Exploring the scaling relations between urban spatial form and infrastructure

ABSTRACT A variety of factors may affect the planning and design of urban infrastructure but urban population usually is the primary consideration given scaling laws between population and infrastructure. Although urban physical spatial form and infrastructure are physically attached, their allometric scaling has not been systematically addressed. In this study, we examine how five types of infrastructure, including roads, water supply pipelines, drainage pipelines, buses, and schools, affect urban spatial form characterized with landscape metrics derived for 78 large cities in China. The results suggest that urban infrastructure has scaling relations with landscape shape index (LSI), area-weighted mean perimeter-area ratio (PARA_AM), and largest patch index. Specifically, at the mean value of PARA_AM, road area increases about 2.5 times when doubling LSI. Under the same population size, cities with more fragmented spatial form need more investments in infrastructure, particularly roads and other traffic components. It is concluded that urban infrastructure experiences a super-linear quantitative relationship with landscape metrics, and a city with a more complex urban form spatially requires more infrastructure. The coefficients of the regression models show a lot of variations but the allometric scaling is meaningful for the planning and design of urban infrastructure. It will be helpful to incorporate ecological landscape metrics into urban planning and development.