Modeling Urban Land Use Change and Urban Sprawl: Calgary, Alberta, Canada Heng Sun & Wayne Forsythe & Nigel Waters Published online: 7 August 2007 # Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2007 Abstract This paper implements a land use classification for the City of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, using an object-oriented approach for six Landsat TM and ETM+ images and simulates the land use pattern in the future using Markov Chain analysis and Cellular Automata analysis based on the interactions between these land uses and the transportation network. Shannon’ s Entropy (an urban sprawl index) based on the land use classification results is used to measure urban sprawl. This research proves that an object-oriented approach can produce satisfactory classification results. It reveals the manner in which land use is likely to develop in the future, and demonstrates that urban sprawl continued to grow in Calgary during the years between 1985 and 2001. Such models are useful for providing the building blocks for traditional four-step transportation planning models. Keywords Urban sprawl . Road networks . Entropy . Object-oriented classification . Cellular automata . Markov chain analysis The research reported here used six satellite images for the City of Calgary (1985, 1990, 1992, 1999, 2000, 2001), together with land use files for the major road networks, parks and water bodies and the eCognition software (Definiens Imaging GmbH, 2002) to produce an object-oriented land use classification. The land use classifications in 1985 and 1992 were then used to “predict” land use in 1999 using two geosimulation techniques: Markov Chain and Cellular Automata analysis. This Netw Spat Econ (2007) 7:353–376 DOI 10.1007/s11067-007-9030-y H. Sun (*) Department of Geography, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada T2N 1N4 e-mail: hesun@ucalgary.ca N. Waters Department of Geography, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA e-mail: nwaters@gmu.edu W. Forsythe Department of Geography, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON, Canada M5B 2K3 e-mail: forsythe@geography.ryerson.ca