Building upward, dividing deeper: Three-dimensional urban expansion assessment reveals regional heterogeneity of preferential developments worldwide

Urban areas are continuously expanding outward with economic development and demographic growth, while simultaneously growing higher vertically. However, few efforts have been made to evaluate the impact of development priorities in different regions on urban sustainability, which limited our understanding of how urbanization has been affected by imbalanced evolution rhythm. Here we developed a 3D structure-based approach to assess volumetric urban expansion, as well as a refined evaluation system for assessing urban imbalanced growth trends. Results show that the 3D expansion patterns of urban areas exhibited significant heterogeneity globally. As urbanization accelerates, urban areas in the Global South are showing a trend of faster expansion accompanied by faster vertical growth. In addition, imbalanced growth types across different dimensions are significantly more complicated in the Global South than in the Global North, indicating the variance of development priorities is greater in the Global South. Furthermore, the imbalances are intensifying over time, as indicated by the temporal indices. Our study enhances the understanding of urban 3D patterns and imbalanced urban evolution, providing crucial insights for more balanced urbanization especially in the Global South.