Funktion und Struktur im Wandel: der Nordwesten der Stadtregion Leipzig

Abstract

The transition to a social free-market economy in the new federal states is closely linked with far reaching structural changes; this conversion is associated with different dynamics as well as with distinctive regional effects within various districts and municipalities. Structural and functional changes become particularly obvious in the large cities and in their surrounding area. For the 1990 - 94 time frame this regional change in settlements of different structures and key-regional substance can be documented by the examples of a soundly prospering region within the centre of the Halle-Leipzig economic and planning areas and by the fusing influence of the Halle/Leipzig’s metropolitan cities. The enormous requirement for commercial real-estate used by trade, businesses, services and infrastructured facilities as well as for the increasingly dominating housing construction was satisfied to a great extent in Leipzig’s surrounding area during the study period. The process of decentralized concentration leads to an increased importance of the suburban municipalities as compared with the metropolis. The change of the hitherto existing economic structure of these municipalities, urban development changes and a rapid change in usage of their so far primarily agriculturally tilled land are the main characteristics of this process. The selected study area to the north of the Leipzig urban region gets special development momentum due to its preferential local function within the regional and supraregional traffic network of railways, motorways, federal highways and airlines. Location and traffic links will also continue to remain attractive geographic/economic factors. This becomes already apparent from the planning premisses with a high investment commitment, as for instance the development of the Leipzig- Halle airport, the expansion of the main railway line and the construction of the trade fair facilities in the north of the urban region. The existing and still to be constructed traffic artery between Leipzig and Halle already looms as a crucial axial development line for the whole economic area. Along this artery the principal modification processes of the region are occurring presently and will continue to do so in the future. Special importance is placed onto the change of the previously as a subordinate center classified city of Schkeuditz towards a medium- sized center. Supraregionally important service functions have presently already set up here and they will develop into a traffic hub within the economic area. The other municipalities under study will also be influenced by the development of the traffic networks. By means of the analysis of planning documents, by means of polls carried out in the municipalities and especially by means of intensive site inspections and building-related mapping to a scale of 1 : 5 000 and/or to a scale of 1 : 10 000 of the processes of change in the settlements it is possible to demonstrate the general development trend in regional policy. Statistics of newly created companies, branches and facilities reveal the orientation towards service facilities. Within the former large industrial parks new trade and service facilities are setting up. Outside of the built-up settlement area industrial land has already been approved by planning boards from the view point of a regional policy. Urban development plans also already exist for the first big housing construction locations so that an increased residential function of the surrounding area municipalities can be counted on for the future. The actual analysis of one section of the Leipzig urban region permits to deduce important methodological bases for the diagnosis of longterm changes of settlement and land utilization types under the conditions of a dynamic structural change in metropolitan regions.