The level of land consumption for building work and transport contrasts sharply with both the necessity and the legal obligation to maintain the ecological potential afforded by open spaces to meet the needs of current and future generations. Owing to the increasing intensity of soil usage, in many urban landscapes the condition of the soil has deteriorated. Soil's natural filter and run-off regulating functions are impaired or even stopped altogether by land surfacing, curbing the natural balance. Since such soil functions closely depend on the soil's physicochemical properties, the decline of water household functionality caused by land surfacing varies. In response to the demand to sustainably secure or restore water household-relevant soil functions, it needs to be assessed exactly how land surfacing affects the functions concerned. Analyzing and evaluating the change of land usage and related changes to land surfacing intensity taking into account interaction between land use structures and water house hold functions ought to improve our understanding of the changes currently taking place in land usage and their consequences. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to assess the decline of soil functionality regarding water household functions caused by construction and other forms of land surfacing in urban districts over the last 130 years. In particular, attention is to be paid to land-use changes, the land surfacing they involve, and how this affects relevant parameters that describe water fluxes in an urban area.