Evaluación ambiental de urbanizaciones turísticas: Paisaje Protegido Lagu

Abstract

In the Uruguayan Atlantic coast, international tourism is the engine of economic growth, but at the same time it imposes external logics that modify society and territory with new urban-tourist models. Nowadays, planning refers to the contemporary paradigm of paradigm of strategic planning, participation and sustainability, but this is not always done in this way.This work identifies a case characterized by extreme tensions between urban-tourism development planning and the conservation of biodiversity in protected areas.The objective was to develop a methodology able of identifying preferential places of implementation and urban-tourist models. In this way, assess their environmental suitability; minimize impacts on the landscape and the natural system and promoting social and economic development.It was finalized by adapting GIS procedures, environmental assessment and decision theory, in order to integrate specialists, actors, territorial variables, development and regulations. By presetting explicit data and processes, it allows consensus agreements and decisions, replacing intuitive options with justifications.