Resilient development? The evolution of western peri-urban area of Iași

Résumé En

A peri-urban area is an ever-changing zone of both interaction and transition due to its localization adjacent to the edges of the city where many complex socio-economic processes take place. Therefore, its capacity of resilience is mainly influenced by its dependency to the adjacent urban area. This paper aims to identify the capacity for a resilient development of the western peri-urban area of Iasi, focusing on the three principal components of the resilience: robustness, redundancy and resourcefulness (flexibility). Can Valea Lupului be regarded as a complex adaptive system or it is just an agglutination of the urban area of Iasi? It is possible to identify a rural-urban continuum, or the peri-urban landscape is divided by socio-economic dysfunctionalities and spatial discontinuities? Engaging statistical data, as well as spatial data, which are analyzed with the aid of GIS and geo-statistical methods, this paper’s overall purpose is to assess the resilient development of the western peri-urban area of Iasi – Valea Lupului, by analyzing its degree of autonomy from the point of view of socio-economic functionality and spatial availabilities, as its dependency to Iasi plays a key role in its capacity of resilience.