http://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/2072_Atlas-of-Urban-Expansion

Atlas of Urban Expansion
The main objective of this Atlas of Urban Expansion is to increase understanding and help residents, policy makers, and researchers around the world come to terms with the expected global urban expansion in the coming decades. The Atlas in book form introduces the project and presents two sets of full-color maps and a set of raw data tables. The first map section contains pairs of urban land cover maps from circa 1990 and 2000, representing a global sample of 120 cities. The second map section includes composite maps of a global representative sample of 30 cities, showing the historical expansion of their urbanized areas from 1800 to 2000. In both sections, the maps shown are paired with numerical and graphical data, making it possible to compare cities in terms of their metric values on key attributes of urban expansion. The third section contains four extensive tables of urban, national, and regional data for each of the 120 cities.
 
Data and images from the Atlas of Urban Expansion are available for download on the companion website,
http://www.lincolninst.edu/subcenters/atlas-urban-expansion/
http://www.lincolninst.edu/subcenters/atlas-urban-expansion/gis-data.aspx

Section 4: Geographic Information System (GIS) Data for Cities
The GIS data used in the analysis and in making the maps can be downloaded from the website. GIS software, such as ArcGIS, is required to view these data. 
For each city in the 120 city sample, these data include: 
1.two urban land cover maps, one circa 1990 and one circa 2000;
2.the administrative boundary shapefile;
3.two maps of the urban landscape categories, one circa 1990 and one circa 2000;
4.the map of new development categories (infill, extension, leapfrog).
For each city in the 30 city historical sample, these data include the urbanized area shapefiles for each time period.
 
Use of data should include the following citation: Angel, S., J. Parent, D. L. Civco and A. M. Blei, 2010. Atlas of Urban Expansion, Cambridge MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, online at http://www.lincolninst.edu/subcenters/atlas-urban-expansion/.

December 17, 2009 (Des Plaines, IL) - Ten years after announcing that electronic copies of the URISA Journal would be made freely available to teachers and learners everywhere via the World Wide Web, the Journal’s electronic archives have become one of the richest collections of open educational resources in the geospatial field.

As of December 2009 there are 196 peer-reviewed articles in 40 issues of the URISA Journal freely available at http://www.urisa.org/journal_archives.

The Journal is one of only three journals listed by the Directory of Open Access Journals (http://www.doaj.org) under the keyword “gis,” and it is the only one to be ranked among 46 leading geographic information science (GIScience) journals by Caron and colleagues in 2008.

Caron and colleagues’ combined a Delphi study of 40 international experts and a quantitative comparison of journal citation rates to identify and rank leading periodicals in the GIScience field.

They ranked the URISA Journal 14th in relative importance among 46 periodicals. According to president Kathrine Cargo, “the sustained quality of the URISA Journal confirms the quality of our authors’ research, the dedication and skill of our editorial team, and the viability of open access publishing. URISA is proud to contribute these valuable resources to the benefit of the geospatial enterprise worldwide.”  

In 1998-99 Harlan Onsrud offered to serve as editor on the condition that the URISA Board of Directors agreed to publish open-access version the journal. Onsrud was concerned about escalating costs of academic journal subscriptions, and about scholars’ responsibility to “maximize dissemination of our works and our readership.” At the time, URISA President Joseph Ferreira stated that “while commercial publishers best make progress through exclusivity and control, the URISA Journal editors believe that science and new knowledge is best advanced through an intellectual environment of openness and freedom” (URISA 1999)

References
Caron, Claude, Stéphane Roche, Daniel Goyer and Annick Jaton (2008) GIScience Journals Ranking and Evaluation: An International Delphi Study. Transactions in GIS 12:3, 293-321.

Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (1999). URISA Journal Breaks New Ground. Press Release