10.Gradinaru teza doctorat

Geogaphica Timisiensis, vol. 19, nr.1, 2010 (pp. 115-124) ●

ON IDENTIFYING URBAN GROWTH AND LAND COVER CHANGE IN THE POSTSOCIALIST ERA USING

GIS. CASE STUDY: FĂLTICENI MUNICIPALITY

Ionela GRĂDINARU Universitatea „Al. I Cuza” Iaşi

Abstract: The dynamic of urban landscapes, in terms of land use/land cover change, is strongly influenced by the underlying changes in economical processes and political factors. Consequently, in a territory undergoing transition from state ownership and management of all resources to free market based on individual property, such as the city of Fălticeni post-1989, the likelihood of identifying significant change in land use/land cover is high. Further, land use/land cover is highly pertinent to urban planning regulations, economical feasibility, ownership over the land and urban growth modelling. In order to document this hypothesis, I have studied the land cover within the urban administrative borders in 2006 in relation to the corresponding data in 1985 at a reasonably fine scale (1:5000) using a GIS software to create my own set of vector and raster data based on cadastral maps (O.C.O.T. Suceava, 1985) and orthophotos (A.N.C.P.I., 2006), that were analysed according to my research objectives. The analysis revealed that the urban landscape has been very dynamic during the two-decade period, displaying consistent changes in most types of land cover/land use, most notably in the case of urban built-up. Urban built-op scored a significant increase, and several agricultural categories decreased, respectively. Given the scale of this research and the accuracy of the data, the findings provide a solid basis for urban planners and future planning and research needs. Rezumat: Asupra identificării creşterii urbane şi a modificării modului de utilizare a terenului în era post socialistă prin utilizarea SIG. Studiu de caz oraşul Fălticeni. Dinamica peisajelor urbane din perspectiva evoluŃiei modului de utilizare a terenurilor este puternic direcŃionată de schimbările survenite pe plan economic şi/sau politic. În aceste condiŃii, un teritoriu în tranziŃie de la o economie în care statul deŃine şi controlează integral resursele către economia de piaŃă bazată pe proprietate individuală, cum este şi cazul municipiului Fălticeni după 1989, poate fi supus unor schimbări consistente ale modului de utilizare a terenurilor ca efect al regândirii reglementărilor urbanistice, a condiŃiilor economice, a proprietăŃii funciare, etc., fiind de aşteptat o creştere urbană. Pentru a testa această ipoteză, am studiat modul de utilizare a terenurilor pe teritoriul administrativ al oraşului în 2006 comparativ cu 1985 cu ajutorul unui soft GIS, construind o bază de date cu layere vector şi raster, pe baza hărŃilor cadastrale (O.C.O.T. Suceava, 1985) şi a ortofotoplanurilor (A.N.C.P.I., 2006) disponibile, analizate ulterior în funcŃie de obiectivele stabilite. Studiul nostru a scos în evidenŃă o dinamică semnificativă a peisajului urban, cu creşteri substanŃiale ale zonelor construite, secondate de mutaŃii deloc neglijabile ale categoriilor de utilizare agricolă. Având în vedere scara de analiză (1:5000) şi acurateŃea datelor spaŃiale, considerăm că rezultatele noastre ar putea constitui o bază solidă pentru planificarea şi amenajarea urbană. Keywords: Land Cover, Land Use, Urban Growth, Urban Planning, Dynamic Cuvinte-cheie: utilizarea terenurilor, creştere urbană, planificare urbană, dinamică

● On identifying of urban growth and land cover change in postsocialist era… 116

1. INTRODUCTION

Landscapes are dynamic and their changes have been studied for a long time, with various cognitive interests and by various scientific methods, some of these studies aiming at understanding how land use patterns are developing (Burgi et al. 2009). Moreover, the changes in urban landscapes are known to be fast paced, thus making it difficult for planners to effectively manage the evolution of the urban territory. Consequently, the increasingly complex relationship between urban function and form has lead researchers to focus on how underlying economical and biophysical processes shape emergent urban patterns and their dynamics, debating on how can policies most effectively shape urban morphology and manage urban growth, expansion and decline (Irwin et al. 2009). The overall increase in the human population and the continuous movement from rural areas to the cities are the driving forces behind the expansion of cities worldwide, resulting in higher human densities and changes in the landscape. Thus, a significant amount of information on urban/urbanizing environments is in demand by natural resource managers, scientists, planners and professionals associated with human health in order to inform planning and management decisions required to create more sustainable cities (McDonnell and Hahs, 2008). In the particular case of Romanian cities after the downfall of communism, the political and economical changes brought upon by the transition from a centrally planned system to a more market-oriented one have had a deep impact on the urban system; albeit, setting the grounds for significant changes in the urban land use. The replacement of state property with individual ownership over land, the disappearance of state planned urban and agricultural management, as well as the changes in laws and regulations concerning land use and urban planning have acted synergistically, causing new landscape patterns to emerge. However, these mutations have yet to be fully understood and evaluated, mainly due to a lack in available spatial and temporal data (Kuemmerle, 2006). This study sets out to identify the main changes in the land cover/land use within the administrative territory of Fălticeni, comprising urban (built up), agricultural (with multiple subdivisions), forested and other classes of lands. The economical and social characteristics of this town, previously heavily industrialized by the communist government and also relying on its extensive state-owned fruit farms, both of which have dissolved after 1989, made it all the more vulnerable to the structural mutations that ensued. The lands have been retroceded to their former owners according to the then newly drafted Law 18/1991, that has been subsequently modified by a new set of regulations, thus resulting in the disappearence of the state-owned farms (C.A.P., I.A.S.) and the division of land into considerably smaller parcels, in an attempt to reconstitute the inter-war property over land. One other internal force that has prompted a visible change in the urban landscape was the replacement of older restrictive regulations concerning building with newer, more liberal ones, aiming at allowing more freedom to the real estate market, but mostly resulting in chaotic development that has often eluded plannning regulations (Tosics, 2005).

2. STUDY AREA

Ionela GRĂDINARU ● 117

Several traits make this medium-sized town an interesting case study for the land cover/land use change after the collapse of communism. Fălticeni is located in north-eastern Romania, in the historical province Moldova, and is presently a part of Suceava county. Its geographical coordinates are 47º27'27" E and 26º16'18" N, respectively. The location in a typical hilly area, namely the Fălticeni Plateau (also known as Şomuzurilor Plateau), is responsible for the distinct topography, comprising of a small depression carved in the Sarmatian clayey-sandy deposits by the Şomuzul Mare river, enclosed by asymmetrical hills (cuests) with a mean altitude ranging between 400 and 431 m, while the central area of the urban body is situated at approx. 350 m above sea level. The city accommodates a population of 30.157 inhabitants (RPL, 2002), the vast majority of which (94,3%) live in the city, while the rest of the population is divided equally between the two component villages, łarna Mare and Şoldăneşti. The accessibility to the main regional road network is very high, considered that the urban territory is crossed by European roads - E85 and E576, respectively -, linking the city to the southern and western regions of Romania, while the rail network has a diminished relevance for the urban development in this particular case, due to the fact that the importance if this secondary route has decreased dramatically after the collapse of the local industry that had previously created large fluxes of goods, as well as by introducing a gap in the urban tissue. The urban built up area has evolved from an initial nucleus that had developed on the smooth, gently sloping SE side of Corneşti Hill, later on expanding towards the higher hillslopes to include the neighboring rural areas (villages) and the agricultural lands (mostly pastures, orchards and arable land), as well as towards the valley of Şomuz that became inhabitable subsequent to the construction of the two dams and the drainage of the floodplain, helping to adjust the groundwater level (fig. 1).

Fig. 1 a) The location of Fălticeni within Suceava county; b) The location of the built-up area in relation to the main communications

a. PoziŃia oraşului Fălticeni în judeŃul Suceava. b. PoziŃoa ariei construite în raport cu principalele axe de comunicaŃie


3. MATERIALS AND METHODS

This study looks at how the urban land cover/land use has changed during a period of roughly two decades (1985-2006), trying to identify the main trends associated to the urban development in the postsocialist era. The land cover data has been acquired by means of vectorizing microscale (1:5000) topographic maps (OCOT Suceava, 1985) and orthophotos (ANCPI, 2006) using ArcGIS 9.1, thus creating polygon layers for each of the land use categories. The land cover classes were established in accordance with the Romanian Cadaster (ANCPI, 2009), as well as the particular traits of the region - for instance, the vast areas occupied by orchards prompted us to furher divide this class by separating intensive and extensive orchards, respectively. Consequently, we have obtained two vector representations of the land cover for the 1985 and 2006, each comprising of 13 classes. The vector files have been reclassified according to the needs of the analysis and converted into raster representations for a better identification of the urban land cover dynamic, by extracting solely the built up vs. agricultural and other uses and emphasizing the developing areas. In addition, we have digitized the elevation lines from the topographic maps as vector layers and created a fine scale DEM, in an attempt to explain the present day land cover in relation to the local geomorphology.

4. RESULTS

While several categories of land cover/land use were determined to have remained virtually unmodified compared to the period pre-1989, such as the terrains covered permanently or temporarily with waters (including the dam lakes, the channels, basins and other categories), which is a logical evolution, considered that no measures have been taken to alter these areas, in most of the classes the spatial dynamic has been apparent, either positive or negative. The highest increase percentages has been scored by built up areas, followed closely by the the arable lands, mostly to the detriment of orchards and pastures. The built up areas have scored a net increase of 140 ha (including solely the actual built up parcels), or cca. 42% compared to the previous built up area (1985). While this category comprises of several types of urban buildings, such as dwellings, industrial constructions, public buildings, special edifices, etc., and their respective parcels, the expansion of the inhabitable area (mostly individual dwellings) accounts for the majority of the urban growth during the last two decades, but, as the maps below suggest, the growth has been relatively diffuse spatially. Our statement is supported by the increase in the inhabitable area, by 39,92% in 2006 compared to 1990, as well as the annual building rate. The most dynamic areas were the village-like districts of the city, such as Oprişeni, Buciumeni, łarna Mare, etc., while the sole urban sector that has remained virtually unchanged is the east industrial area.


Tab. 1 The dynamic of the land cover/land use classes between 1985-2006 in

Fălticeni EvoluŃia categoriilor de utilizae a terenuluiîn Fălticeni între 1985-2006

1985 2006 1985 2006Built up 337,86 479,32 11,75 16,67Arable 807,19 983,78 28,07 34,21Pastures 595,47 417,95 20,71 14,53Meadows 99,54 70,41 3,46 2,45Extensive orchards 201,88 144,05 7,02 5,01Intensive orchards 477,62 407,67 16,61 14,18Forest and shrubland 29,2 48,36 1,02 1,68Nonproductive land 9,86 7,86 0,34 0,27Lakes 150,01 149,24 5,22 5,19Channels 2,33 2,33 0,08 0,08Basins/terrains covered by waters 31,63 29,18 1,1 1,01Roads 111,98 125,33 3,89 4,36Railroad 21,18 10,28 0,74 0,36

Land cover classArea (ha) Percent from urban area (%)

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

1985

2006

Built up Arable landPastures MeadowExtensive orchards Intensive orchardsForest and shrubland Nonproductive landLakes ChannelsBasins/terrains covered by waters RoadsRailroad

Fig. 2 The land cover/land use percentage in 1985 and 2006 in Fălticeni

Ponderea categoriilor de utilizare a terenurilor în Fălticeni, în 1985 şi 2006

The increase in percent arable - close to 22% compared to 1985 - is quite remarkable, but can be explained mostly by the restitution of the land to individual owners and re-parcelling into significantly smaller lots of the large parcels that had been managed


before 1989 by the local state-owned farms and cultivated according to solid agronomical studies. Due to the new property over land and the low investments in agriculture, and subsequent to the dismantling of large parts of the fruit farms, the arable lands have expanded in the marginal urban areas, replacing pasturelands on the hillslopes bordering the city towards the east and the south in the districts łarna Mare, Şoldăneşti and Buciumeni, as well as orchards, both intensive and extensive, mostly in Buciumeni and Oprişeni. The most significat decrease, by over 200 ha between 1985-2006 (approx. 35%) was scored, as mentioned above, by pastures and meadows, mostly replaced by narrow, yet long parcels of arable land perpendicular to the elevation lines in areas with significantly high slope gradients and prone to erosion (O.C.O.T. Suceava, 1978). The orchards, which are considered to have a special relevance for this urban area, given the economical profile of the city and their previous spatial extension - 19% of the city territory in 1985 - , have been subdivided as intensive (large industrial orchards managed by the local state farm prior to 1989, and later taken over by a private farming company) and extensive orchards (including the parcels cultivated with trees spread between the houses, very characteristic to the local urban morphology). Their area has decreased by no less than 125 ha in 2006 compared to 1985, but by different rates - 14,5% loss for the intensive plantations, as opposed to 28,7% for extensive orchards. The latter can be explained mostly by the increase in the density of buildings or by the conversion of some of these orchards into arable land. The areas where this is most apparent are the marginal districts of the city, namely Buciumeni and Oprişeni, but also Şoldăneşti and łarna Mare, to a lesser degree, mostly on terrains with slope gradients over 10º. The forested areas and shrubland are almost negligible in terms of spatial expansion, occupying as little as 1,68% of the adminstrative territory of the city in 2006, which is still an improvement compared to 1985 due to the fact that a park was set up by the lake Şomuz II. Nonproductive land only accounts for 0,27% of the total area of the city (2006), including the local landfill, located by the extreme eastern limit of the administrative limit of the territory (Antileşti district), on one hand, and several areas on the hillsides with slope gradienta as high as 25% or higher, undergoing severe erosion and landsliding (northern cuest of Spătăreşti hill). Finally, we have analysed the dynamic of the areas occupied by roads and railroad (including the rail outbuildings). While the surface of the roads has slighly increased due to the fact that new alleys have been laid down with the expansion of the built-up area, the railroad zone has halved between 1985-2006, as a result of the elimination of several industrial tracks that serviced the plants in the industrial area, such as the wood processing plant, the chemical plant, etc. Given the fine scale of the original data, the number of land cover/land use classes (13) and the large number of polygons in my output maps, the difficulty of visualising the data becomes apparent, so, in order to better understand the spatial spatial array of the urban growth in terms of expansion of the built up areas, we have opted to reclassify the 13 categories listed above in just two major classes, urban and agricultural, respectively, for the two years, and extracted the changes in a raster format.


Fig. 3 The extension of urban built-up in 2006 and 1985 in Fălticeni

Extinderea ariilor construite în Fălticeni, în 2006 şi 1985


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5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

The dynamic of the various land cover/land use classes tends to confirm my initial hypothesis stating that there has been a notable increase in the built up, as well as in arable land percentages (approx. 42% and 22%, respectively, during the studied interval, compared to the areas corresponding to 1985), while other uses, such as orchards and pastures, have been subject to a significant decrease, both in terms of area and percentage of the urban territory. Among the trends identified by this research I mention: a) the significant growth of the urban habitat, that occured mainly within the present day limits of the built-up area, set by the local planning authorities, seldom exceeding those limits (e.g. in łarna Mare district), partially due to the fact that the urban tissue was sufficiently lax prior to 1989 in most peripheral village-like districts; b) the fact that several classes of previously agricultural land use have undergone spatial changes, either by turning the orchards into arable or building parcels (or, in some cases, degraded orchards), by converting pastures and meadows to arable parcels, including in geomorfologically unsuitable areas, or by building on arable land; and c) the restoration of the inter-war cadaster and property over land that bounded rectangular elongated parcels perpendicular to the elevation lines, leaving a lasting mark on the urban landscape, most prominently in the marginal areas of the city, while also proving unsuitable for soil conservation. Overall, the city has been consistently dynamic in terms of spatial growth, while, paradoxically, the urban population has been steadily decreasing since 1992, by an annual rate of approx. 0,56% during the past 15 years (1992-2007). Also, several of the new dwellings have been edified outside the urban built-up limit avoiding the planning regulations, which now prompts the local authorities to extend these limits and update these regulations.

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10.Gradinaru teza doctorat