MONITORING AND MODELLING INDICATORS FOR URBAN SHRINKAGE - THE CITY OF LEIPZIG, GERMANY -

Urban remote sensing research and model approaches predominantly focus on positive growth patterns. In this paper, the phenomenon of a negative urban growth, in the following named shrinkage, is under investigation. Selected pattern of the spatial process are initially calculated by means of Landsat data for the City of Leipzig, Germany. Satellite imagery taken from Landsat may provide reliable information assessing the different states of urban growth when detecting its spatial expansion into the peri-urban surroundings. For the City of Leipzig two satellite imageries were taken for the years 1994 and 2005 to find out the spatial development within the last decade. As spatial shrinkage is a phenomena that rather occurs in the central parts of the city and on a larger scale a very high resolution colour-infrared data set is integrated for a more detailed inner urban differentiation of urban structure and analysis of buildings. Supplementary, to seek for drivers of the detected pattern, statistical data is investigated as urban growth and shrinkage and decline of population run and interact simultaneously. Using respective predictor variables such as fertility and life expectancy, migration and residential preferences, a prototype model approach is presented to explain urban shrinkage related to the housing sector simulating residential mobility, vacancy and demolition.