Sustainable mobility in urban areas of midisized municipalities.

Abstract

Conventionally, midsized 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 of the 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. In order to describe the planning process framework, several proposals were developed in municipal sustainable mobility plans for four different types of urban agglomerates of midsized cities in Northern Portugal, namely in the town of Póvoa de Lanhoso.