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CIVITAS VANGUARD
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| Vitoria - Gasteiz |
Vitoria - Gasteiz website
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| With a population of 233,399 inhabitants, Vitoria-Gasteiz is the capital of the autonomous community of the Basque Country. Unspoiled by massive urban sprawl, the city has always been noted for its careful planning, human dimension and the care that has been taken to balance new development with environmental concerns and social initiatives. |
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In Vitoria-Gasteiz, a city in which most non-pedestrian journeys are made by car, traffic is the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions and one of the aspects of urban living that has the greatest environmental and social impact.
Urban mobility is one of the basic variables of policies designed to fight climate change. A model of sustainable mobility would go some way to limiting the emissions of traffic-generated gases into the atmosphere and, at the same time, resolve a large proportion of the problems associated with traffic (noise, occupation of space, energy consumption, etc).
On the other hand, the unprecedented growth of the city and projects such as the urban tramway, plans to place the existing railway line underground, etc., make it necessary, more than ever before, to initiate a debate on sustainable mobility in Vitoria-Gasteiz.
For all these reasons, in March 2006, Vitoria-Gasteiz began to prepare its Sustainable Mobility and Public Space Plan, in order to face the following challenges:
- Reorganise traffic, so that vehicles crossing the city travel via the basic roadway network, freeing up secondary thoroughfares.
- Redefine its public transport networks, in order to improve the efficiency of the system in terms of accessibility and coverage.
- Consolidate its network of bicycle paths by maintaining most of the existing pathways, this would establish a series of main routes to ensure the maximum use of bicycles as a means of urban transport.
- Set up a pedestrian network to minimise the coexistence of pedestrians and private vehicles to allow the interconnection of the main points of interest in the city through a series of walkways.
- Identify the infrastructure demands for parking and the spaces required for the loading and unloading of goods.
- Reduce the environmental impact of contamination and noise in our streets.
- Increase the quality of public space in terms of accessibility.
The Plan analyses the current mobility model in Vitoria-Gasteiz and develops proposals for the future to resolve the problems detected. The final project will be an integrated proposal for different mobility networks in private vehicles, and public transport, by bicycle or on foot, and their interconnections. It will include aspects linked to mobility, such as the use of public space, noise, atmospheric emissions, energy consumption, and so on. This will help bring about an improvement in the environmental quality and quality of life in Vitoria-Gasteiz.
Until now, Vitoria-Gasteiz has been noted for its balanced growth, quality urban planning and concern for the environment. Today, it is important to maintain this view of the city, as it is engaged in a process of major growth altering the scale of the city and modifying its structure. The new challenges faced by Vitoria-Gasteiz relate to mobility management and the consolidation of a diverse, compact, efficient model of public space developed jointly with the participation of our citizens.
Because of its size, configuration and also due to policies undertaken within the city, Vitoria-Gasteiz is well positioned to put a stop to unsustainable tendencies in mobility and at the same time double its efforts in favour of a quality public space.
In order to attain the previous objectives, a system of mobility and public space based on superblocks is proposed. This system would allow a new differentiated network for each mode of transport to be established, thereby reducing the conflict between pedestrians and vehicle traffic. As far as cycle routes are concerned, superblocks allow these to be extended throughout a large part of the urban grid in a better-interconnected network, offering users higher safety levels.
The public space gained can be given over to the development of the everyday uses and functions of our citizens. The street recovers its role as a place for meeting and relating to others. Contamination and noise are reduced and the introduction of new concepts in urban design oriented towards improving habitability conditions becomes possible.
CIVITAS - MODERN will help to implement, as demonstration measures, some of the aforementioned proposals in order to verify the theoretical model established in the Sustainable Mobility Plan. Likewise, it will facilitate the implementation of other measures already proposed by the City 2006-2010 Energy Strategy or by the Local Strategy for the Prevention of Climate Change.
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