Benchmarking City Layouts—A Methodological Approach and an Accessibility Comparison between a Real City and the Garden City

João Monteiro, Nuno Sousa, Eduardo Natividade-Jesus and João Coutinho-Rodrigues
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João Monteiro: Research Centre for Territory, Transports and Environment (CITTA), 4200-465 Porto, Portugal
Nuno Sousa: Institute for Systems Engineering and Computers of Coimbra (INESCC), 3030-290 Coimbra, Portugal
Eduardo Natividade-Jesus: Institute for Systems Engineering and Computers of Coimbra (INESCC), 3030-290 Coimbra, Portugal
João Coutinho-Rodrigues: Institute for Systems Engineering and Computers of Coimbra (INESCC), 3030-290 Coimbra, Portugal

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 9, 1-17

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: urban layout; accessibility; garden city; GIS; city model benchmarking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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