Abstract: Space-time demographic and built-up trends are crucial in the European challenge of socio-territorial cohesion and the UrbanAgenda. This research aims to analyze the space-time patterns of population and built-up areas in Spain between 1975 and2020, without the constraints imposed by administrative boundaries. To this end, we used the freely available Global HumanSettlement Layer to analyze 3D bins and emerging hot spots for population and built-up areas. Our results showed that the space-time patterns for built-up areas are more homogeneous than those for population, reducing built-up cluster diversity to two cold-spot types and four hotspot classes. In contrast, population dynamics exhibit greater variability, encompassing all eight possiblehotspot categories and seven distinct cold-spot types. The 37.46% of the surface area corresponds to both built-up and populationcold trends. Conversely, 11.91% of the surface area encompasses both hot spots coinciding with functional urban areas (FUA) andextending beyond their boundaries, where 74.93% of the population resides. Surrounding FUA areas exhibit decoupling trends,with dynamic built-up patterns and static or declining populations. Furthermore, dynamic areas showed declining density as theeffective density decreased by 26.87%. The method can be transferred to other countries, and the insightful results could assistpolicymakers.
Fuente: Transactions in GIS, 2026, 30(2), e70235
Editorial: Wiley-Blackwell
Fecha de publicación: 01/04/2026
Nº de páginas: 19
Tipo de publicación: Artículo de Revista
DOI: 10.1111/tgis.70235
ISSN: 1361-1682,1467-9671
Url de la publicación: https://doi.org/10.1111/tgis.70235