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Urban sprawl: Extent and environmental impact in Baguio City, Philippines

Gonzales Lord Byron F. (Saint Louis University, School of Engineering and Architecture, Environment and Habitat Planning, Baguio City, Philippines)

Urban sprawl has emerged as a striking characteristic of recent global urban development. Land use policies advocating urban expansion for residential use to the detriment of a critical environment as in the case of Baguio City, Philippines, have shaped and reinforced the urban sprawl phenomenon. Urban sprawl is characterized by discontinuous, fragmented/leapfrog development, with random population densities. There are generally few studies regarding the environmental impact of urban sprawl and it is along this vein that this study was undertaken. The purpose of the study is to gauge how extensive urban sprawl has grown in Baguio City via Shannon’s entropy model and to explore its impact on the city’s environment. The result of the study revealed that urban sprawl prevails over the city’s physical development. The proximity of the entropy value to the maximum reference value, indicate a highly dispersed urban development attributed to the continuous increase in population, coupled with the physical constraint of topography and its limited land area. The most critical issue challenging the local government of Baguio City and its people is the creation of a Long Term Development Plan that should strike a balance between local ambitions, demographic facts, and the environmental sustainability.

Keywords: urban sprawl, urban growth, shannon entropy, environmental impact