Remote sensing of urban areas

The rapid development of world-wide urbanization causes many problems, such as infrastructure planning, uncontrolled urban sprawl and a concentration of resources at the expense of the surrounding countryside. Hence, planners and resource managers need a reliable mechanism to assess the consequences of urbanization quickly and effectively. Today, remote sensing and GIS are the new technologies that can help to solve these problems with up-to-date spatial information. This paper examines remote sensing of urban areas from the point of view of developed and developing countries.