Land-use patterns in the classification of cities: the Israeli case

The classification of cities is based in most studies on readily available socioeconomic databases. This paper introduces for the first time a classification of towns and cities with regard to the composition of land use in their built-up areas. The analysis used for this classification process is based on a large and unique land-use database gathered from a wide sample of towns and cities in Israel. A combination of two multivariate procedures served the classification process. A hierarchical cluster analysis was employed to define groups of cities with similar land-use patterns, and a discriminant analysis was conducted to test the intervalidity of the adopted cluster solution and the statistically significant differences among the clusters. The proposed typology does not derive from the socioeconomic characteristics of the population residing in these cities. Rather, it relates to the location of the city and the function that the city fulfills in the region.