Name of the Organisation | Municipality of Porto |
Target group addressed | Policy and decision makers for disabled citizens and tourists |
How can the GP be replicated? | The interactive framework can be replicated to other cities around the world so that they can provide their citizens and tourists accessible routes. |
How does it contribute to SMART II? | The practice provides excellent use of advanced navigation technologies to facilitate mobility for all individuals navigating the city, thereby promoting social inclusion and equal access to urban environments. |
How can it be transferred? | Due to the morphological similarity of the consolidated urban fabric of most Portuguese and European cities, the adopted interactive framework also reveals a considerable potential for comprehensive replication in many city centres, reducing the physical barriers, in a more integrative land strategy. |
Short description | The Accessible Routes System is a new interactive accessibility instrument that can help decision-makers, municipality services and citizens to develop pedestrian-friendly networks in their cities under the umbrella of inclusive design and accessibility for all. Apart from the inherent advantages to citizens with reduced mobility, the SIA also has the ability to inform urban planners concerning areas in need of intervention, prioritising the execution of corrective actions within the public space. |
Long description | New techniques of evaluation of built environment conditions are fundamental to better inform decision makers, municipality services, citizens and, consequently, to improve the accessibility of public spaces. In the context of this problem, in 2013, the city of Porto, Portugal, created a strategic tool: the System of Accessible Itineraries (SIA). This new interactive accessibility instrument visions an urban network accessible to any person, ensuring inclusiveness regardless of their physical condition. While it is true that this tool is designed for decision and policy makers in the first place, it will inevitably favour citizens and tourists because the main goal of this tool is to create more accessible urban spaces. The System of Accessible Itineraries was presented as an online platform, making use of four key components: Sidewalk accessibility conditions, route calculation, public building conditions, and public events. Resulting from a surveying process, route calculation became the showcase feature of SIA. Starting with user defined origin and destination points, within the limits of the surveyed area, SIA was designed to provide route guidance, while detailing accessibility conditions for each step of the trip. This route calculation procedure was also characterised by using the metro system as a backbone for longer travel distances. Indeed, the metro was adopted as the backbone of this strategy because it connects the urban centre of Porto with its neighbouring municipalities, serving a considerable portion of both population and city services, thereby allowing the plan to acquire an inter-municipal scale. The intervention area for SIA encompassed a 500 m radius from each station, corresponding to a walkable distance of roughly under ten minutes. This feature of the SIA combines existing approaches on interactive accessibility route calculations that predict which physical obstacles might appear with the online nature of other well-known tools such as Google Maps, which solely calculate the shortest route between two points. |
Country | Portugal |
Source | Leading Examples of Smart Tourism Practices in Europe from the 2023 European Capital of Smart Tourism Competition and dedicated article. |
Link to more information (organisation website) if applicable | https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/11/5840 |
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