Driving Forces of Landscape Change in The Urbanizing Limmat Valley, Switzerland

Abstract

This research aims to identify the driving forces that changed the Limmat Valley west of Zurich from a traditional agricultural valley in 1930 to a suburban region of the city of Zurich in 2000. The landscape changes are quantified based on the comparison of historical maps from 1930, 1956, 1976 and 2000. All individual changes, relating to new or disappeared landscape elements, were linked to a set of one to fourteen critical driving forces. Such an analytical and systematic study of driving forces, and specifically the clear link between changes of landscape elements and specific sets of driving forces and jurisdictional levels, is essential for the development of innovative land-use change models.