What is Land Suitability

The interdependent relation between urban settlements and their environment has been broadly neglected over the last two centuries, particularly near major urban centers. This reflects in an unbalanced and often inadequate occupation of the territory, leading to the deterioration of quality of human life by loss of ecological and cultural diversity. In this sense, it was carried out a research to develop a Potential Land-Use Plan for the Portuguese territory to assess the land suitability for the installation of multiple human activities. The concept proposed for this chapter, will be based on a reinterpretation of tradition, following the current concepts of ecological and cultural sustainability, concerning the historical occupation of the Portuguese territory focusing on the Roman period using a GIS environment.