Analysis of Built-Up Areas of Small Polish Cities with the Use of Deep Learning and Geographically Weighted Regression

Abstract

Small cities are an important part of the settlement system, a link between rural areas and large cities. Although they perform important functions, research focuses on large cities and metropolises while marginalizing small cities, the study of which is of great importance to progress in social sciences, geography, and urban planning. The main goal of this paper was to verify the impact of selected socio-economic factors on the share of built-up areas in 665 small Polish cities in 2019. Data from the Database of Topographic Objects (BDOT), Sentinel-2 satellite imagery from 2015 and 2019, and Local Data Bank by Statistics Poland form 2019 were used in the research. A machine learning segmentation procedure was used to obtain the data on the occurrence of built-up areas. Hot Spot (Getis-Ord Gi*) analysis and geographically weighted regression (GWR) was applied to explain spatially varying impact of factors related to population, spatial and economic development, and living standards on the share of built-up areas in the area of small cities. Significant association was found between the population density and the share of built-up areas in the area of the cities studied. The influence of the other socio-economic factors examined, related to the spatial and economic development of the cities and the quality of life of the inhabitants, showed great regional variation. The results also indicated that the share of built-up areas in the area of the cities under study is a result of the conditions under which they were established and developed throughout their existence, and not only of the socio-economic factors affecting them at present.