Urban analysis with GIS

This paper discusses how GIS (Geographic Information System) can contribute to the research field of urban analysis. The purpose of urban analysis is to explain the processes of spatial distributions in urban areas. For this purpose, urban analysts often need to manipulate large amounts of spatial data. This is the reason why urban analysis cannot advance without GIS. Analysts can visualize urban affairs using GIS and find the processes of spatial distributions. For example, in this paper, land use distributions in Nagoya City, Japan are visually analyzed with Arc View GIS. This analysis demonstrates that GIS can contribute to urban analysis. After this analysis, future work is discussed based on the reviews of recent studies on urban analysis using GIS.