Assessing suburban transformations with freely available spatial data

Suburban areas are undergoing diverse and dynamic transformations. In Poland, where the suburbanization began in the 1990s, the primary changes have been urban sprawl and agricultural abandonment. Analysing these regions is challenging due to their spatial complexity and fragmentation, often characterized by small and sometimes hard-to-detect features. Furthermore, these transformations have significant impacts on both humans and the environment, including increased impervious surfaces, intensified heat island effects, higher levels of light and air pollution, and the formation of wildland-urban interfaces near cities, which may lead to more frequent human-wildlife interactions. Therefore, continuous monitoring of these changes is essential. In this paper, we provide an overview of freely available spatial data that are promising for analysing suburban transformations. We discuss the example studies utilizing a variety of datasets that differ thematically, temporarily and in terms of extent and spatial resolution. Then, we present case studies on how these datasets reveal transformations in the metropolitan area of Kraków, Poland’s second-largest city, across three levels of analysis. Our analysis demonstrates that Kraków and its surroundings have experienced substantial land use changes over the past 35 years, primarily due to settlement development and agricultural decline. The diverse range of freely available spatial data enables the detection of nuanced transformations, substantially enhancing our understanding of the changes taking place in this area.