Urban Sprinkling

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The sprinkling is a new urban model concerning the configuration of low-density settlement, which differs from the international standard of urban sprawl due to its characteristics and the greatest impact on environmental, economic, social and territorial balances. It was identified and theorized, initially, for the Italian case; in fact, this characterization took place in a research about the evaluation of land take in Italy, by a research group coordinated by Prof. Bernardino Romano (University of L'Aquila).

Definition

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, sprawl is "the spreading of urban developments (as houses and shopping centers) on undeveloped land near a city".., but "sprinkling" means "a small quantity falling in scattered drops or particles". And this type of settlement has already been experimentally classified by means of ad hoc indicators, such as Urban Dispersion Index (UDI) and Sprinkling Index (SPX)

The modeling result derives from a ten-year research on the evolution of Italian urban areas since the post-war period to 2000 and appears for the first time in 2015 in two articles: "Il riassetto del suolo urbano italiano: questione di "sprinkling"?". published on Territorio (which is an Italian journal) and "Half a century of urbanization in southern European lowlands: a study on the Po Valley (Northern Italy)" published on Urban Research and Practice (which is an international journal). The characteristics of the sprinkling standard were then definitively defined in 2017 in two other articles published within two international journals: one in Sustainability ("Sprinkling: An Approach to Describe Urbanization Dynamics in Italy") and the other in Land Use Policy ("Land transformation of Italy due to half a century of urbanization").

This form of land take characterizes nearly the whole Italian national territory, without significant north-south differences, although it is a configuration that is emblematically represented in the major Italian plains and coastal areas.

However, sprinkling is an urban arrangement which is also found in other countries and therefore this modeling is useful to describe the urban transformation that took place in other contexts and not only in Italy. To better highlight the high dispersion characteristics, some examples of Italian sprinkling and international sprinkling are shown below:

Model

The Sprinkling model was described considering the Italian geographic sample characterized by high dispersed urban development and it appears to be a better standard to represent the configuration of the urbanized areas of the Italian Peninsula.

A similar urban development is also present in other countries of Southern Europe and in other continental areas, even if with different features and varying physiognomy.

The main differences between Urban Sprawl and Urban Sprinkling are briefly shown in the table below.

MODELS		TERRITORIAL AND URBANISTIC PARAMETERS AVERAGE
	SPRAWL (International Standard) Urban structure planned through apportionment, with a prevalence of detached/semi-detached houses. Interventions for realizing collective spaces and utilities are coordinated, often with reference to the architecture of the buildings. The urban fabric is homogeneous as to its use.	Building Density: 6 buil/ha (*) Population Density: 20 - 25 inh/ha Building Coverage Ratio (BCR): 10 - 12 % (*) between 10 and 20 buil/ha of site density; i.e. the density used at the individual lot level
	SPRAWL (Italian Coastal Model) Urban structure planned through apportionment, with a prevalence of multi-family houses. The urban fabric is homogeneous as to its use.	Building Density: 12 buil/ha Population Density: 120 - 150 inh/ha Building Coverage Ratio (BCR): 25 - 30 %
	SPRINKLING (Italian Extended Model) Land take with a partially spontaneous development, or subject to low controls, adding on to a historical structure. The built-up areas are not homogeneous in size and use, with a mixture of rural, residential, industrial, and tertiary functions.	Building Density: 0,1 buil/ha Population Density: 0,2 - 0,5 inh/ha Building Coverage Ratio (BCR): 1 %
	SPRINKLING (Italian Linear Model) Land take with a partially spontaneous development, or subject to low controls, adding on to a historical structure and governed by the main infrastructures. The built-up areas are not homogeneous in size and use, with a mixture of rural, residential, industrial, and tertiary functions.	Building Density: 0,8 buil/ha Population Density: 1,5 - 2 inh/ha Building Coverage Ratio (BCR): 4 %

The issues caused by ordinary urban management are massive:

• Land take has extremely high energy costs for both the public and private sectors;
• The supply of technical/economic/organizational utilities is particularly onerous, due to the distance among urbanized areas and their extremely low demographic density;
• Landscapes and ecosystems are subject to drastic quality degradation due to partial alteration, disturbance, fragmentation, and loss, even when those changes are remote.

It must be emphasized that sprinkling gives the environmental matrix and communities more serious and irreversible damages than sprawl. For this reason, the partial reversal of many negative effects is, in the short term, substantially impossible, while it is faced with articulated and politically coordinated programs on medium to long horizons; an example of a recovery plan that can be implemented in a specific area characterized by sprinkling is described in the article "Urban Growth Control DSS Techniques for De-Sprinkling Process in Italy"

The Italian territory now recognizes an absolute need to reorganize the distribution of the building and its ancillary functional areas, to contain their expansion and make them more sustainable both in environmental and social terms and in economic terms, and the conclusions reached by the research are substantial in order to be able to recalculate the future rules based on the settlements of the various regional communities.

References

This article "Urban Sprinkling" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Urban Sprinkling. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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