Citizens' Perceptions of Landscape Changes and Their Driving Forces: Evidence from Poland.

Iga Solecka,Aleksandra Krzyżanek,Ada Garczyńska,Piotr Krajewski

doi:10.3390/ijerph19031688

Abstract

The main aim of our studies was to explore the driving forces of landscape change and their impact on the landscape as perceived by citizens in our study. We use quantitative tools for unravelling processes of landscape change over time and a qualitative tool aimed at capturing people’s perceptions about those changes. We use the two municipalities of Ostrów Wielkopolski and Kąty Wrocławskie as illustrative examples of urban and urban–rural municipalities in two time periods, 2006–2021 and 2012–2018, in Poland. We apply a three-stage approach: (1) to identify the main landscape changes based on land-cover data, (2) to characterize those changes with the use of orthophoto maps and (3) to identify the driving forces of landscape changes with the use of an online survey and interviews. The results show a large agreement between the perceived and actual level of changes. We identified key landscape change processes in both municipalities, and we conclude that citizens’ perceptions concerning those processes in both municipalities differed depending on the context, the level of changes, and the way this process was planned and implemented. In both municipalities, the respondents pointed out political driving forces of landscape change as key underlying drivers. Future landscape planning should consider citizens’ approaches towards landscape change to achieve better societal approval and improve the quality of life of the inhabitants.

Highlights

Landscape change is caused by a complex combination of technological, social, cultural, political and spatial processes [1]
The situation is similar in Ostrów Wielkopolski, where the landscape change index for the period 2006–2012 was 5, and for the period 2012–2018, it was only 2 (Table 3)
In the municipality of Ostrów Wielkopolski, we identified three proximate drivers: urban development, road infrastructure development, and industrial and commercial development, as well as accompanying proximate drivers identified by the respondents

Summary

Introduction

Landscape change is caused by a complex combination of technological, social, cultural, political and spatial processes [1]. These processes are called drivers [2], or key processes in landscape change [3] or driving forces of landscape change. They are mostly divided into five main groups—socio-economic, political, technological, natural and cultural [4,5]—and are analyzed as proximate and underlying processes [6]. In the recent 20 years, an intensification of landscape changes [7] and increasing pressure on landscape values [8] have been observed. Landscape transformations are observed all over the world, especially in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe [9]

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Discussion

Conclusion