Monitoring urban to peri-urban development with integrated remote sensing and GIS information: a Leipzig, Germany case study

Urban planning mainly concentrates on the management of cities as an administrative unit. Urban regions, their state and development, constitute the major interaction of urbanization processes. Such regions comprise the urban core and its associated peri-urban and rural areas. Urbanization processes along the rural-urban continuum need to be monitored by a complex set of indicators. In this paper the phenomena of growth and shrinkage patterns are investigated for an inner urban to peri-urban gradient. The area of investigation is a transect covering the eastern part of the urban region of the city of Leipzig, Germany, with its surrounding communes. Selected patterns of spatial processes are analysed for the gradient using Satellite pour l'Observation de la Terre (SPOT) XS data, and additionally, Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) data where SPOT data were missing. Further statistical information on social, economic and environmental sustainability issues related to land-use changes is analysed. These spatial and statistical analyses are data-driven and reflect a wide range of spatial, socio-economic and ecological development being mutually intertwined. It will be shown how suburban communes and local districts within the city have developed disregarding sustainable planning. By the end of the 1990s peri-urban communes started to be organized in a better coordinated regional development plan, this case study being part of the Gruner Ring Leipzig (Green Belt of Leipzig).