Response to Land Use Dynamics beyond the American Urban Fringe

David Theobald talks about the ways to determine land use change from urban to rural and explains different methods in obtaining data sets and information for analyzing patterns of conversion. One description that was interesting was his classification of development patterns of housing density. Urban, suburban, exurban, and rural are considered his four classes of urban housing density, in which, I think, is very much true considering the further away from town, the more rural it gets with less dense housing. Another term that he used was the urban fringe in which is is really noticeable in Nevada. For instance, you can definately see the transition from instant urban to rural in Reno and Las Vegas. Other urbanized states such as California, Florida, New York, and the New England area it is so hard to determine the urban fringe because of developing urban and suburban areas that continue to grow and merge into another city. Finally, I wanted to point out Thoebald's analyzing patterns such as collecting satellite imagery and aerial photos to point out these patterns as Gregory Dicum did in Window Seat: Reading the Landscape from the Air. Most of the book consisted of aerial urbanized satellite photos of easily determined urban fringes.