Plenary Lecture
Sustainable Mobility in Mid-Sized Cities
Assistant Professor Paulo Ribeiro
Universidade do Minho Departamento de Engenharia Civil
Escola de Engenharia II
Campus de Gualtar 4710-057 Braga
Portugal
E-mail: pauloribeiro@civil.uminho.pt
Abstract: Mobility has an important impact on the overall functioning of cities and quality of life of citizens. On the other hand, motorized road traffic is associated with high levels of noise and air pollutant emissions along with congestion and other externalities, leading to considerable social and environmental costs and degradation of human health, causing less healthy and consequently less sustainable urban environments. Therefore, more sustainable transport modes such as walking and cycling are envisaged, as well as the improvement of the public transport performance. Conventionally, mid-sized cities in Portugal, as well as in other European countries, are characterized by higher densities of population and households in relation to its surroundings, mainly at the municipality level. On the other hand, the city itself is concentrated in a small urban agglomerate where most health, educational, financial and administrative facilities are located, resulting in major traffic generators and central active points of a regional coverage. Land use and mobility planning represents a key issue to achieve a more sustainable urban transportation system. For that, sustainable mobility plans can be considered the first tool towards action. These plans can be formally divided in three phases: the diagnosis of the current situation, the definition of the objectives and concept of intervention in terms of mobility, and the development of proposals for intervention. The diagnosis of the current situation can be made through the supply/demand analysis of the urban mobility system, as well as with the identification of the major mobility constraints for different modes of transport inherent to the functioning of the various subsystems of the overall transport system. In order to integrate the sustainability principles in mobility proposals, it is necessary to characterize and define the main objectives of future interventions as well as the level of priority. In this stage, the introduction of the strategic vision of the authorities responsible for the management of the city transportation system represents an important input for planning as well as its underlying commitment with the selected solutions. In order to describe the planning process framework, several proposals will be presented for four different types of urban agglomerates of mid-sized cities in Northern Portugal, namely Viana do Castelo, Barcelos, Póvoa de Lanhoso and Arcos de Valdevez. Several priority actions were identified and detailed proposals were developed for these areas that included the reorganization of land use in the central area of some cities, thus supporting walking and cycling, and represents an innovative concept of urban transformation of historical and cultural areas of interest to promote economic vitality of those areas, the integration of a multimodal approach in larger cities, the development of air quality monitoring systems, among other solutions to promote the sustainability of these cities.
Brief Biography of the Speaker: Paulo Ribeiro is an Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Systems in the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Minho, Portugal. He is a research member of C-TAC: Territory, Environment and Construction Centre from the University of Minho. Throughout his career he has participated in a number of national and international projects, including the preparation of the Portuguese Municipal Plans for Electric Mobility under the MOBI.E program, the Sustainable Mobility Project of the Portuguese Environmental Agency, the European project ARTISTS (Arterial Streets Towards Sustainability) and several traffic and urban mobility studies. He has authored several scientific papers published in journals as well as in national and international conferences.