Comparing the fractality of European urban neighbourhoods: do national contexts matter ?

International audienceThe objective of this paper is to show that morphological similarities between built-up urban surfaces are greater across borders than within cities in Europe: living, architectural and planning trends are international. The spatial arrangement of built-up areas is analysed here by means of fractal indices using a set of 97 town sections selected from 18 European urban agglomerations. The fractal dimension is estimated by correlation techniques. Results confirm that morphological similarities are higher across countries/cities than within. Moreover, two types of fractal laws are considered: one uses the basic fractal scaling law; the other introduces a prefactor a that is often called a ''form factor'' in the fractal literature. Differences in the results obtained by both laws are explained empirically as well as theoretically, and suggestions are made for further measurements