Action plan for a responsible nightlife in the medieval town of Vitoria-Gasteiz

Publisher Copyright: © INTER-NOISE 2019 MADRID - 48th International Congress and Exhibition on Noise Control Engineering. All Rights Reserved.Because of an increase of the leisure activities in the public areas of cities and due to a greater requirement of the citizens' quality life, the noise caused by concurrence of people is one of the issues to be addressed by the City Councils in Spain. Vitoria-Gasteiz has begun addressing this problem from a participatory approach involving all the stakeholders to build a common diagnosis and a shared road map. The identified actions highlight the need fora holistic approach (not only from the spatial point of view but also from the need to consider, apart from the noise, other issues such as safety and cleanliness). These actions also show the need to raise awareness and involve all stakeholders, the key ones being: the leisure users and their own leisure facilities. The technical-participatory execution of the Plan is accompanied by communication actions and performances in public areas to generate enough social impact and also to create awareness of the problem. The focus of the Plan is on the integration of all the stakeholders and on the adaptation of the measures to the reality of Vitoria-Gasteiz.Peer reviewe

ConaCUS: Proposal of simplified acoustic simulator for urban design

Publisher Copyright: © INTER-NOISE 2019 MADRID - 48th International Congress and Exhibition on Noise Control Engineering. All Rights Reserved.Meeting the comfort standards in urban spaces is a challenging issue that requires active collaboration between multidisciplinary experts in order to form an appropriate "design team" for each urban space. To form a good design team, the architect who orders the urban space needs to know what the key variables are important to define that area. Some simplified evaluations, but based in technical aspects, can be fundamental to establish these key variables for each case of study. In response to this question, this paper proposes an acoustic simulator (CONACUS) based on the simplified application of standard calculation methods. It provides a first information of the acoustic condition in an area, and analyse the relative importance of this acoustical variable, to identify if using precise acoustic models is requires or not. This simulator is based on a web application that allows its use with an internet navigator without installing any specific program. On the other hand, there other possible applications of a simplified Simulator of Acoustics (CONACUS) are explored in this paper. The results obtained with this simulator has lower precision and no legal validation, but it could be used by non-expert technicians and require less calculation times than the commercial calculation models.The work presented in this paper has been carried out in cooperation and with the institution LKS. The financial support of the Basque Government through the research program HAZITEK, project “CONACUS: Product Conacus: simulator-urban equipment acousticocformt”sigtefulrly aacknowledged.Peer reviewe

Master plan for the center of San JosÉ, Costa Rica: Challenges of the integrated approach and plan implementation

La regeneración de las ciudades existentes se enfrenta a importantes desafíos, dada la complejidad de actuar en entornos consolidados y habitados. La necesidad de aplicar un enfoque integrado y multidimensional, así como la dificultad de llevar a la práctica los planes que se diseñan, son algunos de los retos más importantes identificados en este ámbito. Este artículo analiza dichos retos a través del estudio del proceso de desarrollo del Plan Maestro de Regeneración Urbana y Reconversión Productiva de los Cuatro Distritos Centrales de San José, Costa Rica, con el objetivo de aportar claves para superar dichos retos. El centro urbano de San José, que en las últimas décadas ha sufrido un acusado proceso de despoblamiento y degradación, presenta importantes problemas, como la escasez de demanda residencial, un deficiente sistema de movilidad, deficientes infraestructuras de gestión del agua, alta vulnerabilidad frente al cambio climático, falta de integración del tejido urbano y un modelo productivo obsoleto. Desde la década de 1990, la Municipalidad de San José, en colaboración con otras instituciones, ha tratado de abordar dichos retos desarrollando planes y poniendo en marcha proyectos de actuación específicos. A pesar de los esfuerzos, los avances han sido escasos, principalmente por la ausencia de una visión común y una hoja de ruta para la regeneración urbana integral del centro. Como respuesta a esta problemática, y con apoyo del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, entre 2018 y 2019 se ha desarrollado el citado Plan Maestro. Este artículo expone los principales retos detectados durante el proceso de desarrollo de dicho Plan: el abordaje desde una perspectiva integrada de los desafíos de la regeneración urbana, y las barreras para una implementación efectiva de las propuestas. Para ello se identifican, en el primer caso, las problemáticas complejas existentes y las posibles sinergias en las actuaciones en las diferentes dimensiones urbanas; y en el segundo, las barreras a la coordinación interinstitucional y la falta de instrumentos de gestión y financiación adecuados, aportándose claves para superar dichas barreras