What word means "the changes of a place"?

I do not think there can be a single-word substitute for the idea of "changes taking place in an area with time."

There are at least two distinct aspects to the changes: physical-geographical and demographic-cultural.

Tucker Sharon reviewed Carl Ortwin Sauer's "The Morphology of Landscape (1925)" in his blog. Extracts:

… the natural landscape as a static baseline for culture-induced change. This is where he finds geognosy – “which regards kind and position of material but not historical succession” (334) – should be the primary science that cultural geographers should concern themselves with.

Over the course of this essay Sauer develops two formulae: one describing the natural landscape and the other describing the cultural landscape. The natural landscape is described as the combination of forms designated by climate, land (surface, soil, drainage and mineral resource), sea and coast, and vegetation as they have been shaped through time by geognostic, climatic and vegetational factors. (337) The cultural landscape is the combination of population (density and mobility), housing (plan and structure), production and communication forms as they have been articulated by culture through the medium of the natural landscape. (343) Again, Sauer stresses that causality and change with time come from cultural processes, not natural ones. [emphasis mine]

Currently, geographic morphology (geomorphology) and cultural morphology as distinct disciplines study the "changes taking place in an area with time."