Diverse dynamics of urban sprawl: Examining changes in urban form, forest landscapes, and demographics across the Metropolitan Detroit region

Urban growth in cities across the United States and the world has continued to follow the low-density pattern often called urban sprawl. Prior research has rarely linked changes in urban form, forest landscapes, and racial diversity, instead often analyzing these phenomena in isolation. This paper explores the relationships among variables in these categories through a hierarchical cluster analysis of the 231 local jurisdictions in the Metropolitan Detroit region in Michigan, USA, drawing from spatially-detailed metrics derived from remote sensing data from 1985 to 2015 and demographic data from 1990 to 2010. The analysis revealed patterns of change among these variables by identifying 10 clusters. The clusters describe communities evolving in both more sprawling and more sustainable trajectories, empirically documenting important local variations in development patterns across the region.