Innovative tools for urban regeneration planning. The study of alternatives for accessibility to the city of Coimbra

This thesis project presents a comparative analysis of the city of Coimbra (Portugal), modelled according at its current and present physiognomy (2021) to a compact version of itself; aiming at identifying an urban planning tool able to emerge as one of the possible ways to achieve a sustainable development of the city. The tool chosen for the interpretation and numerical comparison of the two models was identified in the accessibility index, a position-based indicator, calculated through a digitization of the built and inhabited areas in a GIS environment. The results, summarized in indexed maps and tables with weighted average distances per inhabitants to facilities, show how the compact city reduces the average distances between inhabitants and facilities by 70%, with peaks (on maximum distances) of 81%. In addition to that, thanks to a pronounced reduction of the average distances between citizen and facilities we can find a higher possibility of moving around the city actively (walking and cycling) thus improving transport sustainability and accessibility equity. To quantify this variation, a different and widely validated tool was used: the modal share. The case study analysis shows how this method can provide an evaluation tool to improve further planning for the expansion and development of current cities. When aiming at a solution for the sustainable development of a city, this study methodology could also be implemented to other urban planning tools and hypotheses for the physiognomy evolution of a city. This analysis provides a useful numerical contribution to the debate about investigation methodologies of cities sustainability and on the effectiveness of their distributions.