Land Use Changes in Peri-Urban Open Spaces of Small Towns in Eastern Hungary

Péter Csorba, Krisztina Bánóczki and Zoltán Túri ()
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Péter Csorba: Department of Landscape Protection and Environmental Geography, University of Debrecen, Egyetem tér 1, 4032 Debrecen, Hungary
Krisztina Bánóczki: Doctoral School of Earth Sciences, University of Debrecen, Egyetem tér 1, 4032 Debrecen, Hungary
Zoltán Túri: Department of Physical Geography and Geoinformatics, University of Debrecen, Egyetem tér 1, 4032 Debrecen, Hungary

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 17, 1-18

Abstract: Changes in land use were studied in 2 km wide peri-urban open spaces of seven small Hungarian towns as part of a RENATUR Interreg Europe (2019–2023) project. The aim of the project is to present best practices related to the sustainable and wise use of the peri-urban open spaces of small European towns. The rate and tendencies of conversion from one land use type to another were evaluated on the basis of a comparison of Corine Land Cover and Land Cover Change databases from 1990, 2000 and 2018. Land use changes in the study areas in different time periods were studied for which the Corine categories were aggregated. Subsequently, there were field verification surveys carried out between March and June of 2021. Most significant changes—due to the significant increase of built-up areas—were found in the case of the towns that were developed to form the suburbs of Debrecen, the core settlement of their region with a population of 200,000. In the case of settlements further away from the major city, the population is either stagnating or decreasing, and the size of built-up areas hardly increases. In the case of cities that are surrounded by high-quality chernozem soils with profitable agriculture, large-scale arable lands have become dominant in the border zones of the settlements, as the spatial extent of gardens, orchards and grasslands has decreased. Highly diverse and mosaic land use (dominated by small plots) is not characteristic anywhere.

Keywords: land use change; peri-urban zone; landscape identity; Eastern Hungary (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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