Google Earth Engine (GEE) to Study Land Take and Urban Green Space Area in Caserta Plain (Southern Italy)

Abstract

In the last few decades, the remarkable increase in the number of people living in urban areas around the world has posed new challenges for urban planning. The environmental, economic, and social issues of urban sprawl are well-known also in several metropolitan areas of Italy. In this paper, we consider a southern city of Italy (Campania Region), Caserta and its surroundings. We use several satellite images with different spatial and spectral resolutions (Landsat, Sentinel, and KH-9 Hexagon) within the Google Earth Engine platform, to map the main land use changes of Caserta conurbation from the 1980s till 2021. The results highlight the great land consumption and, at the same time, the relevant urban infill that occurred in this area in this short period, both on topographic and local scale (referring, in this last case, only to the town of Caserta). While at an early stage, the increase in artificial areas responds to a specific demand related to the increase in the resident population, the urban growth of the last two decades has more complex answers. Systematic delays in land use planning and a biased perspective (usually focusing only on the municipal scale) to solve the problems of a significantly larger area means insufficient services to the citizens in their daily lives (mainly in relation to local public transport and the actual availability of urban green areas).