Urban land use changes forecasting

Abstract

The development of urban areas largely affects the land situated along the border between urban and rural areas, causing various forms of land use to penetrate and overlap each other. Called a “transitional” zone between the town and country due to its specificity and character, the area is characterised by a high variability of function in time and changes in the forms and ways of use of particular pieces of land. These are so-called city adjoining areas, with loosely built-up areas, horitcultural and pomicultural farms, incomplete communal development, scattered industrial and storage facilities, greenery and leisure facilities. The area is treated as a temporary (transitional) form of land use, which precedes the phase of more intensive development. An object of research was the area of the fringe area of the city and the village and parameters characterizing it, definite on the ground analyses of current forms of the land use with the utilization of foundations of the fuzzy sets theory. The article aim is analyzing of changes in land use on the fringe areas of the Olsztyn city. Changes has been analyzed that have occurred since 1999, in the southern part of the city. The study also contain forecast of transformations that may occur in the future, in the study area. On the basis of changes, the scenario of land use in the near future was created. The evaluation of a degree to which a piece of land belongs to a city and a possibility of designing the width of transition zones enables the planning of the development of the transition zone between urban areas and landscape protected areas (e.g. forests, lakes). Such a plan seems necessary both because it makes it possible to determine the optimum way of land use and also to adapt it to the natural conditions.Detailed analysis of the forms of land use and its use enables the shaping of an urban landscape with the developed models.