Measurement of the Compactness of Regions by the Average Distance

Abstract

''Compact city'' is a conceptual object to work toward for urban planners. In the last decades, numerous studies have revealed some benefits of the compact city. However, there are few studies for measuring the compactness of actual regions. This paper proposes a way to measure the compactness of regions with the average distance. The average distance is calculated with census population data of ''half-size mesh'', rectangles about 0.5 km each side length. Yamagata prefecture and Chiba prefecture are used as real regions to apply the proposed method.