2022).…”