Assessing path-dependent urban growth with geographically weighted regressions

Urban growth may exert remarkably intense environmental impacts, e.g. as far as land resource depletion, pollution, and rising temperatures in built-up areas are concerned. The relationship between urban expansion and environmental degradation is complex and depends on spatial heterogeneity of biophysical conditions, closely intertwined with inherent transformations in settlement forms and socioeconomic functions. Understanding past urbanization patterns contributes to delineate future trajectories of urban development supporting environmental plans that mitigate the negative environmental externalities of economic growth. The present study adopts a spatially explicit approach based on Geographically Weighted Regressions (GWR) to evaluate density-dependent population growth as a key dimension of urban development – and the consequent environmental pressure – along one century (1920–2020) encompassing a cycle from urbanization to re-urbanization in the Athens' metropolitan region (Central Greece). Density-dependent regulation of population growth was particularly intense at the end of the ‘urbanization’ phase and during ‘suburbanization’, being less intense with ‘counter-urbanization’ and negligible with ‘re-urbanization’. Density-dependent regulation of population dynamics demonstrated to be an important dimension of metropolitan expansion in heterogeneous socioeconomic contexts, causing a locally differentiated impact on the surrounding (natural and semi-natural) environments.