Urbanization in Europe 2000–2018: Amount, Density, and Form

This chapter provides an overview of urban development in Europe in the 2000–2018 period, which has been greatly enabled by new land-use data. Urbanization (land take) was found to be greatest in the largest countries, but most intense in the Netherlands. When controlled for population, a different picture emerges with countries like Poland, Spain, and Iceland exhibiting relatively high urbanization rates. One drawback of the analysis was the failure of the data to adequately capture small-scale developments. Various measures were employed to measure densities, showing the complexity of this relatively simple but essential concept. Finally, European regions were evaluated by a manual assessment of urban form. This again revealed the heterogeneity of Europe, but also hotspots of ‘diffuse’ (urban sprawl) development.