Monitoring spatio-temporal change as a means of achieving resilience in the suburban landscape: the case of the eastern area of Thessaloniki, Northern Greece (original) (raw)

Landscapes are complex entities which are created, shaped and changed by natural and human forces, decisions and interactions. Similar to organisms, landscapes exhibit three fundamental characteristics • structure, function and change, whose methodological approach is studied by landscape ecologists. Within the concept of landscape and polars such as human-natural, pragmatic-cognitive, objective-subjective etc., lies the capacity of simultaneity. The suburban landscape is the space where this simultaneity best demonstrates itself. Furthermore, since 'resilience' is defined as 'the ability of a system to respond or adapt to change, by taking a new form based on a previous state of its evolution', it shares common ground with landscape ecology. Its study of pattern change in a temporal manner manifests a way of detecting, understanding and interpreting resilience. and the challenges it possesses. in the context of the generalized term of urban and regional development. The paper elaborates on the pattern of change of a suburban area of the city of Thessaloniki, Northern Greece during the years 1945 and 2007, using GIS systems and landscape ecology principles. It presents change in LULC patterns with the aid of classifying the landscape under thirteen (13) different land use/cover types for a 10,000 hectare suburban landscape. Furthermore, it attempts to define the socioeconomic factors that influence this drastic change in structure and function. Results demonstrate the transformation of an arable agricultural landscape into a suburban landscape with mixed residential and agricultural uses Key Words: landscape, suburban landscape, landscape ecology, temporality, spatio-temporal change ''It is important to recognize the realm of life's essential attribute: change that is reflected in form. This exhibits, not simple multiplication, but relative growth of the parts, better described as rhythm than as mere modular increase''. Ian McHarg, Design with Nature. Ch. 'Process and Form', p. 163