Raquel Pérez-delHoyo

Citizen Participation in Urban Planning-Management Processes - Assessing Urban Accessibility in Smart Cities

The concept of Smart City, supported by the latest technological advances in the field of Information and Communication Technology, offers great potential to meet the challenges of cities in the economic globalization context. As a consequence, the present work is focused on the deployment of these technologies through public participation activities to generate knowledge for the processes of urban planning, design and management.The methodology proposed in this work allows obtaining information about accessibility problems directly from citizens, based on their own experience. Citizens have a communication channel that allows them to inform, at any time and in any place, about all the accessibility problems they encounter when they move around a city in their daily activity. The work presents a Case Study focused on a experience of citizen participation which has been developed to evaluate the accessibility of urban environments in Benalúa neighbourhood of Alicante in Spain. A diverse group of neighbors of different ages, gender and abilities have participated in the experience. After the experimentation it was concluded that the research offers new forms of communication to facilitate information flows between the Administration and citizens, allowing their integration and feedback.

Accessibility Index for Smart Cities

There is a growing social awareness about accessibility. The accessibility in cities and public spaces has become in an important issue in official agendas due to recent European directives. There are several studies on the way to improve accessibility in cities but they do not offer the possibility of view if solutions applied are valid over time. This paper proposes a method to measure the degree of accessibility of a city or urban area by using data from conflicting accessibility points collected by the own citizens. It will allow us to visualize in a concise way how accessible a city is and its progression in the time.

Unexpected consequences in the operation of urban environments

The purpose of this paper is to study the unexpected consequences in the operation of urban environments. Prediction within the urban planning process often presents difficulties and unintended consequences. It is not enough to develop a good project. Unexpected consequences are possible because of the environment. The authors argue that these problems of uncertainty can be minimized with citizen participation and the use of new technologies.,The problem of how urban planning initiatives result in unexpected consequences is described. These effects are determined by studying a series of cities and real urban environments. A case study on urban accessibility is developed for a better understanding of the problem.,Avoiding unexpected consequences in the operation of urban environments is strongly linked to the concept of Smart City 3.0. This concept is based on the co-creation. In this line to address the problem, a citizen-centric methodology using the latest information and communications technologies and internet of things technologies is presented. As a practical application, different categories of unexpected events related to the Faculty of Education building at the University of Alicante have been identified as a consequence of the impact of its environment. An uncomfortable or non-accessible environment causes unforeseen behaviour of individuals.,There are no analytical tools to investigate how aspects of the urban environment cause uncertainty about the acceptance of projects by future citizen users. This work takes a step forward in that direction.

Urban and Building Accessibility Diagnosis using 'Accessibility App' in Smart Cities - A Case Study.

In the context of economic and technological changes arised from globalization, cities face the challenge of conceiving models capable of combining both competitiveness and sustainable urban development. The increasing body of knowledge in the field of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) offers methods to exploit the huge potential of technological advances, enabling to increase productivity of industrial and business processes and improving the liveability of cities. One of the most important aspects that influence the liveability of cities is the ability to be an inclusive city. Thus, Smart Cities require an inclusive urban life, and they are characterized by being accessible cities. In this regard, this paper describes a method using the latest ICT for the analysis and diagnosis of the accessibility in buildings and urban environments. This method allows the collection of information on accessibility issues through the collaboration of citizens, as well as to organize and display it, so that administrations and institutions responsible for addressing accessibility issues can use it in order to take actions. In this context, a practical application of the method has been performed through a case study in the University of Alicante, with the objective of showing a real diagnosis of urban and building accessibility.