Healing Water: Greenway Strategy and Landscape Perspective Shaping the Urban Revival of Historical Spa Resort Towns in Transylvania

The management of natural resources, particulary of air and water, green and blue infrastructure, urban green network, as key elements in current urban and spatial planning, the idea of sustainability in a historical cultural landscape are very much present in both academic research and professional practice. Băile Tușnad, Borsec and Sovata are case studies that could be a good example for both. Their central position in Transylvania, Romania, as a resort destination of national importance with a tradition in balneary tourism, is given by multiple factors: a trademark built heritage, characteristic to most resort towns of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire at the turn of the 19-20th century, and an exceptional natural environment with the (mineral) water resource and fresh mountain air at their core structure. These factors define a special cultural landscape shaped by the (mineral) water and air, a specificity materialized in the blue and green infrastructure elements (urban parks and forests, touristic greenways, a network of creeks, mineral water fountains and natural outdoor pools etc.), in cadastral, open space and building patterns or in a particular, traditional (touristic) use of the landscape. Despite their outstanding heritage, their existence at the end of the 20th century was marked by economic-social uncertainty and decay, similar to most resort locations in Romania, doubled down by a general gradual degradation of the natural environment. A current rebirth, confirmed by recent data, is due to a landscape management and spatial-urban planning more aware of the importance of sustainability (ex. diversified-localized and prudent tourism development, a gradual removal of polluting industries, restructuring and renaturation of former mining sites, protection of the water resource, reforestation etc.). The long (green) road of recovery is still an ongoing process with two main components, the thoughtful (mineral) water and air management and greenway planning, as premises of a sustainable (spa) tourism. Present paper proposes a research on sustanability in a historical cultural landscape, through the Transylvanian phenomenon placed in a broader national/international context, and thus, possibly with more generally valid findings.