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Magazine of the European Geography Association for students and young geographers

The European Geographer

9th issue September 2012

ISSN: 1605-6566

The Scientific Symposium 2011

Contents

3 Sandra Sosnowski and Tobias Michl Editorial

4 Tom De Bruyn Political representation of minorities in Cape Town

9 Tine Bergmans Struggles over urban space. A case-study of state-led urban restructuring and squatters’ struggles over urban space in Lund, Sweden

13 Agata Warchalska-Troll Susceptibility of large post-socialist housing estates in Poland to landscape and social degradation. The example of the city of Katowice (Upper Silesia)

18 Cătălina Ioniţă Willingness to Pay for Ecological Reconstruction Projects - Partial Results of a Contingent Valuation Study in Braila Islands and Neajlov Catchment

21 Cristina Ciobanu The ecotouristic potential of the central region of the Republic of Moldova

23 Svetlana Samsonova Geomorphologic analysis of urban protected areas for environmental management (case study of Moscow parks)

26 Catrin Promper Multi-temporal analysis of surface processes of an anthropogenic influenced high alpine catchment (Idalpe, Ischgl, Austria) - Master thesis

ColophonThe EGEA Magazine is a publication from the European Geography Association for Geography students and young Geographers. The EGEA Magazine is published twice a year. The magazine is produced for the EGEA community, EGEA partners and all others interested in EGEA, Geography and Europe.

Postal address:EGEAFaculty of Geosciences - Utrecht UniversityP.O.Box 80.115NL-3508 TC UtrechtTelephone: +31-30-2539708E-mail: [email protected] E-mail EGEA magazine: [email protected] Website: www.egea.eu

Editors of the 9th issue:Inge Wiekenkamp (Chief Editor), Tobias Michl (Chief Editor), Colette Caruana (Chief Editor), Ciprian Caraba, Cosmin Ceuca, Olga Chernopits-kaya, Nicu Ciobotaru, Amanda Finger, Franziska Hübner, Annika Palomäki, Jakub Ondruch, Cristi-na Onet, Laura Helene Rasmussen, Julian Thesen

Graphic Design: Cosmin Ceuca, Inge Wiekenkamp, Nicu Ciobotaru

Contributing authors:Tine Bergmans, Cristina Ciobanu, Tom de Bruyn, Catalina Ioanita, Tobias Michl, Catrin Promper, Svetlana Samsonova, Sandra Sosnowski, Agata Warchalska-Troll.

Coverphoto:Ekrem Canli

All authors are completely responsible for the con-tent of their articles and references made by them.

The editors would like to thank:Sanne Heijt – EGEA BoE Secretariat Director 11/12Karl Donert - president of EUROGEO and UK National Teaching Fellow at Liverpool Hope UniversityAll authors

EGEA is supported by:ESRIEUROGEOFaculty of Geosciences, Utrecht UniversityEYF - European Youth FoundationThe European Union

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The European Geographer, 9th Issue

The chosen presentations covered a vari-ety of themes, which, once again, exempli-fies the diversity of geographical research, which is what makes it such a valuable sub-ject.

The presenters covered a variety of top-ics, including the connection of urban plan-ning and protest, the link between socialist heritage and real-estate markets, the inter-relation of socio-spatial groups and elec-toral systems, the consequences of Alpine surface processes for spatial planning, the effects of ecological awareness on tourism or the question of which obligations people are willing to take because of this afore-mentioned awareness.

Geography offers a unique point of view to a variety of aspects and the capability of linking themes and disciplines which seem to differ enormously. Therefore, geography offers helpful tools for developing solutions for wider problems whilst making it clear that everything is interrelated.

With its holistic approach it shows that physical and social processes are not to be treated separately, but that they are in-terdependent.

Using this point of view, our presenters were able to introduce the audience to very interesting and exceptional themes. In this special issue of the European Ge-ographer we are happy to present you with the written work of these EGEAns.

We hope you will learn something new and that you have fun reading this magazine.

This 9th Edition of the European Geog-rapher is a special edition with articles of EGEA’s Scientific Symposium 2011.

Due to the first Scientific Symposium held at the Annual Congress 2010 being such a great success, the Scientific Committee and the Annual Congress organizers de-cided to continue this project in 2011.

Everybody was very happy with the nu-merous positive responses to the call for abstracts. We thank everybody who sent in their abstract and encourage you all to continue with your geographical work. Ul-timately we could only choose six topics which were then presented at the Scien-tific Symposium.

Once again EGEAns proved that the qual-ity of their scientific work and research skills was very high and we were happy to see that the next generation of geogra-phers is capable of doing such good work.

Editorial

Scientific Symposium Presenters and team - EGEA Annual Congress 2011 - Ebermannstadt, Germany

Photo: Joanna Wawrynowicz

by Sandra Sosnowski (Speaker of the Scientific Committee 2011/12)and Tobias Michl (Chief Editor of the European Geographer 2011/12)

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TheScientificSymposium2011-September2012

1. Introduction

Around the world, democracy is executed by mechanisms of representation. In doing so, an ongoing issue is whether everyone can be represented in an equal way.

In order to achieve this there are different electoral systems, from those based on spatial systems (electoral dis-tricts) or ideological-proportional systems (proportional representation systems) to ideology-paramount systems (majority systems) – or combinations thereof. However, because there are differ-ences between individuals in any so-ciety and democracy is very difficult to function with total participation (with-out representation), there will always be differences in the level of repre-sentation of individual citizens. A very interesting question for geographers refers to the representation of socio-

spatial groups, and how they may or may not be influenced by the electoral system and its’ operation by politicians and the socio-spatial groups themselves.

Cape Town is one of the largest cit-ies in South Africa, a country that has been a democracy for only 17 years. As it turns out, turning the wrongs of apart-heid into rights has not been very easy, and the inexperienced government has struggled to get South Africa out of a social low and into an economic high (Western, 1996; Prinsloo et al., 1999).

Cape Town itself still looks a lot like the segregated city of the apartheid era, seeing the similarities between the ideal lay-out of the apartheid regime (Fig 1) and the current racial structure (Fig 2). Additionally, there is a high correlation of races and their economic situation (Fig 3), merely shifting the causes of apartheid from politics to the economy without significantly lessening racial segregation.

Obviously, both geographical segrega-tion and economic segregation work together in creating several urban prob-

lems. Segregated poverty creates a ghetto-effect, with declining communityintegration and rising rates of alcohol-ism, violence, crime, environmental problems and diseases such as TB and

Figure 1: Map of racial areas during apartheid in Cape Town. Western, 1996

Political representation of minorities in Cape Town

Figure 2 - Map of races in Cape Town at the smallest statistical level. Data SSA, 2001, own cartography

Tom De Bruyn, EGEA Leuven,

KU Leuven

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Figure 3 - Yearly income per capita of statistical areas. Poverty line indicated. Data SSA 2001

electoral districts (‘wards’) in the city.

This system uses the background bias, namely the tendency of politicians to fa-vour their own neighbourhood or social group/class (Pande, 2003), to ensure each ward has its own representative, while also incorporating the more modern representational system of the people electing a certain number of seats to dif-ferent parties.

This article researches this balance in Cape Town’s local government.

2. Objectives

The main objective of this article is to see in what way different socio-spatial groups are represented in local government.

In a city that is as divided into different so-cial, economic and racial neighbourhoods as Cape Town is, but where electoral repre-sentation is based on electoral districts that combine different neighbourhoods: where do the ward councillors live, and how do they take account of other neighbourhoods than their own in their policies?

The main hypothesis is: “There is a demo-cratic deficit benefiting affluent white social groups and hindering less affluent black groups.

This occurs mainly in local government areas where different racial and economic groups are significantly present.”, or, as one councillor said it: “Still a lot of people complain that this city is not well-repre-sented, and also is catering for the whites”.

To give an example, what if a councillor lives in a rich, white, secluded neighbour-hood, but parts of his/her ward include a poor, coloured area or a black township? How are they able to understand and meet the needs of those unknown areas in their decisions and policies? Let’s find out.

Figure 4 - Clusters in Cape Town. Data SSA, 2001; own cartography

AIDS (Pieterse, 2002: 10). Western (1996) calls Cape Town’s contemporary situation ‘deracialized apartheid’. This is one of the main reasons why ‘race’ is still an issue in the self-proclaimed ‘rainbow nation’ of South Africa (MacDonald, 2006) and why it will be an issue in this article.

Before all kinds of policies can be made, people have to make their voices heard - especially in a segregated city. Cape Town tries overcoming policy involve-ment issues with an electoral sys-tem based on a 50/50 representation, where half of the 210 councillors are elected in a proportional system and the other half represent one of the 105

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Figure 5: Council composition during research. Data Cape Town Council documents, 2009

Figure 6 : Results of the renaturation of the Wertach with widened riverbanks and the possibility for local recreation

3. Methodology

The research method includes both qualita-tive and quantitative parts. The quantitative method consists of data on three scales. The smallest scale is that of the individual councillors, where the home address is ob-viously the most important.

The next scale is that of the statistical ar-eas, smaller entities as wards, for which a total of over 50 social variables were col-lected to combine these areas into several clusters. Multivariate analysis is used (Fig 4) to compare areas inside one ward and to compare different wards. The largest scale is the ward, for which all financial reports of this legislation (2006-2009) were collected.The qualitative part of the data collection

consisted of several interviews.

First, five interesting wards (in two sub-councils - the 105 wards are grouped into 23 subcouncils) were selected based on the clustered data. Then several interviews were conducted, not only with all five ward councillors but also with ten other councillors, most of them in one way or another connected to these five wards or their subcouncils and with two people connected to rep-resentative associations in those wards. In addition, the official subcouncil meet-ings of both subcouncils were observed.

This data was combined to get results in several ways: • Ward demarcation. Who decides about the ward boundaries, and why?• Citywide. Is the council an accurate socio-economic intersection of the city?• Ward level. Why do wards have good or insufficient internal representation equality? How does this work out financially?• Politics. What’s the difference between the two large parties; the ANC (African National Congress), a black movement, in opposi-tion, and the DA (Democratic Alliance), tra-ditionally white, in government?

4. Results

a. Ward demarcation

When aligning wards, governments can opt to create a maximum mixture or maximum homogeneity. Mixture creates problems as it divides communities and forces coopera-tion of different political cultures, especially in heavily segregated areas. On the other hand, it does have the advantage of ‘Ubun-tu’, the interaction of different backgrounds, which should be a pillar for ‘Rainbow Na-tion’ South Africa, and the extra advantage of budget leftovers from more affluent areas

flowing to poorer ones in the same ad-ministrative unit.

Political parties in government might also have other reasons to opt for mixture: when they create electoral wards with a small majority of their own voter demo-graphic and a minority of other groups, they will ‘use up’ less of their votes to win these wards and may thus win more wards with the same amount of votes.

Officially, the South African gov-ernment strives to create wards as homogeneous as possible. It seems, however, that they do break this rule in certain cases. We can weigh the proportions of the racial groups within these divided wards for two pos-sible reasons, leftover funding or elec-toral gains.

The national government, controlled by the ANC, delimits the wards, as a result most of the divided wards have a major-ity of poorer black and coloured people (the typical ANC-voters) and a minority of white and coloured middle class citizens, the demographic of the DA. In this struc-ture, there is little leftover funding to ben-efit from and some large black groups are represented by DA-councillors from affluent white areas (as coloured people voted overwhelmingly DA in 2006).

Therefore, we might conclude that if wards are not delimited with the in-tent purpose of creating homogeneous wards, electoral considerations and de-mographic issues may come in the way of equally designed wards, some ben-efiting but mostly disadvantaging poorer communities.

b. Citywide representation

After the elections of 2006, won by the DA and creating a DA-ID coalition gov-ernment and an ANC opposition (Fig 5), the socio-economic composition of the council turned out to be different from that of the city. The average councillor lives in a neighbourhood that is 50% richer than Cape Town’s average (Fig 6). This is the case for proportional as well as ward councillors who often live in the richer parts of their ward.

Looking at the division between the six clusters and the parties (Fig 7), we see that there are two major causes: firstly, an under-representation of informal ar-eas in favour of poor, black, formal ar-eas within the ANC, probably because it is harder to attain and maintain a po-litical function for poor people living in an informal area. Secondly, there was an overrepresentation of people from

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neighbourhood. Of the first group, 74% are financially advantaged, meaning they receive a larger percentage of the ward’s budget than their population share. Of the second group, 69% are disadvantaged.

Some councillors admit this: “I think that the ANC serves mostly the interest of their black constituents, the ID mostly serves the interest of the coloured community. And yes, the DA mostly attends to whites and coloureds, because the DA support base is made up of both white and coloureds.”

To analysing individual ward situations (the outcome of the election) and finan-cial balances (the actual governance), we divided all wards in four categories: good, acceptable, bad and discriminatory (Fig 9).

It seems that wards that are more homogeneous are better represented, which is what we would logically expect. Furthermore, the result of 25 wards was influenced by the financial decisions of the local councillor, equally distributed

white, affluent areas in the DA. This was because the DA is still a particularly ‘white party’, while they attract votes from both white and coloured voters. These two fac-tors contribute to the general inequality in Cape Town’s city council.

To add to this, several proportional councillors (see explanation of the vot-ing system above) are assigned to work for a specific area to try to win the inhabitants’ votes for their party, but all too often white councillors from affluent areas have to work in and ‘rule’ areas of poor black people who have a completely different political culture and often haven’t forgotten about apartheid.

These people say, in their own words, “umlungu akuazi Wallacedene” (Walla-cedene is an informal area): “This white man doesn’t know Wallacedene”. The DA-councillors very often do not realise they are not accepted by the black population and are oblivious of the difference in politi-cal culture: only one of the ten interviewed councillors acknowledged that “a councillor [coming from a white area] cannot know or understand fully the situation.” Only one other councillor acknowledged this might be a problem, while the eight others did not believe or even denied it.

c. Ward representation

Councillors advantage their own neigh-bourhood financially (Fig 8).

Neighbourhoods are homogeneous enti-ties within wards with one ward compris-ing of one up to 7 neighbourhoods. Of all neighbourhoods, 46 have direct repre-sentation (the ward councillor lives in the neighbourhood) and 118 are represent-ed by a ward councillor living in another

between parties, social composition or direction of the influence (positive or negative). Thus, the person-alities of the people in chargeheavily influence the representation issue and not always for the better. In eight wards, the budget reflects heavy discrimination of poorer communities.

Of these eight, three are ‘black’ wards where the local councillors give a great advantage to his/her own formal area and disadvantage the poorer informal areas.

This is the same situation for coloured communities. Three others are in coastal areas where small, poor, black, informal settlements are heavily neglected by the white councillor living in the surrounding affluent areas. The last one is an area in the east were the councillor lives in a small, white, affluent area comprising 2% of the ward population where he spends 19% of his budget while neglecting poorer com-munities outside of his neighbourhood.

Figure 7 - Clusters of population, council and parties. Data SSA, 2001; Cape Town Council, 2009

Figure 8 - Graphs of difference in financial advantage of neighbourhoods with (left) or without (right) ward coun-cillor. Data SSA, 2001; Cape Town Council, 2009

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References

Cape Town Council (2009), http://www.cape-town.gov.za/en/councilonline/Pages/default.aspx

Macdonald, M. (2006) Why race mat-ters in South Africa, Cambridge: Har-vard University Press, pp. 245

MDB (2009) Demarcation South Africa: Cape Town, Pretoria: Municipal Demarcation Board

Pande, R. (2003) “Can mandated po-litical representation increase policy in-fluence for disadvantaged minorities? Theory and evidence from India.” Ameri-can Economic Review 93(4): 1132–1151.

Pietersen, E. (2002) “From divided to inte-grated city? Critical overview of the emerg-ing metropolitan governance system in Cape Town.” Urban Forum 13(1): 3-37.

Prinsloo, R., Jansen-Verbeke, M. & Vannste, D. (1999) South Africa: spatial transformation in the post-apartheid era, Leuven: Acco Publishing

SSA (2001) Census 2001, Pretoria: Statistics South Africa

Western J. (1996) Outcast Cape Town (reis-sue with added prologue and epilogue), Berke-ley: University of California Press, pp. 396

d. DA vs. ANC

There is a large difference between the DA and the ANC. The DA is aiming to achieve raceless politics, but, in doing so, it by-passes social reality and the political ex-pectations of the people as evidenced by reactions of politicians of both parties. This is creating an ever-growing gap between those who are ‘up-to-date’ while joining in modern politics and those who are left behind and are alienated from their gov-ernment. The ANC is socially very real but suffers from corruption and the hunger for power of their members. While it is not po-litically experienced enough to sufficiently be the part of government, their position is that of the largest opposition, and thus de-fenders of their voters (less affluent black population groups), as would be expected.

5. Conclusion

The following conclusions can be made from the analysis above: • Electoral considerations and demo-graphic issues prevent the establishment of equally designed wards, some ben-efiting but mostly disadvantaging poorer communities. • Councillors live, on average, in a neigh-bourhood that is 50% richer than Cape Town’s average. This is the case for proportional representation elected as well as ward councillors who often live in the richer parts of their ward. The main causes for this are an under-representa-tion of informal areas and DA-members living on average in wealthier areas than their voters. • The numbers show that councillors advantage their own neighbourhood financially. On all levels, the personalities of the people in charge heavily influence the representation issue and not always for the better. In eight wards the budget reflects heavy discrimination of poorer communities. • A large difference in political culture between DA and ANC aggra-vates the representational problems. Cooperation between stakeholders is only working for people who have joined the DA’s political culture. The ANC is politically not experienced enough to defend the needs of their constituents. As is typical in representational democ-racy, Cape Town’s local politics show a difference in background between the community and their leaders.

The social problem of racial economi-cal segregation is not the only division in Cape Town: representation of minorities in their electoral districts is almost complete-ly depending on the personalities of the councillors, without much structural reas-surance. Fifteen years seemed enough for

Figure 9 - Map of ward evaluation results before (left) and after (right) re-evaluation based on financial data. Data Own research

a predominantly white party, DA, to gain control over Cape Town and implement its modern view on political representation. The large poor, coloured and black com-munities are not ready for a change. The ANC is not equipped enough to moderate.

The results of the election of 2011, in which the DA won an absolute majority and the ANC won the rest of the wards, are mere-ly a continuation of this trend and might mean a further division in creating what might become a sort of ‘political apartheid’.

Further reading: De Bruyn, T. (2011) “Po-litical representation of minorities in the city of Cape Town”, unpublished master thesis, Department of Earth and Environ-mental Sciences, Campus Library Aren-berg, Leuven

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Struggles over urban spaceA case-study of state-led urban restructuring and squatters’ struggles over urban space in Lund, Sweden

Tine Bergmans, EGEA Leuven,

Abstract

Recent urban transformations in Lund are analyzed in this research through a lens of struggles over urban space. The focus is on the relation between squatters’ activ-ism and the policy context. The research objectives are to examine on one hand how urban public actors imagine the city and how urban policy is coordinated and legitimated, and on the other hand how an activist squatter movement emerged in the city in opposition to the policy context. Beside this, the aim is to investigate how the urban regime deals with the claims of the squatter movement and how this affects the development of their protest actions. The method used to carry out the investigation is critical discourse analysis.

The premise is that discursive tactics have a major role in the production of oppositional meanings over space and related tactics to struggle for urban space. Social movement and collective protest literature gives an analytical framework for the analysis of the squat-ters’ activism in relation to the policy context.

Based upon insights from social move-ment and collective protest literature, the hypothesis is that the local policy framework and the discursive and or-ganizational tactics of the local policy-makers in Lund affect the development of the protest of squatters in the city.

A second hypothesis is that if there is a strong discursive neoliberalisation of urban policy and a tendency to re-press, ignore or combat the squatters, there is more chance that the squatters will have reacted with counterattacks.

The empirical findings of the research clearly illustrate that in Lund neoliberal policy reforms and the consequences of these reforms have affected squatters in several ways, but due to a diversity of motivations, it is questionable whether the squatters constitute a basis for a strong oppositional movement.

This calls for further research on the effect of neoliberal policies in the protesting of squatters.

Introduction

Motives for collective action in cities have changed over the last four decades. According to Mayer (2000), in the 1960’s and early 1970’s, struggles of urban social movements in European cities were concerned with the cost and the use value of public infrastructure. In Castells’ words, it was a struggle for ‘collective consump-tion’.

However, globalisation and its conse-quences gave rise to a range of new motives for collective mobilisation. Cas-tells (1983) recognised that collective activism can react to the policy context in three different ways, namely, with demands for collective consumption, with attempts to defend cultural identities and with demands for territorially based self-management. Mayer (2000), in turn, became aware of mobilisations in Euro-pean cities in reaction to social problems exacerbated by globalisation, entrepre-neurial ways of urban restructuring, the introduced system of local governance, forces trying to make the cities competitive and cuts in welfare rights and budgets.

However, the Post-Fordist urban social movement literature also tends to claim that an increased diversification of motivations and action repertoires has led to a fragmentation of urban social movements since the late 1980’s, which in turn questions their capacities to make real changes. The change of Castells’ interpretation concerning the role of urban social movements already suggests this development. In his initial interpretation, urban social movements were effective agents of social change and counter-power opposite capitalist interests, but later on his interpretation changed to say that they were only a sign of resistance.

Furthermore, Castells indicated that the success of a movement is related to several conditions, such as their autono-my, linguistic skills, consciousness of their role as a movement and contacts with the media, political parties and profession-als.Besides, if their intention is to make social change, his three defined goals had to be combined. Mayer (2000) and Saunders (2007) highlighted the coopera-tion between different protest mobilisations as a constructive point for the mobilisation of resources. Saunders also underlined the importance of network links for the creation of a shared movement identity.

Several authors have argued (like Sassen, 1996; Bauman, 1999; Lund Hansen, 2006) that the changing global competitive climate created increased exclusive and powerful neoliberal claims over urban space, which tend to introduce urban transformations leading to multiple forms of exclusion and marginalization.

Discourses have an important role in this context, because they can be used to legitimate and coordinate changed policies. Discourses are related to power, because a discourse can be used to mobilize people for a specific interest. Consequently, the analysis of discours-es also makes sense for the analysis of hegemony; If the State wants to establish hegemony, discourses could be shaped to serve their hegemonic projects and silence opposed claims. Organizational strate-gies also matter for the establishment of hegemony, as they can support the process of legitimating and coordinating the hegemonic projects. Disadvantaged social groups could react to this with counterattacks to undermine the dominant ideology.

Changes in urban policy and urban protest can affect each other, as urban policy can be the motive for protest and the authori-ties will have to deal with the claims of the protestors. The strategies with which the authorities deal with these claims, might in turn affect the forms of protest. The authorities can deal with protests by using different tactics. Van Noort et al. (1987) distinguished both anticipative and reactive strategies.

The studies of Uitermark (2004a, 2004b) on the squatter movement in Amsterdam, for example, reveal that the urban govern-ment uses cooption as a strategy to deal with a segment of the squatter movement, namely the artistic segment, while the radical segment is ignored. This is argued to be related with a shift towards softer neoliberal policies and a related compat-ibility of movement and state goals.

State-led urban restructuring in Lund

Lund is part of the urban region Malmö-Lund in the province Skåne in Sweden and belongs to the Öresund region. In this geographical and economical area, the Öresund bridge connecting Malmö and Copenhagen, is an important element(figure 1).

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Contemporary state-led urban restructur-ing in Lund reflects a neoliberal project in different ways.

There is an emergent neoliberal policy discourse behind the symbolic represen-tation of Lund as the “City of Ideas”. The aim of the policy makers is to restructure Lund to a modern competitive ‘sustainable’ city with a strong knowledge-based urban economy, which at the same time radiates a cultural vibrancy of such uniqueness that Lund is competitive enough to become the European Capital of Culture in 2014.

The urban plans reflect this vision on the points of development of new research in-frastructure (like the ESS and the MAX-IV project), new ‘sustainable’ housing proj-ects and investment in ‘sustainable’ trans-port infrastructure.

Squatters’ struggles over urban space in Lund

The squatter movement in Lund has been quite effective in mobilizing resources. They have used both instrumental and expressional techniques for the purpose of raising awareness, mobilising people and creating networks and alliances. This could explain why they have already been very active during the two years of

their existence. However, both goals and tactics have changed due to different new problems and due to the reaction of the politicians on the squatters’ actions.

Neoliberal policy reforms and the conse-quences of these reforms have affected squatters in several ways. Receiving attention in their protest (during the period 2008-2009):

1. Possible speculation strategies of the public housing company, vacancy in the city and a need for affordable housing (by the Smultronstället occu-pation during October 2008, figure 2, and the squat festival during May 2009, figure 3).

This reflects a criticism on the entre-preneurial way of governing and a demand for collective consumption.

2. The “City of Ideas” symbolic repre-sentation for the city, which is claimed to be imposed on urban space by an ‘evil alliance’ of economic and political forces focusing on bourgeois values and norms. There has not been a mobilization against this, but the motive of one of the squatters reflects a criticism against the neoliberal meaning imposed on space.

Figure 2: Image of the Smultronstället villa on a flyer that calls for a demonstration. Translation of the text: DEMONSTRATION! Housing for everybody! Occupy more! For rent reductions! Free

rooms, everybody’s rooms! No more compromises! Private source

Figure 1: Location of Lund in the Öresund Region.Source: Official Website of the Öresund Region and personal marks, 2009

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3. Cuts in welfare budgets for social cen-tres (by the Romano Trajo occupation dur-ing August 2009, figure 4). This reflects a criticism on neoliberal policies and its social effects and a demand for collective consumption.

4. The focus on promotion of cultural and historical heritage for the purpose to give Lund a chance to become the European Capital of Culture in 2014.

There has not been a mobilization against this either, but there is a squatter who criti-cizes that it is a ‘cultural experience for the bourgeoisie’, which reflects a critique against the segregating mechanism behind the idea that consumption desires of ‘the bourgeoisie’ are favoured in urban policy.

5. Political opportunity structures in the current policy context. The squatters criti-cize top-down decisions, that the city is restructured with hegemonic means and that the city authorities ignore their claims and try to criminalize them. This suggests that the squatters became aware of a dom-inant ideology for urban space and dis-crimination in the field of urban manage-ment (as their claims have been ignored).

The reaction of the municipal government made some squatters more radical as the

revealed ideologies reflected anarchism, anti-establishment and anti-capitalism. This suggests a radicalization of a part of the movement.

The reasons were the narrow political opportunity structures, the often ignorant,

brutal and criminalizing reactions of the municipal government towards the squat-ters and the discourse that was used by the state authorities to legitimize these practices.

The radical squatters’ protest takes forms like fight the ‘evil alliance’, create a radical climate and create an own agenda for the city. This reflects a demand for autonomy and suggests counter-hegemonic pur-poses.

Nevertheless, there is a diversity of mo-tivations for protest actions and although squatters mentioned other constructive ideas, like creating an autonomous agen-da and creating a radical climate, these are only a few people. This could be a sign of a fragmentation of the movement.

Perhaps there are just one or two squat-ters with a strong ideology who try to mobilize other people for their project.

This questions whether the squatters con-stitute a basis for a strong oppositional movement to a governing neoliberal sys-tem and calls for further research on the effect of neoliberal policies on the protest of squatters.

Figure 3: Squatters on the roof of a house and policemen during the squat festival, May 2009Private source

Figure 4: Romano Trajo occupation, August 2009.Private source

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References

Bauman, Z. 1999. Urban space wars: On Destructive Order and Creative Chaos,Citizenship Studies, Vol. 3, Nr. 2, pp. 173-185.

Castells, M. 1983. The City and the Grass-roots, A cross-cultural theory of urban socialmovements, 336 pp.

Lund Hansen, A. 2006. Space wars and the new urban imperialism. PhD dissertationCLXVII (ISBN: 91-974998-8-9), Department of Social and Economic Geography, LundUniversity.

Mayer, M. 2000. Social Movements in Euro-pean Cities: Transition from the 1970s to the1990s, in Bagnasco, A., Le Galès, P. (eds.)

Cities in Contemporary Europe, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, pp. 131-152.

Sassen, S. 1996. Cities and Communities in the Global Economy: Rethinking Our Concepts,American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 39, No. 5, 629-639.

Saunders, C. 2007. Using Social Network Analysis to Explore Social Movements: ARelational Approach, Social Movement Stud-ies, Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 227–243.

Uitermark, J. 2004a. Framing Urban Injus-tices: The Case of the Amsterdam SquatterMovement, Space and Polity, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp 227-244.

Uitermark, J. 2004b. The Co-optation of squat-

Table 1: The Relation between the urban policy context & squatters’ activism in Lund (2008-2009)

ters in Amsterdam and the Emergence of aMovement Meritocracy: A Critical Reply to Pruijt, International Journal of Urban Research,Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 687-698.

Van Noort, W.J., Huberts, I.W, Rademaker, I. 1987. Protest en Pressie. Een systematischeanalyse van collectieve actie, Van Grocum: As-sen/Maastricht.

URBAN POLICY CONTEXT THE SQUATTER MOVEMENT

Urban PolicySymbolic Representation

of theCity: “City of Ideas”

Urban Planning Squatters’ ProtestTypes of

Mobilization

Improve urban space to at-tract investments, creative people & companies spe-cialized in R&D

-Branding the city & external promotion of the ex-change value of the city

-Plans for the ESS & the MAX-lab

-New housing projects (like the Brunnshög area, the Sugar mill area & Öresundsvägen) & aim to create 900 new apartments/year

Criticism: ‘Evil Alliance’ & hegemonic means (ch) + (a)

Attract cultural consump-tion & aim to become the European Capital of Cul-ture in 2014

-Conservation & promotion of cultural & historical heritage and care for safety in the city

Criticism:‘Cultural Experience for the Bourgeoisie’ (ci)

‘Sustainable’Development

-Reduce car-use & care for ecological & architectural means in new housing and transport plans (e.g. light rails, housing projects along the railway lines & ecofriendly architecture)

-‘Social sustainable development’ & building a ‘good mix’ of housing

Criticism:Demand ‘housingfor everybody’ (c)

Smultronställetoccupation &squat festival

Welfare erosion -Privatization & outsourcing of housingprojects

-Slashes in welfare budgets

-Focus on young families

-Criticism on vacancy, high rentprices & speculationstrategies (c)

-Protest againstbudget slashes forsocial centres (c)

Smultronställetoccupation

Romano Trajooccupation

Legend:(c) = demand for collective consumption

(ci) = defend cultural identity

(a) = demand for autonomy

(ch) = counter-hegemonic purposes

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Abstract

This article discusses the issue of social and landscape degradation of large hous-ing estates (LHE) of high-rise blocks of flats, built under the communist regime in Central and Eastern Europe. As today they consist of a great part of housing reserves in this part of the continent, their eventual downgrading would affect lives of millions of people.

The described procedure of investigating their susceptibility to degradation includes a survey among the inhabitants of six estates in Katowice (Poland), field research and statistical analysis. This leads to the evaluation of the potential role of particular factors in the LHE degrada-tion processes. The final result is rating of the investigated estates on the basis of their susceptibility to downgrading.

The article is based on MSc thesis award-ed in 2010 by the Institute of Geography and Spatial Management of the Jagiello-nian University in Krakow.

Introduction

In many European countries, Large Hous-ing Estates (LHE’s) were probably the most popular type of residential hous-ing built during the post-war decades. However, at the same time, their conno-tations have been mixed. The main ideas behind their construction were: a mod-ernistic concept of high (and therefore economic) buildings located in green, sunlit areas; far away from industry; to provide satisfactory and safe conditions of living for low and middle-class families.

A few decades ago, the idea of LHE’s was seen as a perfect method to solve the dramatic post-war housing problem in both Western and Eastern Europe. This was the result of a huge loss of buildings and a quick rise of the urban population due to a baby-boom and mass migration (from the countryside or from abroad) to work in the heavy industry. In former

socialist countries, this was reinforced by political “social engineering” (providing totally new living conditions as a way to create a new, communist society) and the propaganda of egalitarianism.

As a result, nowadays there are approximately 41 million Europeans living in high-rise blocks of flats on large estates (Dekker, van Kempen, 2004), and this number does not include coun-tries of the former Soviet Union. In the EU countries of Central and Eastern Europe this is the case for huge parts of their societies, approximately 20-30%. In Poland there are about 8 million people living in LHEs, which is more than one fifth of its citizens (Węcławowicz, 2007). These numbers are the first and most important reason for undertaking research into the issue of their susceptibility to degradation in the coming years. Moreover, as in many cities LHE’s constitute the most common form of residential housing, so their degra-dation would mean a degradation of huge parts of cities, depriving even those who can already barely afford it of a dwelling. In addition to this, some social problems, as well as problems with the maintenance of buildings and public spaces, have begun to be a concern on large estates in Poland.

These difficulties are, however, not as advanced as in Western countries where we observe ghettoization of these areas on an ethnic basis (see for instance van Bekhoven & van Kempen, 2006; Mes-nard & Plassard, 2000). Blocks of flats in Poland are still perceived as suitable places for living, especially by lower- and middle-class people. This is a great and real chance to slow down the degradation processes and therefore to protect consid-erable housing reserves, as long as the Polish society is not wealthy enough to move to new types of housing. This paper is based on MSc thesis award-ed in 2010 by the Institute of Geography and Spatial Management of the Jagiel-lonian University in Krakow (Warchalska, 2010, unpublished).

Literature

The scientific literature showed that there is a growing interest in the state of large housing estates. Research topics are mainly practically-oriented, seeking good strategies of development

for these areas. Among them, we should mention RESTATE project (Restructur-ing Large Housing Estates in European Cities: Good Practices and New Visions for Sustainable Neighbourhoods and Cities) which was led by scientists from Utrecht University from 2003 to 2005.This project was held within the Fifth Frame-work Programme of the EU.

In RESTATE, 29 case studies of estates form 10 European countries were pre-pared, in Western as well as Central East-ern Europe (Poland, Hungary, and Slove-nia). On the basis of the RESTATE project several scientific papers and reports were published, e.g. Węcławowicz et al. (2003), Dekker & van Kempen (2004), Černič Mali (2005), van Beckhoven & van Kem-pen (2006), Černič Mali et al. (2008), Górczyńska (2008).

Apart from this European project, there have been many studies about large housing estates in Central and Eastern Europe on national and local levels; e.g. about the Czech Republic (Temelová et al., 2010), Romania (Constantin, 2006, 2007) or Slovenia (Dimitrovska Andrews & Sendi, 2001). Finally, concerning Poland, the subject has been presented in the scientific literature of several disciplines since the very beginning of the economic and political transformation of the country. To mention just some Polish geographical works about LHE’s: Prawelska-Skrzypek (1990), Ziobrowski et al. (2000), Zborows-ki (2005, 2009), Szmytkowska (2008).

However, the literature before the research started in 2009 showed that the city of Katowice had not yet been the object of such an analysis. Recently (in February 2011) a Polish-German project called ‘Large Housing Estates (LHE) – Katowice-Leipzig’ started.

Its aim is ‘developing scenarios for large housing estates in both cities and identify the key drivers that may determine their future development’ (ht tp: / / lhe-katowice- leipzig.host22.com/index.php/en/the-project). It is led by the Faculty of Architecture of The Silesian University of Technology in Gliwice (SUT), the Department of Sociology of the University of Silesia in Katowice (US) and the Department of Urban and Environmen-tal Sociology at the Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ in Leipzig. This research was to include two of the estates considered in this study

Susceptibility of large post-socialist housing estates in Poland to landscape and social degradation. The example of the city of Katowice (Upper Silesia)

Agata Warchalska-Troll,Institute of Geography and Spatial Management of the Jagiellonian University in

KrakowEGEA Krakow

13


(Paderewskiego and Tysiąclecia estates). However, the results of this project have not yet been published (as of mid April 2012).

A general point of view that dominates the publications and projects mentioned above is that the physical and social condition of the estates is what differ-entiates them: we can find some in a very good state, whilst some others are degrading. Nevertheless, the discussion about which factors are decisive in this polarization is clearly not comprehensive.

Objectives

In this article, I aim to:- identify factors that have an influence on social and landscape degradation of big housing estates; - identify how strong is a connection between spatial/landscape and social factors and processes;- use these factors to create a diagnosis of investigated estates and consequent-ly a hierarchy of them on the basis of susceptibility to degradation;- investigate whether there are any particular local factors and circumstanc-es that have a significant influence on degradation.

Study area and methodology

In order to better identify the differenc-es between estates at the local scale, the study area was limited to one city – Katowice. It is the capital of Upper Silesia (southern Poland), a city with

industrial traditions. Katowice, as well as the whole region, experienced a major increase in population during the 1960’s and 1970’s. This was mainly caused by mass migration from other parts of the country (even from the very North) to work in coal, steel and related branches of industry. The large housing estates were mostly built for these workers.

For the study purposes, the following cri-teria for the choice of the estates were proposed:- population of more than 4,000;- the overwhelming majority of blocks

erected by the state from mid 1960s to late 1980s, representing the main features of socialist residential architecture of this time: multi-storey blocks of flats, made of grey concrete panels with hardly any dec-orative elements;- spatial cohesion of the estate.

In Katowice six housing estates met these criteria (fig. 1). However, there were still considerable differences between them (tab. 1.). Of course, each estate also has different informal connotations and perceptions in the city, and as a result, a different position on the real estate market.

Estate

Pad

erew

skie

go

Ku

kucz

ki

Tysiąclecia

Gis

zow

iec

Wit

osa

Od

rod

zen

ia

Approx. surface [ha] 47.88 24.80 110.60 54.24 65.44 31.60

Population* 8,734 4,718 23,518 14,803 11,298 8,038

Number of dwellings** 4,399 1,656 11,062 4,985 3,579 2,987

Start of the construction*** 1974 1977 1961 1966 1967 1981

Distance from the city centre [km] 1.2 1.6 2.8 4.8 3.1 6.6

Number of bus connections with the city centre per day 251 51 149 262 164 96

*Source: the Municipal Council of Katowice (2009), ** Information from housing associations managing estates, ***Source: housing associations managing estates and Szaraniec, 1996

Table 1: Chosen information about the investigated estates in Katowice (Poland, Upper Silesia), 2009

Figure 1. The location of the investigated estates in the city of KatowiceSource: Warchalska-Troll

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The methodology of the research included:

- a survey among the inhabitants of all six estates (quality of life, advantages and disadvantages of living in such an area, social bonds, social activity, and the feel-ing of responsibility for the neighbourhood etc.); 432 responses;- fieldwork (inventory of buildings, public institutions, public and commercial services, public spaces, spatial accessi-bility and more);- an interview with one of Katowice’s real estate agencies (about the position of the estates investigated in real estate market of the city);- statistical analysis (the analysis of the results of the survey, including chi-square test), the analysis of maps, plans, local newspapers and bulletins etc.

The research was conducted in autumn 2009.

Results

First of all, the research showed a relatively good quality of life on the inves-tigated estates. Most of the respondents were quite satisfied with the place where they were living. Among the most impor-tant advantages they indicated were: good access to basic amenities (kinder-garten, school, medical centre, shop, pharmacy, post office etc.), good access to the city centre and to recreational areas and facilities. On the other hand, the main disadvantages of living in Katowice’s LHE’s were: general discom-fort due to high density of population, including crowded car parks, low public safety (the presence of petty crime, graffiti, vandalism), a feeling of anonymity and lack of necessary maintenance of public spaces.

When asked about particular problems, the respondents mostly indicated the fact that younger/wealthier people tend to move out (about 65% perceived this as a problem, half of which perceived it as a ‘big problem’). Although conscious of these matters, the respondents had mostly a positive image of their estates and this type of housing in general, and were optimistic about the tendency of changes that their neighbourhood was undergoing. Most of them also declared that they felt attached to their neighbour-hood (80% as a whole, 26% felt very attached).

The responses to questions about social bonds confirmed this (80% of respon-dents at least know most of their next-door neighbours and chat with them from time to time; one third even have a closer

relationship). A feeling of responsi-bility for the place where one lives was a logical consequence of one’s attachment to it. About one third of the survey respondents said that the condi-tion of the estate depended mostly on the inhabitants, although two times people more pointed out the dependence on the institutions managing the area.

Participation in social activities acces-sible in the neighbourhood was generally popular among respondents. Half of them declared that either they or a member of their closest family was active in at least one local institution/organization (sports club, charity organization, church group, scouts club etc.). Moreover, even those who did not declare this had a quite good knowledge about such institutions/organizations within their estate and the great majority of them agreed that their influence on local society was very positive.

Probably one of the most interesting aspects concerning the degrada-tion of the large housing estates is the connection and mutual influence of physical (spatial/technical) and social factors. Of, perhaps, no less importance is whether (and how) the people per-ceive these relationships. In the survey, the respondents were asked if there is any connection between a neglected appearance of the estate and several negative social features/processes such as: 1) The inhabitants are more pessimistic and often depressed; 2) People who can afford it are more eager to move away from the estate;3) The number of the poor and the unemployed grows in the estate;4) The estate has a worse reputation in the city than it really deserves 5) There is, in fact, more crime and a lack of public safety on the estate.

The survey showed that in cases 1, 2 and 4 over half of the people perceived this relationship. In case 2 (negative selec-tion) the respective rate was even about 80%. Another significant finding was that considerably more people admitted that the neglected estates had also a worse reputation, compared to the number of those who stated that these estates were in fact more unsafe. This seemed to suggest that the inhabitants of inves-tigated LHE’s were conscious of the stigmatization that affects these residen-tial districts.

When an area is stigmatized, it gains worse reputation than it really de-serves because of stereotypes. In some

Western countries this is often based on ethnic tensions, where LHE’s are usually inhabited by foreign immigrants and ethnic minorities. In the case of Polish estates it is mainly caused by associating them with vandalism, thefts, crime provoked by local hooligans and football fans. Another stereotype is based on the feeling that LHE’s are the symbol of the socialist regime which used them as a tool of communist propaganda of ‘new society’.

The results of the survey were then compared to the results of the fieldwork – inventory and mapping basic ameni-ties, the visual state of buildings, public spaces and basic infrastructure (pavements, roads etc.), as well as an evaluation of the quality of the area surrounding each estate.

This fieldwork confirmed that the investigated estates were well equipped with everyday facilities and basic social infrastructure. Their visual state did not always make a good impression, but on each estate the efforts to improve it were visible, e.g. pavements and roads were undergoing renovations, some buildings had recently been painted or renovated, some new playgrounds had been con-structed. The observation of the space in car parks (in the evening on working days) showed that they were overcrowd-ed near the highest buildings, even if in general there were enough parking places in the estate (compared to its population). Therefore, the impression of crowding, including the problem with parking, was rather limited in contrast to the city centre, or even to many new housing districts.

The results of the survey, consulted with scientific literature, were then used to build a set of factors that can (potentially) affect low quality of life and consequently social and physical degradation of estates. The factors were then weighted on the basis of statistical analysis (Chi-squared test) of the relation between identified factors and the responses to questions about the quality of life (in case of closed questions) or the percentage of the respondents (in case of open questions). Each weight represents the impact that a given factor has on decreasing the life quality of the inhabitants.

And when the quality of life becomes low, it can easily provoke a sequence of negative processes, such as: Negative selection (younger/wealthier people moving out) -> lower prices of flats -> negative selection (poorer people who have no choice of place to live move in), -> poverty + unemployment + frustration

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medium size, but with relatively poor state of infrastructure (roads, pave-ments, etc.) and buildings (often due to mining activity), with the highest number of neglected public spaces, and low aes-thetic values (e.g. graffiti on many walls).

Moreover, this estate was perceived as a rather unsafe and uncomfortable place to live, which was confirmed in the interview with a worker in a local real estate agency. However, it was relatively well connected to the city centre and well equipped with amenities, includ-ing schools, medical centre, two social clubs and a swimming pool. Perhaps, the area in the immediate vicinity of the estate – a closed mine and another district which is an older and poorer working class estate – influenced this perception.In second place was the Odrodzenia estate – a much younger one - in this case the most important factors appeared to be a relatively peripheral location, considerably less facilities and relatively weak social bonds when compared to other estates.

On the other hand, according to the proposed criteria, the estate in the best condition appeared to be Kukuczki estate - the smallest one, with the strongest social bonds and the most satisfied and optimistic inhabitants, with relatively high aesthetical values (e.g. buildings were painted and renovated) and good maintenance of public spaces.

-> vandalism, devastation and other anti-social behaviour; no money for repairs/renovation of buildings -> stigmatization of an estate -> lower quality of life, further negative selection etc.

In the obtained hierarchy, the big size of the estate (in both demographic and spatial sense) appeared to be the most significant factor. It was followed by: a low aesthetic value of the architecture, neglected public spaces, weak social bonds, lack of public safety, insufficient amount of basic services. In contrast, factors such as pollution, noise and low quality of management of the estate, were of relatively low significance. Moreover, there were certain interactions between the factors. Some of them could be causes, others can be effects and some might be both. However it would be very hard to measure the force of these relations and therefore this was not investigated further.

The final and synthetic part of the research was the rating of estates on the basis of their susceptibility to social and landscape degradation (tab. 2.). Each estate was given a value of 1 up to 5 points for each factor (where ‘1’ means no/hardly any presence of a factor; ‘5’ – a factor is very visible/strong) and these points were then multiplied by the weight of each factor.As a result, the estate with the greater susceptibility to degradation appeared to be the Witosa estate – an estate of

It is worth mentioning that, according to the real estate agency and popular opinion, the best evaluated estate should have been the Paderewskiego estate as it is of medium size, very well situated (close to the centre as well as close to a large recreational area, with a good access to main roads and shopping centres), and traditionally perceived as a place where well-educated people live.

The survey showed, however, that the inhabitants of this estate were more critical about their neighbourhood and more pessimistic about its future than in case of the other estates. This results either from relatively higher expectations of this group of respondents towards their place of living, or from the fact that the very good opinion of this area is no longer true (or both reasons).

ConclusionsSocial and spatial/landscape aspects of degradation are strongly connected. They create a network of mutual relations which can be summarized as follows:

low quality of life in the area -> negative social selection ->

lower prices of flats -> further negative social selection -> social exclusion and deprivation,

pathological behaviour -> bad opinion about an estate ->

negative perception of the quality of life in the area ->

further negative social selection ->etc.

Table 2: The Kama River, Source: Photo by Aino Kirillova, 2009

Factors Estates – points weighted (and without weight)

Name

Wei

ght

Pade

rew

skie

go

Kuku

czki

Tysi

ącle

cia

Gis

zow

iec

Wito

sa

Odr

odze

nia

Too large size of the estate 4 8 (2) 4 (1) 20 (5) 12 (3) 12 (3) 8 (2)Low aesthetic qualities of the estate 3 12 (4) 3 (1) 9 (3) 9 (3) 15 (5) 12 (4)Neglected public spaces 3 12 (4) 3 (1) 6 (2) 9 (3) 12 (4) 6 (2)Weak social bonds 3 9 (3) 6 (2) 6 (2) 3 (1) 3 (1) 9 (3)Lack of public safety 3 6 (2) 3 (1) 6 (2) 9 (3) 12 (4) 6 (2)Insufficient social infrastructure 3 3 (1) 3 (1) 3 (1) 3 (1) 6 (2) 9 (3)Poor technical state of buildings and flats 2 6 (3) 4 (2) 6 (3) 6 (3) 8 (4) 4 (2)Lack of feeling of attachment to the estate, negative social selection 2 6 (3) 4 (2) 6 (3) 4 (2) 6 (3) 8 (4)

Bad opinion of the estate in the city 2 2 (1) 4 (2) 4 (2) 8 (4) 10 (5) 6 (3)Social contrasts 2 4 (2) 2 (1) 2 (1) 4 (2) 6 (3) 2 (1)Poor transportation access 2 2 (1) 6 (3) 4 (2) 4 (2) 6 (3) 10 (5)Low quality of surrounding area 1 1 (1) 3 (3) 1 (1) 2 (2) 4 (4) 3 (3)Pollution, noise 1 3 (3) 2 (2) 3 (3) 3 (3) 3 (3) 1 (1)Low quality of management of the estate 1 2 (2) 1 (1) 2 (2) 2 (2) 2 (2) 4 (4)Total 76 48 78 78 105 88

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The actual state of the investigated estates was quite good as degradation processes were not yet highly advanced, contrary to popular belief in Poland, especially in the 1990’s when many scientists forecasted their quick ‘death’ or at least perceived them in a very negative way (Prawelska-Skrzypek, 1990; Kwiatkowska, 1994; Rykiel, 1999; Szmytkowska, 2008).

Nowadays, large housing estates are perceived more positively; many authors underline their better maintenance and social state, compared to old districts of the big cities’ centres. There were also much better social bonds, more space and better access to facilities and services than in case of new estates, built by developers (i.e. Kotus, 2006; Zborowski, 2005; Zborows-ki & Dej, 2009; Zborowski et al., 2009; Gorczyca, 2009). However, if no improve-ment is made, it might deteriorate rapidly in future years due to growing technical problems and negative social selection.

This is likely to touch the most vulnerable estates first – those estates which are big, located far from the city centre and principal facilities, with tiny flats, bad reputation and no budget for renovation. There is still a chance to prevent or slow down these processes and therefore to protect a great part of the Polish residen-tial supply which will keep prices moder-ate until the society becomes wealthier.

The main conditions for prevention are to: • create stronger bonds between estates and the life of the city, e.g. by locating cultural and public institutions there;• find more effective ways to prevent their physical (and so aesthetic) downgrading; • better meet the changing needs of their inhabitants (e.g. these connected to the ageing population of the society).

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Prawelska-Skrzypek, G. 1990. Miasta o niezharmonizowanym rozwoju w świadomości mieszkańców (na przykładzie miast polskich), Wyd. UJ, Kraków.

Rykiel, Z. 1999. Przemiany struktury społeczno-przestrzennej miasta polskiego, a świadomość terytorialna jego mieszkańców, Continuo, Wrocław.

Szaraniec, L. 1996. Osady i osiedla Katowic.

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Catalina IonitaEGEA Bucharest

Department of Systems Ecology and Sustainability,

University of BucharestAbstract

This paper makes a contribution to the knowledge of the evaluation methods used in environmental studies and also underlines the importance of this type of method in areas where ecological reconstruction is needed. After a short description of the method and the methodology, the paper describes some of the results of an economical valuation study reflecting the willingness to pay for natural ecosystem services of the respondents.

Introduction

During the last decade, the Danube and its tributaries have been confronted with major problems, such as the intensifi-cation of the flooding periods leading to lower fish productivity, the risk of floods of human settlements, the deterioration of the water quality (in close relation to pollution). This was also the case at the two research sites Neajlov Catchment and Braila Islands (part of the Inner Danube Delta).

One possible solution for these problems is ecological reconstruction (Vadineanu, 2004), which signifies restoring former natural and semi-natural ecosystems

which primarily serve as flooding areas.

The benefits of this measure will contribute to a) the improvement of the water self-cleaning process; b) increasing flood control; c) assuring proper micro-climate condi-tions; d) the recovery of some areas for nesting birds; e) the stimulation of the fish production; f) increasing the recreation potential of these areas.

At the same time, the restoration of some services offered by the aquatic ecosystems can be made by implement-ing certain projects, which in return need proper financial investment, both from the authorities and also from the local population, who are direct beneficiaries of the services. Therefore there is a necessity in measuring the willingness to pay - WTP in short - for certain services and goods.

This paper presents the partial results of research conducted under the AquaMoney project (project under FP7) in Romania. Its main purpose is to identify the WTP of the local population, taking into consideration the possibility of financ-ing some ecological restoration projects by using the Contingent Valuation method.

The Contingent Valuation (CV) method

The CV method is a “stated preference” method, asking people to directly state their values, rather than inferring values from actual choices, as the “revealed

preference” methods do. The method is currently used at a large scale in different fields of interest, such as art, education, transport, health for evaluating environ-mental resources and services (e.g. recre-ation, hunting, esthetic benefits).

The CV method is based on formulat-ing hypothetical scenarios to describe payment alternatives. The consumers are asked directly about their WTP for certain environmental services or about their willingness to accept (WTA) payment for losing a certain environmental service (Asafu-Adjave, 2005). The main instrument for applying the CV method is by face-to-face interview. It is recom-mended to conduct the interview directly (by confronting and asking the respon-dents), rather than to have it by telephone, email or online, even though the costs will be higher. In order to get relevant results, it is necessary that the respondents are well informed about the state of the art related to the discussed resource, to remind them about income constraints and to allow them to change their options at the end of the interview (Hanemann, 1994).

A short description of the Study Areas

The study was carried out at two Long Term Socio-Ecological Research Sites (LTSER Sites), i.e. two socio-ecological complexes at local or regional level which involve not only natural ecosystems but also ecosystems controlled or/and created and dominated by humans - Braila Islands and Neajlov Catchment (figure 1).

Willingness to Pay for Ecological Reconstruction Projects - Partial Results of a Contingent Valuation Study in Braila Islands and Neajlov Catchment -

Figure 1. The location of the two research sites within the Danube Catchment (Source: modified after Geamana et al, 2008)

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Figure 3. WTP in Braila Islands

Braila Islands is part of the former Inner Danube Delta (IDD). This entire section of the Danube was classified as having a high degree of modification due to the dredging of 20% of the river bed in order to make it available for navigation. What was once the former IDD, is now 210 square km of wetlands in the Small Island of Braila Natural Park and the floodplains between the riverbanks and dikes of almost 93 square km. The studied area is inhabited by approximately 300,000 inhabitants, from which 72% live in a rural area.

The second study area, Neajlov Catchment, is situated in the southern part of Romania and is a piedmont plain with a total area of 3,718.5 square km. A part of the river Neajlov was flooded area or wetland, but during the last century the natural and semi-natural ecosystems were replaced by agricultural ecosystems.

A part of these former flooded areas is still included in the Comana Natural Park (1,260 ha), the third largest area of biodi-versity in the country (after the Danube Delta and Small Island of Braila). The number of inhabitants here is 260,000. Videle is the only city in the area, therural population accounts for 93% of total inhabitants.

Methodology

A survey was undertaken to identify the WTP of the local population and their interest in ecological restoration projects. The questionnaire contained a combination of both closed (with different number of options – dichotomous or polytomous questions) and open questions (leaving more freedom of expression for the respondent) and were applied in November 2007 (for Braila Islands) and in March 2008 (for the Neajlov Catchment), both in urban and rural areas.

The question used to evaluate the WTP for ecological restoration, i.e. increasing the size of natural areas along the river - from the current situation to an ecologi-cally enhanced situation, included a range of predetermined monetary values, but also the “free will” possibility (choosing any other value that wasn’t mentioned) and the “I don’t know / I am not sure” option. The respondents were informed that the chosen value would be added to their water bill (as an annual calcula-tion) and also that, in the case of the ecological reconstruction taking place, all the inhabitants of the region will have to make the chosen payment for five consecutive years. The values stated as options were between 0 and 850 Lei (~200 Euro), depending on the charac-teristics of each site and the restoration proportion.

A selection of respondents was made by a systematic sampling procedure, by asking every tenth person (in the urban area) and every fifth person (in the rural area) for their availability to take part in the survey. At the end, there were 519 filled question-naires in Braila Islands (i.e. a response rate of 61%) and 509 completed for the Neajlov Catchment.

Sample’s characteristics

In both cases (sites) the male-female division of respondents was close to 50%, therefore considered relevant for the area (according to the census made by the National Statistics Institute). The average age in Braila Islands was 44 years and 47 for the Neajlov Catchment.

Reflecting the statistical situation at the national level, the majority of respon-dents declared that their monthly house-hold income was lower than 3000 Lei (~700 Euro): 68% in Braila Islands and 95% in Neajlov Catchment site (fig. 2).

The situation in the second case is dramatic, because 74% of the respon-dents have a monthly household income lower than 1500 Lei (~350 Euro). This underlines very clearly some of the problems that confront especially the rural population. For example unemployment (women being disadvantaged), a low education-al level which makes the possibility of getting a well-paid job difficult and a low allowance for old people who in former Communist times worked only in agriculture.

Partial results of the CV method

Braila IslandsTo express their WTP for ecological recon-struction projects, the respondents had to respond to two sets of cards: one set asking for a 50% reconstruction of the area and the second one for a 90% reconstruction for better ecological status. As the percent of the restored area was growing, a bigger part of the agricultural land would be flooded, therefore undermin-ing some economic activities in the area.

From the respondents, most of them chose to pay a certain amount for this type of project. One third (169) of the respondents chose not to pay for

Figure 2. Repartition of the respondents according to their monthly income

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ecological reconstruction in the 50% version, while in the 90% version more of them (190) were zero bidders (fig. 3).

The difference consisted of people who believed that the 90% scenario is not possible or is not desirable, as it would affect agricultural activities in the area, by transforming large polders into wetlands.

Neajlov Catchment

For the second study area, interviewed persons had the possibility to express their WTP for the reconstruction of 12% of the former natural ecosystems or for the reconstruction of 25% of them. Compared to Braila’s case, more respondents chose the “zero” option from the card: 231 for the 12% version and 235 for the 25% version (fig. 4).

Therefore, almost half of the respondents did not wish, albeit for different reasons, to pay for this type of project in the area. Most of the respondents who were willing to pay, chose low amounts of money (5 or 10 Lei), mainly due to the fact that their average income was so low.

Considering that the average amount of monthly payment can be calculated, we can also estimate the economic value as-sociated to the reconstruction projects as follows in table 1.

Short conclusions

The WTP of the local population is very important in the process of assigning economic value to the services and resources offered by the natural capital, including the aquatic ecosystems. The study revealed that the respondents, even though manifesting interest towards the environment in general and water quality in particular, feel constrained by their income when deciding how much they want to pay for the ecological reconstruction of the study areas.

The interest for paying also seems to be related to the proportion of rural popula-tion, where the interest on the environ-ment is lower due to the relatively small amount of information that the population received on this matter or to their lower educational level (this case more visible in the Neajlov Catchment site).

The income issues for the local population are the main influence for those not willing to pay for the ecosystem services, there-fore we can consider it as a case of lack of money, rather than lack of interest in most of the cases of zero bidders. In both cases, however, the respondents were

more willing to pay towards a smaller share of ecological reconstruction (50% sce-nario for Braila Islands and 12% scenario for Neajlov Catchment), not only because the other scenarios might reduce their in-come from agriculture (due to the flooding of the agricultural land) but also because they were afraid that bigger restoration projects could directly lead to bigger money contributions by the local population.

Acknowledgments

The research was developed as part of the AquaMoney project, financed by the European Union under the 6th Framework Program. All the research work was done by a group of researchers and students at the Department of Systems Ecology and Sustainability, University of Bucharest and with the support of the entire department.

References

Asafu-Adjave, J., 2005, Environmental eco-nomics for non-economists: techniques and policies for sustainable development, Ed. World Scientific

Brouwer, R., Turner, R. K., Georgiou, S., Powe, N., Bateman, I. J., Langford, I. H., 2003, Social and deliberative approaches to support wetland management, Managing wetlands: an ecologi-cal economics approach, Turner, R. K., van den Bergh, J. C. M., Brouwer, R. (eds.)

Constanza, R., 2003, Social goals and the valu-ation of natural capital. Environmental Monitor-ing and Assessment 86, p. 19–28

Crocker, T. D., 2002, A short history of environ-mental and resource economics, Handbook of environmental and resource economics, van den Bergh, J. C. M. (eds.)

Daly, H. E., 2007, Ecological Economics and Sustainable Development, Selected Essays of Herman Daly, van den Bergh, J. C. M. (ed.), Ed-ward Elgar Publishing

Geamănă, N. A., 2008, Scientific Report - AQUAMONEY 022723/2006 “Evaluarea monetară a costurilor pentru resursele şi servi-ciile furnizate de ecosistemele acvatice“

Hanemann, W. M., 1994, Valuing the environ-ment through contingent valuation, in The jour-nal of economic perspectives 8, p. 19-43

Mitchell, R. C., Carson, R.T., 1990, Using sur-veys to value public goods: the contingent valu-ation method, second edition, Ed. Resources for the Future

Pearce, D. W., 1993, Economic values and the natural world, Ed. Earthscan

Vădineanu, R., Vădineanu, A., Negrei, C., 2004, Analiza economică a capitalului natu-ral, Managementul dezvoltării. O abordare ecosistemică, Ed. Ars Docendi

Figure 4. WTP in Neajlov Catchment

Table 1. Total Economic Value and average paying amount

Reconstruction versionAverage pay-ing amount (Euro/year)

Total economic value

(millions of Euro)

Braila Islands 50% 37 4,5

Braila Islands 90% 42 5,1

Neajlov Catchment 12% 30 3,1

Neajlov Catchment 25% 34,8 3,6

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With the entry into the new millennium, we have become increasingly aware of the complexity, fragility and the inesti-mable value of our planet. Meanwhile, tourism becomes an increasingly popular expression of this consciousness. Because of transport and information technology development, more and more remote areas have become acces-sible, which contributed to a rapid rise of tourism in natural areas (Nistoreanu & Tigu, 2006).

In the Republic of Moldova, ecotourism may be an opportunity for development for local tourism and economy. Also, it may be a way to understand and protect nature in a better way.

The purpose of this study is to highlight the attractive natural and anthropogenic elements from the central region of Republic of Moldova. The main objectives are the physico-geographical and economic-geograph-ical analysis of the central region and underlining its ecotouristic potential.

A number of different methods including analysis, synthesis, mapping, compara-tive methods and others were used in the study. The method analysis is a detailed diagnosis of the components of tourist activity (tourism resources, forms, equip-ment and travel services, tourist flows etc.) or natural and socio-economic conditions of a specific territory in order to know their characteristics, evolution and how to fit in territory (natural, economic, demographic, ecological, etc.) as well as opportunities for tourism to make full use of thr region.

Synthesis is used after a detailed analy-sis of the components of tourist activities at the global, regional or local level. The mapping method was useful for research as it allowed the touristic phenomenon to be presented in spatial and temporal forms. The comparative method was then used to compare objects, processes and phenomena of the same type in order to determine similarities and differences between them (Glavan, 2005).

The Republic of Moldova is situated in Eastern Europe, between Romania and

Ukraine. It has a surface area of ap-proximately 33,800 km2 and a popula-tion of around 3,560 million people (http://www.statistica.md). The central region of the country comprises 13 districts: Calarasi, Orhei, Ungheni, Telenesti, Hincesti, Dubasari, Ialoveni, Anenii Noi, Soldanesti, Criuleni, Rezina, Straseni and Nisporeni. Its’ surface area is around 10,636 km2, or 31% of the country.

The region includes 598 administrative units which are structured into 329 admin-istrative units of the top level: 14 cities and 315 villages (communes). The majority of the population (47%) live in towns of up to 5000 inhabitants, 17% lives in cities and villages with a population of up to 2000 people and over 16% live in cities and villages with a population between 5,000 and 10,000 inhabitants (http://www.mcdr.gov.md/files/4426_strategie_centru.pdf).

Most of the area is occupied by the Central Moldavian Plateau, which is highly fragmented. Other small forms of relief are valleys, hârtoapele and hills. The highest point in the region is the hill Balanesti (429 meters altitude). The climate is temperate moderate continental. There are four main water courses in the region: the rivers Prut, Dniester, Raut and Bac. Soils and biodiversity are typical for forest-steppe regions of Central and Eastern Europe. The population of the central region is about 1,064,752 inhabitants (1 January 2010). Most of them - 81% - live in rural areas, while only 19% live in urban areas (http://www.statistica.md).

The average population density in the region is 100 inhabitants per km2. There is a slight majority of women in the region with 51%. The natality in the region is 11.8% (2008) and the mortality is 12.6% (2008) (http://www.mcdr.gov.md/files/4426_strategie_centru.pdf). The negative natural population balance – 0.8% - influences the lower fertility rate and the aging population, which increas-es the population pressure in the region.

The most important branch of the econ-omy in the region is agriculture. Around 47% of the local population works in this sector. The main industrial focus is the food industry, especially producing wine, fruit and vegetable preserves. Most of the poultry plants from the country are also situated here (14 of 23) (http://www.mcdr.gov.md/files/4426_strategie_centru.pdf).

The region has interesting ecotouristic potential. From the natural perspective, first of all, there are 28 geological and pa-leontholigical natural monuments. Most of them are ravennas or outcrops with ani-mal fossils of ancient eras. Besides this, there are also interesting relief forms like the canyons of the rivers Saharna, Raut, Tapova and erosional forms (figure 1).

The ecotouristic potential of the central region of the Republic of Moldova

Cristina CiobanuEGEA Moldova

University of the Academy of Science of Moldova

The temperate continental climate of the region is favourable for ecotourism with mild winters and not too hot summers.

The average annual temperature is 8.9 degrees Celsius. The warmest month of the year is July with an average tem-perature of 20.2 degrees Celsius and the coldest is January with 4 degrees Celsius (Cornesti station) (http://www.statistica.md/public/files/publicatii_electronice/Me-diu/Resurse_naturale_2010.pdf). The av-erage amount of precipitation is around 400-550 millimetres per year.

The lack of a marine coastline or large nat-ural lakes limits the water tourist potential of the region. There are two big lakes in the region, Dubasari and Ghidighici which are properly arranged for tourists. The complete courses of the rivers Raut and Bac (figure 2) are situated in the region, but their waters are polluted and their banks have not been arranged for tourism at all. In the region 14 springs have been declared as natural monuments because of the features of their waters. The most interesting one is the Jeloboc spring in the Orhei district with a large amount of water, 45 litres per second.

Figure 1: Erosional forms in the landscape reservation Cabaiesti-Parjolteni-

Source: Cristina Ciobanu, 2010

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Biodiversity is very concentrated in the region and makes it one of the most interesting attractions of the protected natural areas. There are many different forms of protected areas: scientific reservations (2), forest reservations (26), landscape reservations (15), areas with functional management (14), monuments of landscape architecture- parks of local boyars (3), natural areas of resources (1) and areas with medicinal plants (1) (Legea privind fondul ariilor naturale protejate de stat nr. 1538-XIII from 25.02.98, Oficial Monitor of Republic of Moldova nr. 66-68/442 from16.07.1998 ).

Different plant species are protected in all these areas (figure 3), as well as rare animals and landscapes of value and scientific importance. Furthermore, there are 206 trees under protection. Most of them - 126 - are oak trees, 37 are beech trees and 24 are forest pines - (Oficial Monitor of Republic of Moldova nr. 66-68/442 from16.07.1998). One of the oldest trees is the oak of Stefan the Great, situated in the village Cobalea, district Soldanesti, said to be around seven centuries old (http://www.iatp.md/arii/text/ro/monument1.html).

The region has an interesting and diverse anthropogenic potential for tourism. The most interesting archaeological attraction is the museum complex “Orheiul Vechi”, in the Orhei district. The archaeological site includes virtually all cultural and chrono-logical horizons known in the territory of the Republic of Moldova, from Paleolithic to Modern times. It contains traces of the medieval Moldavian town and the oriental Tataro-Mongol town (Postica et. al, 2010).

The area is characterized by a large number of objects of religious architec-ture. There are two monastic complex-es in caves and many wood and stone churches. The most attractive ones are the Tapova and Saharna cave complexes from Rezina district. From those built out of stone, Capriana, Hancu and Raciula monasteries are the most interesting ones.

These objects impress with their archi-tecture, as well as with their cultural and spiritual heritage. In every village, there is at least one church, a highlight of local architecture. Civil architectural attractions are represented by the old mansions, of which there are around ten in the region. Some of them have been converted into museums like the Zamfir-Arbore mansion in the village Dolna, Straseni district, and some have been left to decay like the mansion in the village Raspopeni, Soldanesti district (http://www.stirilocale.md/National/FOTO-Cona-cele-uitate-ale-boierilor-moldoveni.html).

The Central Region is also famous for its crafts and handicrafts, practiced by artisans who live there: pottery, sewing, crocheting, weaving rugs, knitting, weaving osier, or willow.

The house-museum in the village Butu-ceni, Orhei district, is particularly remark-able as it is now an ethnographic muse-um. The house has a thatched roof, which dates from the nineteenth century. The house consists of a basement, a summer kitchen, a chicken coop and is equipped with all the tools and utensils that were once used by local peasants (http://www.placelook.com/photo/60e7b6e8-637c-4a51-8ace- 948983bc66be).

The viticulture in the region is well developed, as the wine industry is one of the most important branches of the local economy. This has prompted the appearance of wine objects and the creation of wine routes. There are two wine routes, one is called the “Muzee sub cerul liber, muzee în subterane (Open air museums, underground museums)”, the other one “Roua Codrilor Moldovei (The dew of Moldavian woods)”. It should be noted that the routes do not only include objects related to viticulture and wine (such as underground cellars and vineyards) but also attractions like monas-teries, museums, craft centres and natural protected areas (Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Republic of Moldova, 2010).

The accumulated information reveals that the Central region of the Republic of Moldova has a rich, diverse, and interest-ing ecotouristical potential. The natural potential is represented by geological and paleontological monuments, hydrological and water monuments, different protected areas, natural landscapes with a special value for science, culture and tourism. The anthropogenic potential is repre-sented by archaeological objects, monu-ments of civil and religious architecture, museums and ethnographical attractions, craft and handicraft activities. All in all the natural attractions predominate, being more significant than the anthropogenic ones.

References

All about river Raut, http://civis-ong.org/raut.htm (Accesed 14 August 2011)

Glavan, V. 2005. Geografia Turismului. ed. Fundatia Romaniei de Maine, Bucharest, pp. 38-39

Legea privind fondul ariilor naturale protejate de stat nr. 1538-XIII from 25.02.98, in the Ofi-cial Monitor of Republic of Moldova nr. 66-68/442 from16.07.1998

Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Republic of Moldova. The wine road in Moldova. 2010. Chi-sinau, p. 24-26

National Bireau of Statistic of Republic of Mol-dova, http://www.statistica.md (Accessed 14 August 2011)

Nistoreanu, P., Tigu G., Popescu, D., Padu-rean, M., Talpes, A., Tala, M., Condulescu, C., 2006. Ecoturisms si turism rural, ed. ASE, Bu-charest, p. 30

Postica, Gh., Boboc, N., Chirica, L., Buzila, V., Lazu, St., Corcimari, N., Zubcov, N., 2010. Peisajul Cultural Orheiul Vechi, ed. CEP USM, Chisinau p. 54

Regiunea de Dezvoltare Centru. Strategia de Dezvoltare Regională, http://www.mcdr.gov.md/files/4426_strategie_centru.pdf (Accessed 14 August 2011)

Resursele naturale si mediul in Republica Mol-dova. Culegere statistica. Biroul national de statistica, Chisinau, 2010, http://www.statistica.md/public/files/publicatii_electronice/Mediu/Resurse_naturale_2010.pdf (Accesed 15 Au-gust 2011)

Secular trees, http://www.iatp.md/arii/text/ro/monument1.htm (Accessed 13 August 2011).

The house-museum from Butuceni, http://www.placelook.com/photo/60e7b6e8-637c-4a51-8ace- 948983bc66be (Accessed 14 August 2011)

The old forgotten mainsons of Moldavian boyars, http://www.stirilocale.md/National/FO-TO-Conacele-uitate-ale-boierilor-moldoveni.html (Accessed 15 August 2011)

Figure 2: River Bac in the middle course-Source: Cris-tina Ciobanu, 2010

Figure 3: Beech trees in the Temeleuti landscape reser-vation-Source: Cristina Ciobanu, 2010

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Introduction

Although naturalists and ecologists have studied nature in cities for many years, in Russia governmental programmes for nature conservation in urban areas have only been developed within the past 20 years, when the first urban protected areas were established in Moscow. Moscow is the biggest city in Russia today, with a population of more than 10 million occupying over 1,000 sq. km of territory. The city has been settled since the 12th century and is character-ized by active development since that time. As a result of the city’s growth and development, all the natural components,including relief, were transformed under heavy anthropogenic pressure.

Nowadays, the city’s relief consists of both natural and man-made landforms, which have been constantly transformed in the last nine centuries. In the 20th century, Moscow became one of the most important industrial cities in the Soviet Union.It became the hub of automotive and light industry.

Moscow was divided into industrial and residential areas, the total amount of green space decreased drastically. As a response to this situation, the Moscow government launched the first environmen-tal programme. The aim of the programme was to conserve nature in the city by estab-lishing a new system of protected areas:

- in 1975 the first prospective plan of Moscow parks was worked out;- in 1991 the first scheme of Moscow green space appeared;- in 1998 the first urban protected areas were established in Moscow;- in 2001 the city environmental legisla-tion appeared (the first federal laws were enacted in Russia at the beginning of twentieth century).

According to the law, the status of an urban protected area was defined. It is described as a part of Moscow city in which high-value landscapes are present due to biodiversity; these areas are protected by law and have administrative borders.

Protected areas were established interritories of Moscow parks and former country estates. Some of the protected

areas were formed on vacant lots. In general, the status of protected area was given to places with a high historical or cultural potential (Tsaritsyno Park, Izmaylovsky Park etc.) or territories with many limitations to construction (slopes, landslides, erosion etc.). These places could not been built upon due to the ragged-terrain and active geomorphologic processes (Sparrow Hills Park, Setun River Valley etc.). All protected areas in Moscow have specific geomorphologic characteris-tics which influence their function. Environ-mental management is the newest type of land use in Moscow which indicates a new stage of city planning and development. The question of high importance is to know geomorphologic processes and therefore to predict their consequences on these territories, and to provide sustainability of environmental management in Moscow.

The aim of this research is to produce recommendatory schemes and guidelines for environmental management on the basis of a geomorphologic analysis of protected areas.

Study methodology

The following techniques were used to fulfil the aim of this study:

Figure 1: The scheme of protected areas in MoscowSource: Samsonova, 2009

1)Multilayer geomorphological map. On the basis of literature, applicable expe-riences, remote sensing data analysis and field research, a geomorphological map of Moscow city was created (Likh-acheva et al., 2010). The map legend shows: genetic types and forms of relief; hazardous geological processes that already occurred or could occur soon. The scale of the digital map was 1:50,000.2)Geomorphic analysis of Moscow digital elevation model (DEM). 3D Analyst (Arc-GIS) was used to visualize the DEM in 3D-pictures, to extract simple derivatives (hypsometry, slope and aspect datasets, plan and profile curvature, drainage sys-tem etc.). 3)Statistical analysis of the geomorphic data distribution. The digital surface information was used to produce a detailed relief description of Moscow city.4)On the basis of geomorpho-logic and land use map analysis, functional zones of Moscow protected areas were identified and delineated.5) In order to establish how geomorpholog-ic features affect environmental manage-ment, several protected areas were cho-sen for more detailed research (Sparrow Hills, Bitsa Park etc.). For these territories detailed maps were created and analysed:

Geomorphologic analysis of urban protected areas for environmental management (case study of Moscow parks)

Svetlana SamsonovaEGEA Moscow

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1) land use map (scale 1:5,000)2) geomorphology map (scale 1:5,000)3) morphometric maps (scale 1:5,000) 4) geochemical scheme of heavy metal spread (scale 1:5,000).

Protected areas in Moscow

The system of protected areas in Moscow consists of 17 existing and 20 plannedprotected areas (figure 1). Existing protected areas got their status in 1998 (8) and 2001-2004 (9). To establish anoth-er 20 protected areas some documents and official procedures are still needed. However, land use is already limited in these territories.Why do some places in Moscow get “pro-tected area” status? There are some spe-cific criteria to distinguish landscapes in the city which follow one or more of these rules:- unique ecosystems- rare or endangered species or habitats- historical and cultural value- high recreational potential.

The main aims of these protected areas in Moscow are not only to conserve nature in a big city, but also to provide recreational zones and improve ecologi-cal education for citizens. To fulfil these tasks successfully the administration of protected areas are obliged to formulate functional zones, establish a cadastre and GIS system and to organize perma-nent monitoring of the most importantindicators of the ecosystem’s functioning. According to the Moscow law, different functional zones can be identified within protected areas: a protected zone; a historical and cultural zone and a recreational zone.

Different functional zones imply different conservation regimes: from strict limitations (protected zones) to public attendance (recreational zones). The total size of protected areas in Moscow is 16,700 hectares (15% of the total city area). According to the Moscow General Urban Plan the size of protected areas will increase up to 1.5 times by 2020.

Figure 2: Natural and urban surface in a part of the Setun River park and its neighbourhoodSource: Samsonova, 2009

Geomorphology of Moscow

Moscow is located on three main geomor-phologic forms: the plain moraine plateau, the fluvial-glacial plain, and the Moscow River valley with its asymmetrical pattern of different terraces. The Moscow River is the specific axis of Moscow, which di-vides the city into two parts, left (SW) and right (NE). The left one is mostly situated on the Moscow River terraces (4 levels, from 5m to 35m above Moscow River level). The right side of the river valley is characterized by the diversity of land-forms due to active erosion and land-slides. Protected areas are concentrated in this part of the city. The combination of small hills, steep slopes and many gullies makes this part of Moscow one of the most beautiful and picturesque.

An analysis of the DEM allows for the estimation of morphometric charac-teristics of the city surface, including:1)Elevation distribution: from 110m to 220m; more than 50% of the city is locat-ed at heights between 130m-160m2)Slope distribution: from 0 degrees to 25 degrees, more than 80% of the city is a flat area (less than 2 degrees)3)Aspect distribution: all aspects are rep-resented equally.

During urban development natural landforms have been levelled: small depressions, river valleys and gullies were buried; whilst some hills were cut off. On the other hand, new forms were constructed: a set of buildings and roads. To estimate the spread of technogenic forms and its influence on natural processes in the city (erosion, slope process, drainage, wind strength and direction etc.) the com-parative picture has been drawn (figure 2).

According to this model, the urban surface is a complicated set of natural and technogenic forms. In such a big city natural landforms were modified and covered by concrete or asphalt. For practical purposes of environmental management it is reason-able and appropriate to take into account

not only natural, but also man-made forms.

Case Study – Protected Area “Sparrow Hills”

The case study was taken in the “Sparrow Hills” Park which is located in the central part of Moscow city, 4 km southwards of the Kremlin. It is situated on the steep landslide slope of the Moscow River, at a height of 220m above sea level and 85m above the water’s edge. The geomorphol-ogy of the studied area is diverse and dynamic. The distinguishing character of the “Sparrow Hills” is landslides and gullies which cut up the steep slope. There are many springs along the slopes, which increase the volume of water flow, accelerate erosion and cause landslides. This affects slope stability in studied area.The digital elevation model of “Sparrow Hills” park was developed and analyzed (ArcGIS, ESRI, Inc., USA).

Morphologic derivations were counted: elevation, steep slopes, aspects, plan and profile curvature (figure 3):1)Three elevation levels were defined: 124-135m (floodplain and the first fluvial terrace of the Moscow River); 135-168m (landslide slope); 168-190m (moraine plain). The second elevation leveldominates (70%).2)More than 50% of the area is represented by flat surface (less than 3°) and gentle slopes (3-7°) which corre-sponds to fluvial and landslide terraces and technogenic (levelled) landforms.3)The hillslope of “Sparrow Hills” has a northern aspect which allows for less solar insolation compared to surrounding areas.

On the basis of geomorphologic and land use analysis, the scheme of functional zones was compiled (figure4). The histori-cal and cultural heritage zone is made up of the complex of Andreevskiy monastery and the remains of the Grachev country estate. Access is restricted to the part of the steeply rising landslide areas. Around 10% of the park territory belongs to

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private land users (under the land ownership category of the scheme). The rest of the park is classified as recreation or sport zones.

Around 10% of the park territory belongs to private land users (under the land ownership category of the scheme). The rest of the park is classified as recreation or sport zones.

The protected area of the “Sparrow Hills” was established in 1998 due to its unique landscapes as well as high cultural and historical value. Accord-ing to the law, the directorate of the park has to fulfil the following tasks:- to conserve cultural heritage and land-scapes- to monitor biodiversity of the area- to conduct scientific research- to improve the recreational potential- to provide ecological education for visitors

The location of the park in the central part of the city and the specific geomorphology and historical background result in 4 main ecological problems of the protected area:1) The borders of the park follow ad-ministrative borders and do not provide the connection between different green areas, even if they are close to each other. As a result, the park is isolated from other green areas.2) Landowners possess around 35% of the park which causes discontinuity and a

mosaic of the territory. 3) Huge anthropogenic pressure leads to soil and vegetation degradation - more than 2,000,000 people visit “Sparrow Hills” each year! This leads to ecosystem degradation (due to: decrease in flora and fauna diversity, simplicity of ecosystems structure, noise, pollution, night light-ening, and the concentration of heavy metals along motorways).

Results and Discussion

The problems mentioned earlier arose because of the location of the territory and planning mistakes which were made at the stage of establishment of the reserve. Due to a mismatch of natural landscape borders and administrative borders, the protected area is isolated, includes private property and cannot be managed by the efforts of the directorate alone.

The territory of the park partly includes a landslide slope but does not cover the watershed and surrounding territories which provide the mass and energy transport from the higher levels to the bottom of the river valley. Surrounding areas are the responsibility of other local authorities (not in the jurisdiction of the Environmental Department).

Thus, it is not possible to provide an appropriate environmental manage-

ment without cooperation betweendifferent local authorities. So far the existing administrative system cannot provide tools for such a collaboration which can ensure operational decision-making and effective management.

Conclusion

In order to improve the management at the local level (inside the borders of the protected area) it is strongly recom-mended to take into consideration geomorphologic features of the landscape, its historical and cultural specifics, the land use structure and the influence of neighbouring areas. The method, implemented by the author, takes into account all these mentioned parameters and allows a delineation of the functional zones which should be established in urban protected areas in order to provide effective management.

References

Likhacheva E., Koshkarev A., Nekrasova L. 2010. Geomorphology of Moscow city. RFBR project 09-05-13567. Moscow: RFBR.

Koshkarev A., Markelov A., Markelov D., Nekra-sova L., Samsonova S. 2010. Methods of creat-ing eco-geomorphological digital map model of the Moscow city.Geomorphologia, No 4.

Samsonova S. 2009. Geomorphological infor-mation in the management of protected areas. Moscow: MSU.

Figure 4: Functional zones of “Sparrow Hills” parkSource: Samsonova, 2009

Figure 3: Morphometric characteristics of

“Sparrow Hills” parkSource: Samsonova, 2009

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Multi-temporal analysis of surface processes of an anthropogenic influenced high alpine catchment (Idalpe, Ischgl, Austria) - Master thesis

Introduction

The changing environment and function-ality of the landscape are big challenges for today’s society. Slaymaker et al. (2009) state that global environmental change addresses not only climatic change, but also demographic and economic modifi-cations. Consequently, the natural as well as the anthropogenic effects influence the landscape. Understanding the evolution of landscape may help to predict its possible changes in the future, thus allowing for sustainable development, adaption and spatial planning.

Land management and conservation are facing the challenge of increasing pres-sure due to growing populations and a higher mobility of people (Bätzing 2003). Remote areas, such as alpine regions, are increasingly affected and have to find a balance between providing space for human settlements and increasing tourist numbers, including feedback on their infrastructure, accommodation facilities and Earth’s surface changes. Providing space for people and their leisure time activities is of importance, particularly in high mountain areas where space is restricted and people are in conflict with the natural surface processes. The surface changes in high alpine areas may include increased bed load, greater numbers of landslides, alterations of the hydrological systems, etc.

However, the distinction between natural and anthropogenic causes of surface changes, as well as their consequences, is very complex, but very important for planning future actions to conserve the precious function-ality of the landscapes.

In this study, a detailed analysis of the changing surface processes was conducted in order to take the first step towards managing and avoiding problems connected to these devia-tions in future. Remote sensing can be used to monitor and highlight the Earth’s surface development and it addition-ally allows monitoring of the on- and off-site anthropogenic interference with the environment. This research focuses on the physical and hydrological function-

ing of landscapes affected by anthropo-genic influences. For this purpose, a high alpine catchment that comprises a ski area was chosen as the area of interest.

Study Area

The study area covers 8 km2 and com-prises the catchment of the Idbach brook situated in the Paznaun in Tyrol, Austria. The Ischgl Ski resort is built on hill slopes of the valley near to the river. The catch-ment stretches from an altitude of 1700 m to around 3000 m above sea level, and thus is imprinted with high alpine condi-tions.

The surface of the catchment is very complex as it belongs to the Engadiner window, Penninikum (Krenmayer 2002). On the one hand, there are smooth hilly features and on the other, there are rug-

Catrin Promper ged calcareous escarpments as well as barren vegetation, which are scattered around the study area.

Methods

The changes on the Earth’s surface were detected by applying a multi-temporal stereoscopic analysis of aerial photo-graphs, mapping earth surface features.

A major step in data preparation was the ortho-rectification of the aerial photographs in ArcGIS for mapping morphological features. The periods which were analysed (called time slices) cover different time intervals, chosen according to the data availability for this region (see Fig. 2). Overall, six time slices were analysed, where the second one, spanning from 1953 to 1970, was the longest one.

Figure 1: Study Area (Promper et al. 2011)

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Additionally, the map for 2010, time interval 2002 – 2010, was created by pre-mapping of a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) with a spatial resolution of 1m x 1m, and by field work. After the data prepara-tion, a geomorphological map was created for each time slice based on the same legend (Fig.3) in ArcGIS. This allows the possibility to quantitatively analyse the data gained in ArcGIS and Excel.

The analysis itself was based on different spatial units. For 2010, the map covered the entire catchment whereas for 1953 the southern part was missing due to a lack of data. For the other time slices, a representative focus area in the lower part of the catchment was chosen (Fig. 1). Fig. 4 shows a section of the geomorpho-logical map for 2010.

The anthropogenic influence was quan-titatively assessed by an analysis of the spatio-temporal evolution of the area of ski slopes according to the available time slices from the orthophotos. The changes were calculated in absolute as well as in relative numbers.

Another factor influencing the analysis was the fact that the whole catchment is part of a ski area, which was initiated in the beginning of the 1960s. Since then the number of overnight stays of tourists in the area has steadily increased (Land Ti-rol 2010), as well as the number of ski-lifts and other infrastructure directly influenc-ing the catchment.

Figure 2: Time slices analysed (Promper et al. 2011)

Figure 3: Legend of geomorphological map (section) (Promper et al. 2011)

Figure 4: Section of the geomorphological map 2010

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Results

The results show changes of surface phenomena like rock glaciers, rock fall deposits and wetlands, not only regarding direct impacts, but also possible secondary impacts due to these changes. Channels and channel related processes have especially been changed during the analysed time span. Fig. 5 shows a section in the lower part of the study area, where channels and deposit alterations are presented.

Focusing on the human impact on channel processes, Fig. 6 shows the increasing length of anthropogenicinfluence on channel sections.

Regarding morphologic processes related to the channels, a decrease of about two thirds in debris flow accumulation was mapped from 1953 to 2010. In the same time period wetlands have doubled in the study area. Another process that has in-creased significantly, as indicated in the geomorphological maps, is lateral ero-sion, having nearly tripled during the in-vestigation period.

The evolution of the ski slopes was also quantitatively analysed, and Fig. 7 shows that most of the ski slopes were built in the second and third time slice (1953 – 1980). In the third time slice, the study area faced the most interference, as half of the total ski slopes were built in these years. The changing channel processes during this Figure 5: Section of geomorphological map 2010 (Promper et al. 2011)

Figure 6: Channels in % (percentage) of all channels for focus area for all time slices (Promper et al. 2011)

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Figure 7: Channels in % (percentage) of all channels for focus area for all time slices (Promper et al. 2011)

time led to secondary effects such as in-creased lateral or vertical erosion.

Discussion & Conclusion

The quantitative analysis of the results provides a better understanding of the interactions and response of a particular system to anthropogenic interference. The development of the catchment clearly shows that this influence has extensive effects on the surface structure, which can be researched and documented through stereoscopic image analysis.

However, there are uncertainties concerning not only the mapping, but also the impacting factors which cause river morphology changes. Aerial photographs only mirror a situation at one moment, immediately after which new processes could occur. Furthermore, anthropogenic processes in the influenced areas could have been reversed and in this sense “hidden” and not been seen at the very moment when the image was taken. It is important to emphasize that no exact prediction concerning cause and effect can be made, but only estimated.

Overall, this study might lead to a bet-ter understanding of how some surface processes are affected by global environ-mental change and thus is a good basis for further analysis. To gain even more insight on the extent of human influence on high alpine regions, the mapping of a reference area which was not influenced by human interference, would be of great interest in order to compare it and better depict the anthropogenic influence and its possible effects in more detail.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the Torrent and Avalanche Control Oberinntal and the Silvretta Seilbahn AG for their sup-port and the data they provided. Further thanks go to the University of Vienna for supporting this thesis financially.

References

Bätzing, W., (2003), Die Alpen Geschichte und Zukunft einer europäischen Kulturlandschaft., C.H. Beck, München

Krenmayr, H. G., (Red.): ROCKY AUSTRIA - Eine bunte Erdgeschichte von Österreich. Wien 2002. ISBN 3-85316-016-6

Promper , C. Keiler, M. Glade, T. 2011, Anthro-pogenic influenced landscape – a multi-tem-poral analysis of high alpine catchments, EGU 2011 Vienna, Austria

Slaymaker, O., Pencer, T. Embleton-Hamann, C. 2009, Geomorphology and Global Environ-mental Change, Cambridge, Cambridge Uni-versity Press

Stevancsecz, S. 1999, Events im Alpentouris-mus Darstellung am Fallbeispiel Ischgl, Öster-reichischer Universitätslehrgang für Fremden-verkehr der Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien

http://www.tirol.gv.at/ accessed on 15.01.2011 (LandTirol2010)

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9th issue September 2012

Magazine of the European Geography Association for students and young geographers

ISSN: 1605-6566

The European Geographer

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