Mestrado em Arquitetura Paisagista - Instituto Superior de Agronomia - ULThis thesis aims to discuss some issues related to the actual situation of suburban sprawl in Europe and focuses on the nature and landscapes. Urbanization is a main topic in EU, since cities are still growing, economy is stabilized, although it faced some challenges during the last decade and the larger part of Europe experiences a long period of time with no war or health epidemic. People have the resources to invest in new housing and in many cases they want to fulfill their dream of a house with garden. But this vision requires a lot of space usage so cities are sometimes spontaneously expanding beyond their borders and sometimes it does not even correspond to state urban policies.
Urban sprawl is also a serious issue for European nature that does not have as many space alternatives as for example the USA. There are issues with coastal habitats, landscape fragmentation and loss of natural habitats.
Thus, this thesis aims to find the main drivers behind urban sprawl and issues related to them. It analyzes its political, economic or social background and deducts solutions for urban sprawl repair with the help of successful projects or experience of states/cities, that suffered from urban sprawl but managed to find a way how to keep the urban development in balance. In this thesis it is a case of Norway. In practical part of this thesis, two case studies were chosen to represent characteristic problems of urban sprawl. They are from Portugal (regional level) and Czech Republic (community level). Those two cases are analyzed independently on each other and variations of solutions are found for themN/
