New perspectives in land use mapping based on urban morphology: A case study of the Federal District, Brazil

The Federal District of Brazilis characterized by intense and uncontrolled urban expansion and growing economic inequality, that is strongly reflected in absence of appropriated land use planning. The inability to effectively manage land use has resulted in unconstrained appropriations of the territory, mainly in public areas. It is necessary to develop tools to support decision-making in managing the land use and sustainable development of urban areas. This effort must address the complex set of laws related to the environment, urban licensing, and water use granting. Urban morphology is a spatial indicator that specifies the physical characteristics of the urban structure and, more specifically, the organization of urban space. In this context, the Urban Structure Type (UST) is a concept for identifying and understanding the urban space. The UST methodology describes urban spaces and considers their homogeneity regarding the coverage types, types of land use, physical features, functionality and context. This study aims to characterize the urban area of the Federal District, Brazil, using the UST approach. The UST features were mappedusing remote sensing data, orthophotos with 1-metre resolution and vector data (blocks, census tracts, routes and ecological corridors). A classification was performed by visual analysis. We considered three hierarchical levels during the classification stage. The first two levels were classified based only on the uses of the urban structure. In the third level, we considered 25 types of urban structures. The classes that had the most extensive areas were Remaining Spaces (29%), Green Spaces (10%), Agricultural Spaces (9%), Consolidation Areas of type SH1 (7.6%), Community Equipment (6.7%) and Residential Areas of type RH1 (5.9%). The UST mapping distinguished the characteristics of the patterns of the urban occupancy. Mapping of urban structure types provided a new and more accurate vision of cities, since the scale of detail allows the cities to be analysed by different stakeholders, both from the public and private sector. After a revision of several legal definitions and allowing convergence in public sector decision-making process on the territory, the UST was incorporated in the EEZ-DF plan discussions, through a district law n degrees 1988/2018. Hence, this methodology represents a capacity-building process for the public sector, with enormous implications for land use planning and management.