Exploring patterns and consequences of land consumption in a coastal city-region

BACKGROUND: The rapid expansion of built-up areas and land consumption with unsustainable spatial patterns in coastal urban areas has become a global major concern due to its far-reaching consequences for human daily life, environmental sustainability, and living organisms. However, the research on this phenomenon in these areas has received less attention. To fill this gap, we conducted a study to explore the spatial patterns of land consumption at both micro- and macro-levels and to evaluate its consequences in terms of sustainable development in a coastal city-region of Mazandaran Province in northern Iran. To achieve these two goals, we combined two methods of urban land density function and landscape expansion index (LEI) to explore spatial patterns of land consumption and also evaluated the sustainability of the region with two methods of the hierarchical analytical process (AHP) and urban sustainability index (USI). RESULTS: The spatial patterns of land consumption in the city-region of Mazandaran from 1996 to 2016 at the macro-level changed from a decentralized-sprawl to a centralized-sprawl pattern. At the micro-level, the dominant spatial pattern of land consumption in the city-region changed gradually from the outlying pattern towards the edge expansion and infilling patterns. Also, the spatial pattern of the built-up patches in the majority of the urban areas had conformity with the dominant pattern of the region. Besides, the spatial patterns of land consumption in the region were in an unsustainable state and were changing towards more unsustainability. The absence of urban containment policies and plans could lead to further destruction of the natural environment and increase its unsustainability. CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that the urban areas of the coastal Mazandaran have the same behavior in the spatial pattern of land consumption at the macro- and micro-levels and all are in the same direction and follow the dominant pattern of the region.