Land Use Mix in Functional Urban Areas of Selected Central European Countries from 2006 to 2012

Abstract

The land use mix (LUM) is among the critical issues in spatial planning because it can determine the occurrence and structure of various land use and cover types (LUC) and prevent any adverse patterns. The paper focuses on the LUM in functional urban areas (FUAs) in Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary. The research employed Urban Atlas (UA) data on LUC in 2006 and 2012 to characterise LUM in the FUAs. The research follows the division of the FUA into the urban area (urban core, UC) and its functional surroundings (commuting zones, CZ). We further characterised the phenomena investigated for the entire country, region, and Europe using Corine Land Cover (CLC) data. The LUM was quantified with the entropy index (EI), dissimilarity index (DI), and multi-dimensional balance index (MBI). The EI demonstrated that the investigated FUAs went through more substantial LUM changes than the 27 European Union member states (EU27) from 2006 to 2012. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that LUM overspill was more intensive in CZs than in UCs on the regional and national levels. We found out that urbanised areas grew at the expense of agricultural areas in both UCs and CZs with similar dynamics in 2006–2012 in all the analysed countries.