Post-communist land use changes related to urban sprawl in the Romanian metropolitan areas

• Published in: Human geographies Vol. 6; no. 1; pp. 35 - 46
• Main Authors: Grigorescu, Ines, Mitrică, Bianca, Kucsicsa, Gheorghe, Popovici, Elena-Ana, Dumitraşcu, Monica, Cuculici, Roxana
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bucharest Bucharest University 2012; University of Bucharest
• Subjects: Demography; Land use; Land-use dynamics; Landscape challenges; Metropolitan areas; Post-communism; Romania; Romania
• ISSN: 1843-6587; 2067-2284
• DOI: 10.5719/hgeo.2012.61.35

The landscape pattern of the Romanian urban system has experienced significant transformations as a result of the rapid and irreversible changes undertaken after the fall of the communism. In Romania almost 34% of its total population are living in metropolitan areas. The paper is aiming to analyse the landscape-related challenges land-use/land-cover changes in the Romanian metropolitan areas in relation with the main factors involved in the patterns of change: demographic, political and natural. Based on the investigation of relevant cartographic supports of the last 20 years, the authors are making use of different GIS methods in order to conduct a series of complex analysis of the spatial-temporal landscape challenges. The paper will mainly focus on four metropolitan areas considered as case-studies: the capital-city (Bucharest) and the three functional metropolitan areas (Oradea, Iasi and Constanta), each metropolitan area is facing different patterns and causes of change. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]