Measuring the morphology of suburban settlements: Scale-dependent ambiguities of residential density development in the Prague Urban Region

Abstract The academic debate on methodological approaches to the measurement of urban sprawl, particularly its most cited dimension, the density of residential settlement, is discussed in this article. The methodology of point pattern analysis, and its benefits in comparison to land-use data analysis, especially for researching the morphology of residential development, is examined. This empirical study was conducted in the hinterland of Prague and is based on point data from 2007, 2010 and 2016. The paper contributes to the scholarly discussion of suburbanisation in Central and Eastern European countries, including the morphology of suburban development. The role of scale is also emphasised, given our observation of two ambiguous means of development, namely spatial dispersion at the regional scale and increasing density at the local scale. The findings support claims regarding the crucial role of micro-scale research in understanding suburban form. The largest Czech suburb of Jesenice serves as a case study, where the morphology of built-up areas is analysed in the local context.