Potential Surface Analysis - An Alternative Approach for Demarcating the Appropriate Land Use Zoning in Urban Areas : A Case study of Colombo, Sri Lanka

Abstract

Land Use Control Zones and Regulations are some of the important aspects in the urban Management. However, Most of the Municipalities in the Developing world, demarcate land use zones based on very limited information or sometime in a very arbitrary manner. The main intention of this book is to validate the Potential Surface Analysis which has been introduced to demarcate the socio-economic boundaries rather than the arbitrary land use control zones for urban land uses, using Multivariate Analysis Techniques and Geographical Information Systems. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was the main Multivariate Techniques which used to extracted the main components of the socio- economic layers. GIS has been applied for the extraction of the common area among the different data layers. Further, attention has been given to some Urban Morphological aspects of the city of Colombo; Ethnic Segregation, Spatial Structure of the Occupational groups and the Filtering Process. This book may be very useful for those who are engaged in Urban Management activities such as Urban Planners, Urban Designers and Decision Makers.