Environmental and legislative aspects concerning existing and new cemetery planning

How to Enhance the Environmental Values of Contemporary Cemeteries in an Urban Context

“…Transportation and ecological-landscape factors began to be taken into consideration in the 18th and 19th centuries, when, based on sanitary examinations carried out in French cemeteries, an edict was issued ordering the liquidation of "intra muros" cemeteries and moving them outside the city gates [11,12]. Nowadays, the growing ecological awareness, the idea of sustainable development used in spatial planning and global environmental problems force the ecological and landscape factors and associated pro-ecological solutions to be the main determinants conditioning the location of cemeteries and the nature of its development [79][80][81]. Ecological guidelines for locating cemeteries that have been developed after analyses carried out on 78 European and 8 Polish cemeteries are location of facility by a public road, which reduces costs of equipping the area with facilities and infrastructure, emphasizing links of greenery, accessibility of the area by walking or cycling, and the incorporation of the cemetery into village structures.…”

Land use consequences of the evolution of cemeteries in the Bucharest Metropolitan Area

“…In several countries, such as Great Britain (Rugg 2000b), Denmark (Kjøller 2012), Turkey (Uslu 2010), the USA (Basmajian and Coutts 2010;Coutts, Basmajian, and Chapin 2011) or Italy (Santarsiero et al 2000a), cemeteries are considered an external or peripheral land use. In Romanian territorial planning cemeteries are placed at the boundary of urban growth (Petrişor, Ianoş, and T alâng a 2010).…”

“…There have been several investigations examining the adverse impacts of cemeteries on human life, such as hygienic conditions (World Health Organization -Regional Office for Europa 1998; Simonovicova, Godyova, and Sevc 2004;Jim and Chen 2009), psychological perceptions (Santarsiero et al 2000a), social conditions (Hui et al 2007), environmental contamination (Engelbrech 1998;Spongberg and Becks 2000;_ Zychowski 2012) as well as planning issues (Coutts, Basmajian, and Chapin 2011). Furthermore, the management of cemeteries is a difficult task because they are very different from other types of public services in terms of functionality (Kjøller 2012).…”

“…These problems are not characteristic of well-managed cemeteries (Kjøller 2012). Visual discomfort, the development of opportunistic organisms and groundwater pollution are among the most common problems related to cemeteries (Santarsiero et al 2000a;Tudor et al 2013).…”

Map and Database Construction for an Historic Cemetery: Methods and Applications

“…They have long been recognized as "mirrors of society" that reflect social structure, cultural customs, mortuary behavior, and architectural trends (Francaviglia 1971;Schepartz et al 1999). Cemeteries have been studied by scientists from a wide variety of academic disciplines, including history (Kroger 1989;Weinstein 1992), archaeology (Raemsch and Jamison 1999), anthropology (Dethlefsen et al 1977;Prowse and Lovell 1996;Lazenby 1998;Smith 2000), environmental science (Santarsiero et al 2000), soil science (Spongberg and Becks 2000a;2000b), geology (Turco et al 1997;McNeill 1999;Schreiber and Meierding 1999), epidemiology (Grauer and Roberts 1996;Waldron 2001), pathology (Buzon et al 2000;Haas et al 2000;Henneberg and Avagliano 2000;Slaus et al 2000), forensics (Cox and Bell 1999), teaching (Capelle and Smith 1998), and genealogy. In some of these disciplines, e.g., history, archaeology, soil science, geology, and epidemiology, maps are used frequently, but spatially highly accurate maps linked to databases do not seem to be employed when cemeteries are studied.…”