Bases pour la reformulation des politiques de logement dans les régions rurales: caractérisation du patrimoine résidentiel et du statut socio-économique des municipalités dans Castille-La Mancha

Housing policy in Spain has traditionally been conceived as being uniform throughout the country; giving preference to the housing economic dimension over the social, environmental and territorial ones; promoting the private property culture; and following an urban-metropolitan logic. Facing this notion of housing policy, this article holds the need to recognize local and regional conditions in its design and accordingly moving towards an agenda whose main axis is the rent, rehabilitation, and intervention in the existing urban fabric. Taking as a case study the rural region of Castilla-La Mancha, this article presents a cluster analysis that identifies types of municipalities based on their socioeconomic characteristics and physical conditions of their housing stock, with the aim of adapting housing policy for the different types of municipalities.La política de vivienda en España ha sido tradicionalmente concebida de manera uniforme para todo el territorio nacional, anteponiendo la dimensión económica de la vivienda a la social, ambiental y territorial, promoviendo la cultura de la propiedad privada, y siguiendo una lógica urbana-metropolitana. Frente a esta concepción y forma de hacer de la política de vivienda, este artículo mantiene la necesidad de reconocer condiciones locales y regionales para su diseño y, conforme a ello, apuesta por avanzar hacia una agenda cuyo eje fundamental sea el alquiler, la rehabilitación y la intervención en el tejido urbano existente. Tomando como caso de estudio la región rural de Castilla-La Mancha, este artículo plantea un análisis clúster para identificar tipos de municipios en función de sus características socioeconómicas y de las condiciones físicas de su parque de viviendas, con el objetivo de adecuar la política de vivienda para las diferentes tipologías de municipios.La politique du logement en Espagne a traditionnellement été conçue de manière uniforme dans tout le territoire national, en mettant la dimension économique du logement devant à la sociale, environnementale et territoriale, en promouvant la culture de la propriété privée et en suivant une logique urbaine-métropolitaine. Face à cette conception et façon de faire de la politique du logement, cet article maintient la nécessité de reconnaître les conditions locales et régionales pour sa planification et en conséquence il avance vers un agenda dont l’axe principal est le loyer, la réhabilitation et l’intervention dans le tissu urbain existant. Prenant comme étude de cas la région rurale de Castilla-La Mancha, cet article présente une analyse de cluster pour identifier les types de municipalités en fonction de leurs caractéristiques socio-économiques et les conditions physiques de leur stock de logements, dans le but d’adapter la politique du logement pour les différents types de municipalités

Developing speaking competences in technical English for Spanish civil engineering students

[EN] Traditionally, Spanish schools of civil engineering provide their students a class on “Technical English” in order to develop their language skills. However, this class does not cover all the skills that the student would need in the labor market and mainly focuses in the reading and writing skills, and in a lower degree in the speaking and listening ones. This paper proposes a series of innovative and informal training activities (cine-forum on technical civil engineering topics and role playing on real professional situations) that allow Spanish civil engineering students to develop English skills that can rarely be worked in the classroom (i.e. speaking, negotiating and conversing), encouraging debate, participation, and fostering their self-confidence to speak about technical-English topics in public. Although the students’ level of English is much lower than expected, they all agree on the importance of technical English for their future career. The results also show the students’ lack in skills that are difficult to train in regular classes (speaking and talking). Consequently, this situation would require to provide complementary activities like the ones suggested in this project in order to develop these skills and increase the students’ demand for engineering classes taught in English.Romero De Ávila Serrano, V.; Diaz García, S.; Asensio Sánchez, L.; Lozano Galant, JA.; Moyano Enríquez De Salamanca, A.; Porras Soriano, R.; Poveda Bautista, E.... (2017). Developing speaking competences in technical English for Spanish civil engineering students. En Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Higher Education Advances. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 1228-1236. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD17.2017.55641228123

Efficiency of high-speed rail same-day trips for different purposes. Characterissing the supply of services in the Spanish High-Speed Rail System

The development of high-speed rail systems in recent decades, transitioning from single lines to a complex mode of transportation that encompasses many lines and cities and involves many kinds of services, requires a global assessment to understand the real utility of HSR for each city. Since the beginning, the literature and stakeholders have focused on the infrastructure itself. HSR systems were conceived to connect large metropolitan areas over distances of around 400-600 km. However, as this infrastructure generates impacts on the regions in between, it challenges how smaller cities en-route are still going to be serviced by rail. In many cases, local/regional authorities have actually applied pressure to secure specific HSR infrastructures that were originally designed primarily to serve bigger cities. Subject to the balance of power, technical feasibility, costs and financial contributions of local/regional authorities, HSR acquired a social and political compromise through which it served smaller cities on the lines. The local authorities of these smaller intermediate cities believe an HSR station in their locality is an iconic element needed for surviving the national competition between cities and an opportunity for urban and regional development. Being included in the HSR map generates important expectations for urban projects, based mainly (and sometimes excessively) on the ‘image effect’ of HSR in terms of modernity, accessibility and connectivity. Indeed, local and regional authorities often do their best to secure specific rail infrastructures to accommodate HSR services. Nevertheless, in their euphoria they usually forget to consider HSR operations. Yet it is the services supplied (routes, frequencies and timetables) that ultimately determine the utility of HSR for cities, and the real possibility of being connected to other cities. This focus on infrastructure has also been reflected in the scientific literature on the subject, in which scholars have mainly examined the socioeconomic impacts generated by the systems and improvements in accessibility provided by HSR. Such impacts are generally centred on the reduction of travel times generated and the benefits this improvement provides in terms of accessibility, mobility and socioeconomic development. However, at a time when medium- and long-distance accessibility is considered a key element of the attractiveness of cities and regions, it is necessary to think beyond infrastructures to also consider services. Improving long-distance/high-speed accessibility is not enough to induce economic development if adequate HSR services are not also implemented. In addition, in the context of HSR expansion, the quality of the operating services is just as important as securing an HSR infrastructure. The new panorama of HSR development, with its many possibilities for connections and services provided for the cities involved, highlights the need for a whole reassessment of HSR systems from a service-related perspective. Importantly, this dissertation focuses on the services and opportunities they provide for Spanish HSR cities in terms of accessibility and mobility choices. The aim of the dissertation is to characterise the supply of services of the different HSR connections found in HSR systems and to analyse their efficiency and utility for different same-day trip purposes. This will help us understand and identify the differences between cities in terms of possibilities for travelling in the current HSR map. This dissertation presents three main contributions and helps to answer key questions about the utility of HSR services for cities. 1) First, this dissertation highlights that the ‘HSR brand’ should not be considered the same for all the cities included in HSR networks. The evolution of HSR networks and services is opening up a new panorama in which the quality of the services determines different types of connections, highlighting the fact that an HSR system could play different roles in terms of connectivity and mobility choices. Among all the types identified, it is possible to recognise not only the ‘early stage’ HSR connections, which are those links between large cities located approximately 350–600 km apart, with high frequencies and speeds oriented to compete with air transport, but also other types, to which little consideration was given during the conception of the initial HSR system. The latter connections generally appear due to the development of the network (new lines and intermediate stops) and the bypasses connecting different lines. They offer a new perspective on the HSR service and establish a multirole network that can cover a wider range of possibilities from which travellers may benefit. 2) Second, this new scenario highlights the need to assess HSR systems from a different perspective based on the need to incorporate the characteristics of the supplied services into the accessibility analyses of the means of transport that are limited to fixed timetables, such as HSR systems. The main contribution of this dissertation is an efficiency analysis of the HSR system for same-day trips in the Spanish HSR network. Traditional accessibility analysis, usually location-based approaches that consider travel time as the main friction in network analyses, reveal the potential of network configurations but generally overestimate the outcomes, as they assume that all nodes in a network are equally well served in terms of frequencies and costs. However, in this dissertation, the efficiency measure proposed – the available time at a destination that can be gained with a given monetary investment – is a new approach to assessing the accessibility of transport networks. Therefore, this dissertation focuses on an analysis of the efficiency of HSR networks as a whole for different trip purposes, such as tourism, business and commuting, identifying and analysing the influence of the ‘network effects’ (different services, bypasses, transfers, etc.) in mobility choices. 3) Finally, this efficiency approach should not be understood without including the stations’ integration in urban transport systems. HSR trips must be considered, including the influence of all the links in the whole transport chain, because the influence of access and egress times to/from HSR stations and their spatiotemporal variations are determinant in door-to-door HSR trips