engleski

Dangers and Potentials of Urban Development - The Case of Pazin

During the last decade, Croatia has made considerable progress in spatial, tourism and economic development, as evident particularly in intensive urban growth. In many cases, rapid development has led to unsuitable transformations and interventions in the environment. The goal of this paper is to show that well-devised and carefully planned development scenarios can protect a city or parts of it from undesired forms of transformation and, furthermore, that spatial potentials of an area need to be re-studied and taken as the starting points for sustainable urban development. The paper deals with the relationship between spatial and historic particularities and the transformations of the Istrian peninsula. Even though protection of natural resources has been integrated into the planning documentation, the authors argue that further attention needs to be paid to the sensitivity of the area, its environmental attributes and cultural heritage. This area stands out due to its numerous preserved urban entities and uniqueness of the overall landscape and therefore the form of their future development ought to be further studied. One possible way of such urban development is shown on the example of area Lakota and stream Drazej running through it, in the town of Pazin, chosen as a depository for waste materials from the nearby industrial plant. Pazin is the administrative centre of the county, lying in the geometrical centre of the Istrian peninsula. Its area abounds in specific karst forms whose uniqueness calls for an extra sensitive approach in the planning process. The authors critically re-examine urbanists and environmentalists’ points of view and suggest a different development scenario for the area based on re-cultivation of nature and its attributes.Their suggested use of the area starts from ecological approach and appreciation of environmental attributes, respecting the need to fit the area into the urban tissue of Pazin.

Croatia; urban transformation; development scenarios; spatial identity

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