This book presents a compendium of the urban layout maps of 2-mile square downtown areas of
more than one hundred cities in developed and developing countries-all drawn at the same scale
using high-resolution satellite images of Google Maps. The book also presents analytic studies
using metric geometrical topological (or network) and fractal measures of these maps. These
analytic studies identify ordinaries extremes similarities and differences in these maps
investigate the scaling properties of these maps and develop precise descriptive categories
types and indicators for multidimensional comparative studies of these maps. The findings of
these studies indicate that many geometric relations of the urban layouts of downtown areas
follow regular patterns that despite social economic and cultural differences among cities
the geometric measures of downtown areas in cities of developed and developing countries do not
show significant differences and that the geometric possibilities of urban layouts are vastly
greater than those that have been realized so far in our cities.
