Dakar Metropolitan Area

Abstract

Globally, the demand for timely land use/cover change information has increased over the past decades given the rapid pace of urbanization . The objective of this chapter was to analyze observed and simulated land use/cover changes between 1989 and 2030 in Dakar Metropolitan Area. The land use/cover maps for 1989, 1999, 2010, and 2014 indicated that built-up areas increased substantially over the study period. Generally, built-up expanded during the “1989–1999” and “2010–2014” epochs, while built-up expansion slowed down during the “1999–2010” epoch. Built-up growth in Dakar Metropolitan Area was characterized by a combination of sprawl and densification . Future land use/cover simulations (up to 2030) indicated that the current land use/cover change trends such as the increase in built-up areas and decrease in non-built-up areas as well as urban sprawl would continue to persist. The observed and simulated land use/cover changes provide a panoramic view of built-up expansion as well as a simulated urban growth scenario for Dakar Metropolitan Area. These results convey important insights about urban expansion, which could potentially be used to implement the “2035 Dakar Urban Masterplan.”