Spatial Planning and Sustainable Development Measuring Regional Geographical Characteristics towards Ecotourism in Spanish Rural Housings

摘要

Spanish rural regions are under increasing pressure of human movements and illegal construction sprawls in the late 20th century: the regions are also distressing to their ecological consequences. Precisely, the conflict in ecotourism regions between environmental conservation and rapid urban development immediately needs to be addressed because of their regional geographical characteristics. This research presents a spatial and sustainable planning method, classifying Spanish rural housings' suitability maps in a case study area (La Vera, Spain). Evaluation criteria herein decide a spatial data management with a grading scheme with constraints, tourism resource, environmental and social-economic criteria, which are supporting environmental conservation, economic opportunities, local municipal benefits and efficient management of tourism and ecotourism. The method presented is an integrated and operational application based on the multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) with the understanding of all possible aspects and implications, applied for weight coefficients calculation of the criteria according to their impact and sensitivity. Here, six constraints and twelve criteria were analyzed in the process of computation, categorized into four groups. Then, with the assistance of the simple additive weighting (SAW), the final housings' suitability map is assessed for the case study area on grading scale of 0 to 255. Here, it displays that 7.99% of La Vera has a most suitable area for sustainable and resilient housings planning after considering their stability with sensitive analysis. Hence, the proposed planning method and the results measuring regional geographical characteristics can be used for policies and decision making processes of sustainable and resilient housing planning towards ecotourism at all government levels and private sectors. Besides, this method can extend to similar geographical conditions and situations for verifying suitable rural housings planning suitability.