Clustering patterns of urban built-up areas with curves of fractal scaling behaviour

International audienceFractal dimension is an index which can be used for characterizing urban areas. The use of the curve of scaling behavior is less common. However its shape gives local information about the morphology of the built‐up area. This paper suggests a method based on a k‐medoid for clustering these curves. It is applied to 49 ward of European cities, and shows that the curves add interesting intra‐ward information to our knowledge of the spatial variation of the urban texture. Moreover, morphological similarities are observed between cities: living, architectural and planning trends are not specific to individual cities