CCAU Centre for Research on Settlements and Urbanism

The Centre for Research on Settlements and Urbanism was founded as a result of a remarkable accumulation of scientific capital, earnestly built and settled over 40 years, and amplified in the last 15 years through the development and organization of numerous studies and four International Conferences on Rural Space and Regional Development in 1996 and 2001 and Rural Space and Local Development in

2006 and 2010. All along, the social order of time supported by the haste of spatial phenomena and processes has decisively determined the switch from the expectative bibliographiccontemplation of the great territory to a new cognoscible approach, able to lead it on paths with thresholds and continuous upwardly progressive ends. The great excitement of the World, the local and regional convulsions, as well as the global crises are mostly determined by the impact of the spontaneous growth of population and the limited resources of the Earth, both dimensionally and geometrically, as it represents the environmental support and the supplier of vital resources. Therefore, any prospective construction of any territorial establishment has always and everywhere been a continuous source of wealth to avoid waste of human energy and financial resources of any nation. The fractal structure of the territory, as well as the speculative creations and additions, the impulsive exploitation of competencies, the involvement of outsiders, the radical change of territorial patterns once with the change of political codes, are all major obstacles in the way of a prospective and sustainable territorial planning. Therefore, we decided to create this centre as an imperative response to the demand of social time.