Public spaces play many important roles and constitute a vital component of the urban fabric, in particular in towns with historical centers. Effective management of public space should be based on the results of qualitative assessments. The quality of public space is usually evaluated directly during field surveys. However, field methods require considerable effort and time, which is why a remote sensing method based on satellite images and the Street View technology was proposed in this paper.

In a context of aging, low fertility, and progressive slowdown of both internal population mobility and international migration at working age, residential mobility at older ages was regarded as an emerging phenomenon in Mediterranean Europe, a region with increasingly attractive retirement places. The present work discusses the socioeconomic processes (and the environmental impacts) associated with an increasing flow of retirees, which decide to settle from ‘Northern’ countries to Southern Europe, concentrating in coastal districts and in rural countryside.

The application of global open data remote sensing satellite missions in land monitoring and conservation studies is in the state of rapid growth, ensuring an observation with high spatial and spectral resolution over large areas. The purpose of this study was to provide a review of the most important global open data remote sensing satellite missions, current state-of-the-art processing methods and applications in land monitoring and conservation studies.