WHAT A TOURIST CAN SEE, OR AN ENVIRONMENTAL-AESTHETIC EVALUATION OF A GREEN AREA IN SZEGED, HUNGARY

Nowadays it is an evident feature in our fast-developing big cities, that there need to be steps taken to improve the inhabitants’ well-being and their state of physical and mental health. Improved health can also be achieved by extending the proportion of well-cared-for green areas in city centres, or, by rehabilitating particular buildings, streets, or entire urban areas. These developments have an obviously beneficial psychological effect on people. The establishment of such ’liveable cities’ is profitable not just for the local residents, but from the point of view of tourism as well. Tourists are likely to spend more of their free time in an urban area, which is free from the visible signs of social and political conflicts, free from the recognizable symptoms of environmental deterioration or technical decline. Most tourists prefer a "safe" urban environment that is not only "safe" in the sense of law enforcement, but devoid of visual conflicts. This is the reason why our research team have attempted to evaluate the environmental state of our city by determining a so-called Visual Liveability Index (VLI). In this process all those elements were evaluated by points which may have an impact on the aesthetic value of the settlement. We took into account both the elements that has positive impact to the appearance of the settlement, and those phenomenas that degrade the cityscape. Our aim was to keep the scoring system simple while also including numerical values for each observed visual conflict according to their significance. Then, after summarizing the given points, the next step was when the streets, squares and certain districts, finally the entire city us to be qualified with the help of the VLI index. Thus makes the results comparable with the same data of other similar settlements, or provides opportunity to determine the direction of development of the cityscape by examining the same settlement in two different date. This method is a relatively easy-to-use tool for local actors of settlement development and tourism to identify the conflictcausing elements of the cityscape which have an undesirable impact on the use of space by residents and tourists. It simply and visually points out those visual elements whose remediation can improve the competitiveness of the settlement. By applying it to larger urban areas it can be able to outline those urban areas where intervention is needed due to unfavorable processes.