Land cover in single-family housing areas and how it correlates with urban form

Land cover composition is a valuable indicator of the ecological performance of a city. Single-family housing areas constitute a substantial part of most cities and may as such play an important role for sustainable urban development. From aerial photos we performed detailed GIS-based mapping of land cover in three detached single-family housing areas in Denmark of different urban form but comparable housing densities (ranging from 10.0 to 11.3 houses per hectare). The findings were subjected to statistical analysis and landscape metrics. Land cover varied with urban form: A traditional spatial configuration with rectangular parcels contained significantly more vegetation and less impervious surfaces per parcel than newer Radburn-inspired configurations with more quadratic parcels. Correlation analysis showed size of paved access ways to be positively correlated with distance from road to carports in all parcels, and number of trees to be positively correlated with garden size in rectangular parcels. Correlation analysis also showed that higher trees were located further from houses, and that rectangular parcels could support more trees than quadratic parcels. These results suggest that the urban form of neighbourhoods to some degree predicts the long term land cover composition. We conclude that strategies for maximizing the ecological performance of single-family housing areas can be informed by knowledge on urban form, and that digital mapping of land cover based on aerial photography is a useful tool.