%0 Journal Article
%T THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT AND THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT. CONCEPTUAL AND APPLICATIVE PRELIMINARIES
%A Irina Ungureanu
%A Alexandru B£¿nic£¿
%A Daniel Tudora
%A Adrian Ursu
%J Present Environment and Sustainable Development
%D 2011
%I 
%X The present paper represents a conceptual and methodological general framework which will offer the ground for future applicative demarches aiming to identify some sustainable trajectories for the towns of Romania. Starting from some fundamental lacks and errors of the existing approaches in the urban planning, the authors try to establish some methodological guiding marks of the systemic analysis of the urban environment The identification of some structurally and functionally relevant indicators and their successive integration on certain progressive levels, of a rising complexity, is a key component of the present approach. In the final indicator of the (geographic) favourability of the urban areas for a sustainable development are to be found, simultaneously, three complex reference levels: the natural favourability for the habitation, the socioeconomic internal favourability for the development and the territorial capital of insertion within the system of settlements. Although the difficulties appearing in the way of such an approach are not negligible (and are related not only to the identification of the indicators but also to the possibilities of their aggregation and integration), the proposed model of systemic research can become an efficient instrument for the identification of real development potential, for the diagnose of the disfunctionalities within the towns and for the realistic tracing of some adequate directions of urban evolution.
%K urban environment
%K systemic approach
%K successive integration
%K geographic favourability
%K sustainable development
%U http://pesd.ro/articole/nr.5/2/10.%20Ungureanu.pdf