Intercultural Approaches to Cities and Spaces in Literature, Film, and New Media: a review of new work by Manzanas and Benito and Lopez-Varela and Net

Intercultural Approaches to Cities and Spaces in Literature, Film, and New Media: a review of new work by Manzanas and Benito and Lopez-Varela and Net

Planning and Management of Mobility in Natural Protected Areas

The paper describes some relevant results of an on-going research aiming to elaborate a methodology to help the mobility management in natural parks, compatible with their protection missions: it has been developed a procedure to reproduce the mobility-environment relationships in various operational conditions. The final purpose is the identification of: a) the effects of various choices in transport planning, both at long term and strategic level; b) the most effective policies of mobility management. The work is articulated in the following steps: 1) definition of protected area on the basis of ecological and socio-economic criteria and legislative constraints; 2) analysis of mobility needs in the protected areas; 3) reconstruction of the state of the art of mobility management in natural parks at European level; 4) analysis of used traffic flows measurement methods; 5) analysis of environmental impacts due to transport systems modelling (air pollution and noise only); 6) identification of mitigation measures to be potentially applied. The whole methodology has been tested and validated on Italian case studies: i) the concerned area has been zoned according to the land-use peculiarities; ii) the local situations of transport infrastructure (roads and parking), services (public transport systems) and rules (traffic regulations) have been mapped with references to physical and functional attributes; iii) the mobility, both systematic and touristic, has been represented in an origin-destination matrix. By means of an assignment model the flows have been distributed and the corresponding average speeds to quantify gaseous and noise emissions was calculated, the criticalities in the reference scenario have been highlighted, as well as some alternative scenarios, including both operational and infrastructural measures have been identified. The comparison between projects and reference scenario allowed the quantification of effects (variation of emissions) for each scenario and a selection of the most effective management actions to be taken.

Planning and management of mobility in natural protected areas

The final purpose is the identification of: a) the effects of various choices in transport planning, both at long term and strategic level; b) the most effective policies of mobility management. The preliminary work was articulated in the following steps: 1) definition of protected area on the basis of ecological and socio-economic criteria and legislative constraints; 2) analysis of mobility needs in the protected areas; 3) reconstruction of the state of the art of mobility management in natural parks at European level; 4) analysis of used traffic flows measurement methods; 5) analysis of environmental impacts due to transport systems modelling (limited to air pollution and noise); 6) identification of mitigation measures to the potentially applied. The whole methodology has been firstly tested on the case study of the National Park of ?Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga? and further validated on the National Park of ?Gargano?, both located Italy: i) the concerned area has been zoned according to the land-use peculiarities; ii) the local situations of transport infrastructure (roads and parking), services (public transport systems) and rules (traffic regulations) have been mapped with references to physical and functional attributes; iii) the mobility, both systematic and touristic, has been synthetically represented in an origin-destination matrix. By means of an assignment model it has been determined the distribution of flows and the corresponding average speeds to quantify gaseous and noise emissions. On this basis the environmental criticalities in the reference scenario have been highlighted, as well as some alternative scenarios including both operational and infrastructural measures have been identified. The comparison between the projects and the reference scenario allowed the quantification of the effects (variation of emissions) for each scenario and a selection of the most effective management actions to be taken.