Some demographical aspects of the newly nominated towns in Romania

Present paper tries to present some demographical aspects of the newest towns declared in the post-socialist period in Romania. First we draw a sketch of the current demographic tendencies and structures, as basis for the evolution of settlements and new towns. In the second part of our paper we describe a few elements of the demographic profile of new towns declared in post-socialist period

Regions in Romania: Purpose and Territorial Realities

Regionalisation as a process and regions as territorial entities reappeared in the political, economic, administrative, and scientific discourse. In Romania, even since the Middle Ages, there have been regional type entities called “ţări”/ “countries.” They covered areas of approximately 400 km². These regions have remained as such until nowadays and therefore, they are irrefutable territorial proofs of the continuity of the Romanian people in the area. The territorial and administrative divisions that appeared later were the result of the effort to keep pace with the necessity to modernize the society and with the consequences of different historical events. The present eight development regions in Romania try to emulate the territorial realities that had occurred earlier in Western Europe. The Romanian regions emerged from the need to fit the statistical requirements of the rank 2 NUTS regions, but they are not functional.The same thing is true about Euroregions, which, in fact, have a rather cartographic functionality, the normal territorial relationships being obstructed by the frontier effect. This effect has increased lately because visas have again become compulsory for some of the would-be partners in the co-operation on which the construction of these regions relies

APPLICATION OF TOURISM DESTINATION COMPETITIVENESS MODEL ON RURAL DESTINATIONS

Measuring competitiveness has become one of the key factors for ensuring successful and sustainable tourism development, especially destination's current level of development and its growth and vitality. The main goal of this study was to analyze the applicability of the Ritchie and Crouch competitiveness model in order to assess tourism advantages and disadvantages of Vojvodina Province (Northern Serbia) as a rural tourism destination. Exactly 216 tourism stakeholders on the supply side that have the knowledge and/or experience relevant to this topic were interviewed. The results show that stakeholders believe that Vojvodina is not a competitive rural tourism destination, but some destination's advantages were identified, and they can be used for improving Vojvodina's position on rural tourism market. The research has shown that the key resources and the attractions of rural areas of Vojvodina are rated better than the macro and industry-related factors. In order that Vojvodina stands out in the competitive market, destination marketing is crucial and should be more closely focused on new products and market development. .

Restraints and opportunities of the Romanian rural areas

Although Romania disposes of an extremely valuable agricultural land, it has proved to be insufficient and irrationally exploited in the last two decades, as a direct consequence of the programme for returning the agricultural areas to the former individual landowners. The lack of technological agricultural means for cultivating the land, its excessive allotment, as well as the rather inappropriate involvement of the political factor in the decision making process and the invasion of imported agricultural products have generated a continuous process of degradation of the rural life as a whole and certain repercussions on the food safety. Currently, more than 50% of the Romanian agricultural area is not being cultivated, while the state imports more than 70% of alimentary products every year

The contemporary city between administration and geomanagement

The city, judged from the perspective of complexity sciences and tackled in a functionalist manner, is seen by many as a living organism, which is a geosystem that tends towards a finality, called sense of existence. Reaching this finality, that acts as an epistemological axis, offers the chance of a new definition for the city and its functions. Starting from this construction, we are faced with several questions: Must today’s city be subjected to a sustainable development or must it be geomanaged in the spirit of a sustainable evolution? Does the concept of sustainable development have a future or must it be replaced with sustainable evolution? What is the revolution brought by changing the concept of sustainable development with that of sustainable evolution? In the substantiation of the leap from development to evolution, we propose the concept of managerial geography, as a new step of the urban management paradigm, offering the openness for establishing a new taxonomy of urban functions, which introduces concepts like: civic functions; vital functions, frontier functions, etc. By applying the taxonomy to the geography of Cluj-Napoca, respectively the taxonomy of the functional tertiary subsystem, we propose new approaches that will lead to the establishment of this new paradigm: urban geomanagement for attaining sustainable evolution

Vision and strategic objectives for sustainable development of the Apuseni mountains mining settlements

The restructuring of the mining sector in Romania since 1989 has had extremely serious social, economic and environmental consequences for the mining settlements. Following the mine closure pro- grams and socio-economic and environmental regeneration efforts the situation has only slightly improved, the settlements being still very vulnerable in terms of quality of life and prospects for sustainable development. In this paper the authors have developed a vision for sustainable development of the Apuseni Mountains mining areas that would support policy writing and lead to the identification of appropriate solutions for socio-economic and environmental development of the studied area

The evaluation of the environmental quality in Romania

The evaluation of the environmental quality concerns the analysis of the physical, chemical, biological and statistical features that allow the scientists to classify a territory in a certain category or hierarchic scale. In the model used in this study, the environmental quality was assessed at the administrative unit level (county), as a result of the interaction of different components. Fifty indicators were selected and included into 6 major groups based on several factors (natural hazards, air quality, biodiversity, water quality, human health, soil quality, economic activities) that increase the communities' susceptibility to different negative aspects concerning the environment. Each indicator was classified on a scale from 1 to 5 (1-very good…5-very weak). The sum of the indicators was reclassified according to the same model, until the total environmental quality was finally determined. The analysis of the environmental quality on a departmental level provides the opportunity to identify the regions that need to be allotted financial resources in order to diminish the negative impact of the disturbing (anthropic and natural) factors. At the same time, by focusing the research on the most vulnerable counties, a more detailed analysis has revealed the most vulnerable administrative units (towns and communes)