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- Soft Mobility as a Smart Condition in a Mountain CityPublication . Virtudes, Ana L.; Azevedo, Henrique Oliveira de; Abbara, Arwa; Sá, João Paulo Costa eNowadays soft mobility is a crucial issue towards a most sustainable urban environment. Not only because it promotes a less polluted atmosphere among the always dense and busy urban fabric, but also because it avoids several traffic problems. The use of bicycles, or mechanic mechanisms to support the pedestrian mobility is an emerging requirement of cities’ quality. In this sense, this article aims to discuss the soft mobility as a requirement of smart cities having as a case study one mountain urban area. It refers to the urban area of Covilhã on the highest mountain of Portugal with nearly two thousand meters high. During the last decades, this city’s transformation process has driven to an urban sprawl to the suburbs, increasing the efforts in terms of transportation required by the commuters. In fact, the number of inhabitants living in the city centre is decreasing in favour of the peripheral neighbourhoods. At the same time a set of several mechanic mechanisms such as public lifts, has been built in order to promote a soft pedestrian mobility. However, in many cases, because of the lack of connection and continuity of pedestrian paths in between these mechanisms, they are not allowing a pedestrian mobility network at the city scale. Thus, this paper aims to present a set of good practices in terms of pedestrian mobility network at the city scale, in order to promote a smarter urban environment. The principal results are that soft mobility is a key issue in order to turn cities smarter, among several other factors such as smart economy, smart people, smart governance or smart living. The major conclusions show that the concerns with mobility are key tools to achieve the smart city sustainability, providing and efficient and flexible traveling across the urban fabric, boosting the use of non-polluting ways of mobility. At the same time, there is the conclusion that the underlying areas of development for a smart city, despite its cultural or territorial environments, include several aspects such as reducing the transportation problems as congestion, traffic jams or painful accidents.
- Research methodologies focused on urban planning and mathematical issuesPublication . Virtudes, Ana L.; Rodrigues, Ilda Inácio; Sá, João Paulo Costa e; Azevedo, Henrique Oliveira de; Simões, Alberto; Serôdio, RogérioThis article aims to present an interdisciplinary approach about the research methodologies used at the civil engineering research field, in the domains of urban planning and mathematics. Actually, there are some similarities in between the research process features of urban planning and mathematics. In fact, these both scientific subjects follow analogous tasks in their research process, which have the same starting point with the definition of the research problem and the final phase, based on the proposed solution. It joins scholars from the department of civil engineering and architecture, experts in spatial analysis and scholars form the department of mathematics of the University of Beira Interior. Two case studies will be presented as examples of the application of these methodological approaches, both of them focused on the urban planning researches, associated with postgraduate teachings, one is related to a PhD thesis and the other one relates to a master degree dissertation.