Characteristics of Residential Areas in Krakow Functional Urban Area

Urban sprawl is an unfavourable phenomenon not only in economic terms, but also due to the social and spatial effects. The failure to implement a coherent spatial policy in suburban areas may result in a chaotic distribution of residential buildings and cause spatial disorder. The main aim of this study is to present the classification of residential housing in the Krakow Functional Urban Area (FUA). Another objective of the study is to analyse the distribution of residential buildings in selected area. Moreover, it has been hypothesized that the chaotic suburbanization causes an uneven distribution of residential buildings in Krakow FUA. The urban transect method was selected to illustrate the spatial distribution of residential buildings in this area. Additionally, GIS analyses were performed based on official spatial data describing the location and type of residential buildings. Thanks to the combination of both methods, a classification of residential housing and its spatial distribution in Krakow FUA were presented. The analysis of the results obtained leads to the conclusion that the suburbanization process in Krakow FUA is characterized by a significant dominance of single-family housing. The result of chaotic suburbanization is also visible in the lack of developed general urban areas.