engleski

Measuring Sustainable Urban Development in Selected Coastal Cities of Croatia: An Indicator and GIS Based Approach for Cities of Zadar and Pula.

Over the last two decades, there has been an intensive discussion and research about measuring sustainable urban development. Many cities, regions and countries have decided to introduce indicators for monitoring and measuring the progress towards sustainability. Today there is a wide spread perception that information on the environment and development in general, and urban environment in particular, is the determinant of effective rational decision and allocation of resources. Such information would enable planners and decision makers to formulate redistributive policies and programmes to address some of the disparities that exist within post-socialist city. Cities of the postsocialist world characterized by sharp disparities, socio-economic contrasts and environmental degradation provide an excellent laboratory for tracing information on the quality of urban life. The current situation in emerging Croatian coastal cities of Zadar and Pula also reflects the diversity of post-socialist urban change in a very fragile Mediterranean landscape. This paper takes a critical look on sustainable development and its measurements. It describes how different local communities in Zadar were evaluated quality of life based on basic pillars of sustainable development. It also contributes to the development of new solutions for enhancing strategic values and priorities of National Association for Science of the Republic of Croatia by offering both scientific forum and urban laboratory for joint learning. This research draw also much-needed attention to a very important issue of unification with EU sustainable urban indicator initiatives, as well as help, to trace general recommendation to other Croatian cities striving for sustainable development.

GIS ; urban indicators ; monitoring ; sustainable urban development

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