Urban Sprawl Impact on Agricultural Lands in Irbid City, Jordan

Abstract

Urban sprawl on agricultural lands is considered as one of the major problems that agricultural sector can face, especially in Irbid city. Irbid city, which is located at the north of Jordan, is one of the most important provinces in Jordan for the fertility of its soil. Most of its lands have clay soil which is suitable for cultivation of several crops. Unfortunately, the scenario of urban sprawl is continuing randomly and the percentage of agricultural land continues to decrease. This research article focuses on the agricultural lands of Irbid city and its districts, and how urban constructions will affect their areas based on statistics along the years from 1995 to 2015. In order to provide a solution to agricultural area exhaustion in Irbid governorate, this article suggests allowing adding additional floors to the current allowed floors in order to encourage vertical construction expansion rather than horizontal one.This study presents a simulation study steps to figure out the relationships between the growth of construction areas and the decline of agricultural lands. These relationships can be computed by using statistical techniques of correlation and regression analysis. Based on this analysis and computation, we tested the suggested solution, of adding more floors on the current allowed number of floors, by measuring the appropriate number of allowed floors at the same building that will delay agricultural area blocking for each Irbid district.  The simulation results indicate when each district of Irbid city will be blocked before and after using the additional floors, and possible achieved delay for each district is computed. The model indicates that one alternative to reserve the agricultural lands in Irbid city for the coming 40 years is to allow buildings to grow up more than 4 floors. Therefore, this research encourages vertical construction expansion rather than horizontal one, for the coming buildings.

Keywords: Agricultural lands, Construction Area, Distributive Function, Population, Simulation Process, Urban Sprawl.