Studying green urban infrastructure is important because of its ecosystem services, contributing to the welfare and comfort of citizens, mitigation of climate changes, and sustainability goals. Urban planning can increase or diminish the performance of ecosystem services. Despite numerous studies on the green infrastructure–services–planning nexus, there are very few concrete planning recommendations. This study aims to provide such recommendations for a broader audience by analyzing the dynamic of open green areas in Polish and Romanian cities, connected with its drivers. A novel approach including mathematical modeling and geostatistical analyses was applied to Urban Atlas and statistical yearbooks data. The results indicated that open green areas were lost and fragmented in all Romanian and Polish cities during 2006–2018. The drivers included urban built-up areas, population and density, the number of building permits, number of new dwellings completed, number of employees, and total length of roads. The study also revealed a tremendous lack of consistent datasets across the countries using the same statistical indicators. Based on the findings, planners should aim to preserve and develop urban greenery and maintain its continuity. City managers should use more research and decision-making policy developers to develop targeted policies and scientists should develop planning manuals.

A solution for the habitat fragmentation, decline of biodiversity, loss of ecosystems and ecosystem services can be to increase the number of protected areas and the connectivity between them, by creating ecological corridors. Since this conservation practice is becoming more relevant considering the climate change, the concept of ecological connectivity must be integrated in most political frameworks, especially in relation with the spatial development, requiring appropriate legislation. The article aims at proposing a new technique of ecological connectivity modeling, demonstrated by a specific methodology aiming to identify the ecological corridors used the brown bear (Ursus arctos) within the Natura 2000 sites in the Romanian Carpathian Mountains covered by the Buzau County. The processed GIS layers together with the ArcGIS.x Corridor Design Tool were used to map the permeability in the studied area and thus to identify the ecological corridors. The obtained results are useful tools for spatial planners that must integrate, adapt and accept these corridors in their plans. It is the first study published at national level, a novel one, in which ecological corridors for the brown bear are identified based on a County Land Use Plan, embedding the ecological dimension in the concept of spatial planning.

: Management of archaeological sites in Tulcea County using an integrated geospatial system for their positioning and protection. While conservation is a key component of sustainable development, cultural landscapes preserve traditional interactions between nature and culture. Within the cultural landscapes, the protection of historical monuments presents an importance underlined by numerous international and European political documents. The importance increases when historical monuments receive additional educational and informational value through their inclusion in touristic circuits. Consequently, different institution started their involvement in historical conservation all over the world. New technologies, particularly the Geographical Information Systems (used to integrate spatially referenced data in a problem solving environment) and the Global Positioning Systems (used to accurately position and represent different objects in a geodatabase), had found applications in the conservation of historical monuments. Unfortunately, approaches differ by place, and no common methodology could be used for a joint management of the worldwide heritage. Two pieces of legislation tackle the issues related to the protection of historical monuments in Romania, and each of them introduces different classifications. This paper introduces a novel methodology that has a potential of integrating other approaches and databases, and also for being used in conjunction with other planning and research instruments. The methodology had been applied in Tulcea County, due to its richness in historical monuments, to build and query a geodatabase of all historical monuments, regardless of their inclusion in other databases. The database consists of the following elements : literature reviews, archeological database, digital elevation model, thematic maps, satellite imagery, digital maps, integrated maps, and WEB site. Results suggest that the methodology allows for integrating new elements to existing database, join databases owned by different agencies, easily update information and perform spatial queries for informative, research or planning purposes. Furthermore, the project leading to the creation of the PATRIMON database had proposed a lighting system used for the possible inclusion of identified monuments in touristic circuits.

Tourists, like any other users of transport systems, seek to travel safely from origin to destination, choosing the appropriate route in relation to the speed, comfort, and cost of trip. Therefore, the goal is, from a tourism transport planning perspective, to minimize connections and, wherever necessary, make them as efficient as possible. Multimodal solutions allow passengers to adopt less polluting modes of transport whenever possible, encouraging a more sustainable journey. Digital solutions and integrated planning services offer the potential for sustainable, easy-to-use and efficient multimodal travel. The purpose of this article is to present a novel GIS-type IT solution for assessing the cost of multimodal transport to tourist resorts in Romania. The IT platform considers the movement of tourists to tourist resorts through two networks in the intermodal system, railways and national roads, connected through nodes represented by the railway stations.