Salat, Hadrien;
(2019)
Multifractality applied to the study of spatial inequality in urban systems.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
This thesis investigates multifractality as a tool to analyse the spatial patterns emerging from urban inequality. In our context, inequality is defined as a difference between individuals in economic welfare (in the tradition of Dalton and Sen). As such, it considers the typical household income distribution, but also variables such as real estate and energy consumption. These variables can be transformed into mathematical measures which present diverse extent of self-similarities explained by the self-organisation processes resulting from an intense competition for space. The multifractal methodology can exploit these self-similarities to produce precise local statistical information even when the usual tools fail due to an excessive complexity. The analysis is performed on large geographical datasets for London, Paris, New-York and Kyoto. The main results are a decrease in multifractality with modernisation that can be understood as an arguably positive homogenisation, but also a negative loss of diversity; striking similarities in the independent evolution of the spatial repartition of land and housing prices across the globe during the 20th century; and discrepancies between income and the other measures, in accordance with the idea that income alone is not enough to fully characterize inequality. The most important result, however, is the validation after comparison with the traditional inequality and segregation measures that multifractality is a high-performing spatial inequality indicator. It is in particular able to extend the exposure and clustering dimensions of segregation to ordinal continuous variables.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Multifractality applied to the study of spatial inequality in urban systems |
| Event: | UCL (University College London) |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2019. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment > Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10067978 |
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