The Degraded Insular Landscape in the Urban-Rural Interface – Application to the Urban Agglomeration of the South of the Island of Tenerife

Abstract

The urban agglomeration of the south of Tenerife is characterized by its accelerated and explosive conformation since the tourist boom of the 80s of the last century. This speed has caused radical landscape changes that have had environmental, economic, social, and spatial repercussions. We try to extract those landscape patterns that characterize this urban model but also to analyze and quantify the landscape degradation of the urban-rural transition zones existing between the tourist and non-tourist nuclei. Through the cartographic and graphic method, typical of spatial thinking and regional geographical analysis, we combine multiple components that characterize and synthesize the substance of the abiotic, biotic, and cultural elements. As a result, we have a diagnosis where the centrality of the tourist nucleus brings together economic activity, the movement of people and vehicles, but at the same time, allows the development of other former rural-based nuclei, transforming them into residential ones, as well as the explosion of buildings dispersed between them. We propose that planning should be based on the landscape patterns that characterize it, starting from the corridor that links the urban centers of the agglomeration.