THE NECESSITY TO DEVELOP VULNERABILITY-BASE LAND USE POLICIES IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES. CASE STUDY: USE OF HIGH RESOLUTION LAND USE DATA IN ROMANIA.

Vulnerability, land use and sustainability are some of the main elements of major concern in the last decades that can be translated in practice through efficient development and planning. The role land use plays is recognized worldwide due to the rapid and continuous urban growth and development, which determine the occurrence of new powerful forces leading to social, demographical, environmental, technological and governmental changes. The large number of disasters in recent years demonstrated that the most effective and accessible method of reducing the pressure exerted by natural and technological risks is to reduce the level of vulnerability of communities exposed to a particular hazard. The vulnerability of populated areas to natural and technological disasters is also exacerbated by the decades of inefficient spatial planning policies that did not incorporate hazards and risks. This paper is aiming to create a bridge between the existing vulnerability theories and their implementation in land use planning policies, by assessing the need of a new methodology that will incorporate vulnerability reduction into spatial planning. The paper focuses on a case study of a developing country in SE Europe, Romania, using high resolution data obtained from the Urban Atlas inventory. The discussion and results section illustrates the spatial development of urban and rural areas in Romania in the last years. Moreover, this section demonstrates the impact of land use changes on vulnerability and the need to develop future sustainable development policies that can support decision makers, coming from the public or the private sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]