Land-Use Planning and Satellite Imagery Used for Green Areas Protection – Case Study of the City of Łódź, Poland

The article presents the issues of spatial planning on the case study of Łódź. Of significance in Łódź are its outer peripheries, which due to their natural value have become areas that must be protected and monitored in order to limit the anthropogenic impact. Protection of these areas may be carried out through the usage of instruments such as local land-use plans which help to limit the green field development phenomenon and to look after the biologically active surfaces within the borders of the city. The second step which may concern the areas with local land-use plans, as well as those without current local land-use plans, is monitoring. Such monitoring may be carried out through the analyses of satellite imagery of the city area. Such activities are a kind of low-budget enterprises which bring many benefits at a very small cost resulting from the purchase of satellite imagery. From the perspective of the authorities, a crucial fact is that the material collected during the analyses of the satellite imagery may be used in the initial phase of the planning process as an element of the inventory of areas designated for the development of land-use plans.