Defining and characterizing urban boundaries: A fractal analysis of theoretical cities and Belgian cities

In this paper we extract the morphological boundaries of urban agglomerations and characterize boundary shapes using eight fractal and nonfractal spatial indexes. Analyses were first performed on six archetypal theoretical cities, and then on Belgium's 18 largest towns. The results show that: (1) the relationship between the shape of the urban boundary (fractal dimension, dendricity, and compactness) and the built morphology within the urban agglomeration (fractal dimension, proportion of buildings close to the urban boundary) is not straightforward; (2) each city is a unique combination of the morphological characteristics considered here; (3) due to their different morphological characteristics, the planning potential of Flemish and Walloon cities seems to be very different.