VULNERABILITY OF CLUJ URBAN AREA TO CONTEMPORARY GEOMORPHOLOGIC PROCESSES.

CLUJ-Napoca (Romania); ROMANIA

The paper points out the dynamics of Cluj urban space during the last ten years and the environmental impact induced by the deficient management of the local authorities, through the Urbanism Commission. A chaotic municipal development got installed as a result of the conflict of interest between the technical approach, defining extension feasibility, political implications, based on domination and on the tendency to crumble the local stakeholders groups and public involvement, in the majority of cases opposing projects, but rather insufficiently aware of the importance of planning decision-making. Utility services (water supply and sewage systems, electricity, telephone, road infrastructure) were extended without assessing the territorial support capacity, without preserving natural areas (forests, pastures) and without obeying the General/Zonal Urbanistic Plans that were in many cases modified in relation to the influence "power" of the beneficiary or of the constructor). The geographic environment answered to the aleatory impact of the human interventions with increases in the lineary (slope flow, gullies) and areal (slopping, landslides, land settling processes) erosion. The elaboration of the present paper followed several steps: delineation of the urban perimeter (1990, 2004, 2008) and establishment of the rapport between built areas and the total surface through ortophotoplans, cadastral and topographic maps analysis; mapping the contemporary geomorphologic processes and the areas affected by older land instabilities; elaboration of the vulnerability map of Cluj built up area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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