CITY CENTER DELIMITATION Olomouc case study Jaroslav Burian First StatGIS conference

CITY CENTER DELIMITATION Olomouc case study Jaroslav Burian First StatGIS conference

Introduction Different ideas about delimitation of city centre “Centre is defined as a core district of a city with the most intensive commercial occupancy of an area in where shops, financial and cultural institutions and branch offices of big companies are concentrated.” An objective delimitation of a city centre is important – For a statistical comparison of parameters and data from different cities

City centre Research of an inner structure of a city is one of the priorities of the current city geography In Central Europe delimitation of city centers mostly on a theoretical level Based on a historical development of a city Different aproaches – City is divided into a historical centre, an inner city and an outer city – A city centre (old town) is usually represented by a medieval core of a city and its immediate surroundings

Study Area –Olomouc region – inhabitants –area over 103 km 2

Delimitation of Olomouc City Centre Currently in Use Several delimitations of the city centre in Olomouc: – The city district Olomouc – centre – The cadastral district Olomouc – city – The basic settlement unit – historical centre – Historical town reserve – The functional area of the inner city in the municipal plan – The economic subcentre core

City district Olomouc – centre Cadastral district Olomouc – city

Economic subcentre core Basic settlement unit – historical centre

Functional area of the inner city -municipal plan Historical town reserve

Comparison used delimitations of centredelimitated area [km 2 ] municipal plan – the functional area of the inner city0.595 the basic settlement unit – Olomouc historical centre0.842 the historical town reserve0.961 the economic subcentre core1.389 the city district Olomouc – centre2.279 the cadastral district Olomouc – city2.708

using Delimitation of city centre using GIS Data – Vector layers in dgn and shp formats in scales from 1:2 000 to 1: Software – ArsGIS 10 – Repeating Shapes tool for ArcGIS → creation of a regular network of points or polygons in a range specified by a user

Delimitation of City Centre According to Price Map by means of the price map of Olomouc on the basis of the most expensive pieces of land in the city centre – average price CZK/m 2 – minimum price CZK/m 2 – maximum price CZK/m 2 – To delimitate the city centre, pieces of land with price higher than 2 600, and CZK/m 2 were selected

Delimitation of City Centre According to Price Map price [CZK/m 2 ] delimitated area [km 2 ] more than more than more than

Delimitation of City Centre According to Density of Services Public Services Database Repeating Shapes tool – several regular polygon grids of various shapes (hexagons, squares, triangles) and sizes were created (hexagonal was the best) – For each individual polygon a number of services in it was counted → 5% of the polygons with the highest concentration were selected – The biggest continuous area of polygons comprising the city centre was selected

Different polygon shapes Area of delimitated centre [km 2 ] Areas of polygons [km 2 ]TrianglesSquaresHexagons

Delimitation of City Centre According to Density of Services

Delimitation of City Centre According to Density of Public Transportation lines The city of Olomouc corresponds with a monocentric model of a city - most of the main roads lead to the centre For each polygon a density of bus and tram lines was calculated → the polygons with the highest density were selected This method of delimitating the city centre proved to be unsuitable (low density of the lines - the historical centre of Olomouc is a pedestrian zone surrounded by parks)

Delimitation of City Centre According to Density of Public Transportation Lines The density of the public transportation lines in a hexagonal grid, polygons of which have the area of m 2 and m 2 The public transportation system basically bypasses the centre

Delimitation of City Centre According to Mental Maps Mental maps (of Lynch's type) tend to differ significantly with respect to the borders of the city centre The group of 40 respondents (students of Palacky University) Drawing the city centre in an aerial photograph of the city according to their individual perception The data were subsequently summed up using the tools of map algebra in the ArcGIS SW

Delimitation of City Centre According to Mental Maps The result was divided into 5 categories; each of these represents an accordance of a given percentage of the students on a particular delimitation The category on which most of the respondents agreed (more than 80%) is the smallest one

Delimitation of City Centre According to Mental Maps Accordance [%]Area [km 2 ]

Comparison with other delimitation Both the appearance and the area of the two smallest delimitations is similar to the delimitations according to the price map and the density of services

Conclusion The best results were achieved when delimitating the centre according to the price map and the density of services and these areas were delimitated very similarly These areas also corresponded with the mental maps of the inhabitants of the city These methods are appropriate for delimitation of the city centre In comparison with the delimitations already in existence the delimitations acquired in this research were significantly smaller

dr. Jaroslav Burian Department of Geoinformatics, Faculty of Science Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic