An Evaluation of Degraded Touristic Landscapes

The widespread degraded tourist landscapes are a defining feature of Romanian tourism in the post communist transition period. They are spread throughout all the development regions of the country, and are generated by common economic, social, legal, institutional and managerial causes. The analysis of such landscapes in the North-West Development Region required, as a major aspect of the analysis, the development of a visual evaluation grid. The establishment of this grid preceded the general evaluation operation which highlighted the main structural and functional features of the landscape, such as: the level of degradation, the relevant structural characteristics, the physiognomy, the functionality and the manner in which the landscape is perceived. Thus, regarding the extent of the degradation, four levels were established, namely: early, medium, high and excessive. They are directly correlated, in terms of landscape structure, with the gradual damage (from a minor damage to a generalized one), of physiognomy (from a difficult to detect stage to the obvious, derelict one), of functionality (from the permanent, minimal one, to the non-functional one), perception (from worrying to repulsive perception) and sensitivity (from insensitivity to variable sensitivity). A grid was also developed containing the quantitative and qualitative indicators of the level of degradation, the most important criterion of the operation. This grid highlights three assessment classes (A, B and C), which capture, from a quantitative point of view, the extent of the phenomenon (from complete disintegration/ destruction to some specific impacted elements) and the number of impacted elements (from all of them to a single element). In terms of quality, for each class, the level of degradation (excessive, high, medium and low/early, respectively) and the contrast with non-degraded tourist landscapes (from striking to lack of contrast) are indicated.