The Path of Petrila Mining Area towards Future Industrial Heritage Tourism Seen through the Lenses of Past and Present

The paper explores the industrial tourism development potential of a former mining area in Petrila, Jiu Valley, Romania, drastically affected by deindustrialization, in order to build a theme park in the old mine site. The research context is determined by the current economic and social state of the area, and also by the potential of the identified industrial heritage elements. For this reason, there was developed an optimal selection algorithm, based on multi-criteria analysis and Greedy approach. This optimal selection algorithm blends the objectivity of the technical-economic studies and the subjectivity of the residents’ perceptions of community satisfaction. After carrying out the Petrila case study, the results of the proposed algorithm application concerning the destination, from the point of view of their use, of each existing building in the Petrila site was determined. Compared with other studies, ours considers different criteria and can always be reapplied to validate or refine the selection based on new emerging inputs.