Compactness of Polish urban areas – methodologies and analysis based on CLC dataset

This research delves into the dynamics of urban compactness in Poland, exploring methodologies for analysis and assessing changes over time. Three key research questions guiding the study revolve around methods for compactness analysis, the relationship between the size of urban municipalities and compactness, and temporal changes. The research considers all Polish municipalities and analyses selected compactness measures in 2006, 2012 and 2018. By evaluating various analytical approaches and utilising land use data from CLC (CORINE Land Cover), the study provides a new methodology to monitor city compactness measures, thus contributing to evidence-based decision-making for sustainable urban planning. The outcomes unveil patterns and correlations across city sizes and temporal trends, showing the decrease in compactness over time. It reveals a logarithmic relation between population size, compactness index, and urban population density. While smaller cities tend to be more compact in shape, they are less dense. Conversely, larger cities tend to be more densely populated but also more spatially dispersed. This study contributes to the state of knowledge by introducing and testing a method to assess urban compactness across urban areas. Since the CLC datasets cover the entire European Union, this method is replicable in every member state, allowing for further comparative studies.