Understanding Urban Growth Patterns: a Landscape Ecology Point of View

Landscapes always change, as they are the expression of the constant interaction between natural and cultural forces in the environment. Applied to an urban/peri-urban case, changes are seen as a menace. By identifying the past urbanization patterns, policy makers and planners can gain better insight into the contributing factors that have resulted in the most problematic development patterns now and into the future. Remote sensing and GIS technology seem to be a proper and effective tool to understand and present the phenomenon. Thus, this study aims to identify and compare the development pattern in the town of Aydin, Turkey to highlight the underlying process by utilizing satellite images between 1986 and 2002. Population information obtained from the State Statistics Institute is used along with satellite images for the land use/land cover change analyses. Existing ancillary data and aerial photographs are also utilized. Several critical land resource impact indicators associated to urbanization are being elaborated: density of new urbanization, loss of agricultural areas, and loss of core habitat areas. The results indicate that urbanization pattern of the town of Aydin is not so impacting natural core habitats so far. However, the investigations yielded some warning signs with regards to the density of population and the agricultural land loss. The distribution of population is favoring the rural areas. This is causing lower rates of urbanization compared to other cities in Turkey. But the establishment of industrial areas would attract more people in the future. Therefore, the shift has to be occurred in the traditional land use management, which is only concerning those areas within the municipality boundary, to include the peripheral settlements and the landscape context.