Kraków—Anthropogenic Changes in the Relief of a Large City

The location of various types of anthropogenic landforms is analysed in the context of major natural landforms within the city of Kraków. While anthropogenic landforms first appeared in the early Middle Ages, the city area is dominated by those that emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. One notable trend points to the diminishing of the relative elevation differences between the main natural landforms as a result of an equalising trend whereby the lower-lying landforms are being built-up and the higher-located ones are being lowered. On the other hand, the appearance of a number of convex and concave anthropogenic landforms, especially adjacent to each other and measuring more than five metres in either height or depth, increased local elevation differences. Overall, the historic city centre is marked by a dominant process of raising and flattening of the terrain as cultural sediments are deposited, while at a local scale the processes in action lead to the differential lowering and raising of adjacent terrain, thus increasing the undulation of the topographical surface.