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The conservation of cultural heritage is a well-established fact recognized by public administrations, the scientific community, and society at large. Understanding this heritage strengthens the historical memory of communities. However, there is a type of heritage that, as it disappears or evolves over time, cannot be physically recovered: the urban fabric of historic cores. This article aims to implement a system for integrating historical urban data into a Geographic Information System (GIS) to enable the graphic recovery of urban evolution within a territory. This system facilitates the storage of alphanumeric and graphic data in a centralized database, providing a holistic view of the transformation process of a historic center's landscape. This case study focuses on an area in the historic center of Valencia, a territory influenced by multiple cultures since the city was founded by the Romans. Each culture has altered the spatial structures within the area. Georeferenced documents from historical archives, historical cartography, and the scientific literature were utilized for this study. The results have been integrated into the current cartography of Valencia in the GIS, producing plans of successive urban stages through the overlay of historical maps and current cartography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conservation of cultural heritage is a well-established fact recognized by public administrations, the scientific community, and society at large. Understanding this heritage strengthens the historical memory of communities. However, there is a type of heritage that, as it disappears or evolves over time, cannot be physically recovered: the urban fabric of historic cores. This article aims to implement a system for integrating historical urban data into a Geographic Information System (GIS) to enable the graphic recovery of urban evolution within a territory. This system facilitates the storage of alphanumeric and graphic data in a centralized database, providing a holistic view of the transformation process of a historic center’s landscape. This case study focuses on an area in the historic center of Valencia, a territory influenced by multiple cultures since the city was founded by the Romans. Each culture has altered the spatial structures within the area. Georeferenced documents from historical archives, historical cartography, and the scientific literature were utilized for this study. The results have been integrated into the current cartography of Valencia in the GIS, producing plans of successive urban stages through the overlay of historical maps and current cartography.

Compactification of cities, i.e., the opposite of urban sprawl, has been increasingly presented in the literature as a possible solution to reduce the carbon footprint and promote the sustainability of current urban environments. Compact environments have higher concentrations of interaction opportunities, smaller distances to them, and the potential for increased active mode shares, leading to less transport-related energy consumption and associated emissions. This article presents a GIS-based quantitative methodology to estimate on how much can be gained in that respect if vacant spaces within a city were urbanized, according to the municipal master plan, using four indicators: accessibility, active modal share, transport energy consumption, and a 15-minute city analysis. The methodology is applied to a case study, in which the city of Coimbra, Portugal, and a compact version of itself are compared. Results show the compact layout improves all indicators, with averages per inhabitant improving by 20% to 92%, depending on the scenario assumed for cycling, and is more equitable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate on the ideal urban layout, or form has long been an active topic of research. As cities expand and population demands rise, the quest for efficient and sustainable urban designs gains greater significance, necessitating objective and quantitative evaluation of their performance. This article adds to the debate by presenting a multicriteria analysis of city performance, based on quantitative indicators obtainable from geographic information systems calculations, which focus on sustainability and physical pleasantness issues. Indicator values were derived for a real city, its infill version, and five redrafts as classic city models existing in the literature. The city layouts were then compared using the TOPSIS multicriteria ranking method, results showing a preference for the more compact urban layouts due to the multiple advantages of having shorter distances between supply and demand points. The methodology provides quantitative insights on city performance and efficiency and can be used to compare options for city expansions or major urban regeneration projects. [Display omitted] • A multicriteria methodology for assessing city performance is presented. • Quantitative indicators related to sustainability and pleasantness are proposed. • A comparative study benchmarked a real city with classic urban models using TOPSIS. • Results favor compact urban layouts. • Provides policymakers with quantitative analysis tools for urban planning decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a comparative accessibility study between a real city and its redraft as a Garden City. The benchmarking methodology involves defining and evaluating a location-based accessibility indicator in a GIS environment for the city of Coimbra, Portugal, and for the same city laid out as a Garden City, with the same number of inhabitants, jobs, and similar number of urban facilities. The results are derived as maps and weighted average distances per inhabitant to the facilities and jobs, and show that, for the Garden City, average distances drop to around 500 m for urban facilities and 1500 m for the combination of facilities and jobs, making much of the city accessible by walking and practically the whole of it accessible by cycling, with positive impact on transport sustainability and accessibility equity. The methodology can be extended to other benchmarking indicators and city layouts, and the quantitative results it yields make a valuable contribution to the debate on the ideal layout of cities. Moreover, it gives directions on how to improve real cities to address current and future sustainability concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]