Implementation and management of private traffic limitation in urban areas: experiences and methodologies.

This paper shows the results of a research aimed to formulate a general model for supporting the implementation and management of an urban road pricing scheme. After a preliminary work, to define the state of the art in the field of sustainable urban mobility strategies, the problem has been theoretically set up in terms of transport economy, introducing the external costs’ concept duly translated into the principle of pricing for the use of public infrastructures. The research is based on the definition of a set of direct and indirect indicators to qualify the urban areas by land use, mobility, environmental and economic conditions. These indicators have been calculated for a selected set of typical urban areas in Europe on the basis of the results of a survey carried out by means of a specific questionnaire. Once identified the most typical and interesting applications of the road pricing concept in cities such as London (Congestion Charging), Milan (Ecopass), Stockholm (Congestion Tax) and Rome (ZTL), a large benchmarking exercise and the cross analysis of direct and indirect indicators, has allowed to define a simple general model, guidelines and key requirements for the implementation of a pricing scheme based traffic restriction in a generic urban area. The model has been finally applied to the design of a road pricing scheme for a particular area in Madrid, and to the quantification of the expected results of its implementation from a land use, mobility, environmental and economic perspective.

CAS: A tool for improving autonomous work

The EHEA proposes a student-centered teaching model. Therefore, it seems necessary to actively involve the students in the teaching-learning process. Increasing the active participation of the students is not always easy in mathematical topics, since, when the students just enter the University, their ability to carry out autonomous mathematical work is scarce. In this paper we present some experiences related with the use of Computer Algebra Systems (CAS). All the experiences are designed in order to develop some mathematical competencies and mainly self-learning, the use of technology and team-work. The experiences include some teachers? proposals including: small projects to be executed in small groups, participation in competitions, the design of different CAS-Toolboxes, etc. The results obtained in the experiences, carried out with different groups of students from different engineering studies at different universities, makes us slightly optimistic about the educational value of the model.

Urban Archaeology in Madrid. Experiences and Opportunities to Understand Historical City

In 2015, it will be thirty years since Spanish Historic Heritage Law from 1985 was approved. The results after three decades under this law are necessarily positive and witness how the complex autonomous regional legislation has been promoted, guided and organized in this Heritage field. In addition, the law enforcement has brought into the scene how the numerous public and private initiatives involved in caring, managing, protecting and restoring our cultural heritage have been channeled and regulated, as well as monitoring the impact these initiatives produce on urban archaeology. During this long period of Spanish recent history, cultural heritage -understood as an important development tool, especially when related to cultural tourism- has succeeded in channeling resources for developing the historical research projects, both documental and archaeological, that the Spanish monumental urban ensembles were requiring. In this context, the case of the city of Madrid is a clear example of the significant development that urban Historical Archaeology has experienced in Spain over the last thirty years, especially when dealing with the study of the Middle Ages (8th to 15th centuries) and the Modern Age (16th to 18th centuries). Given the number of interventions and the important results obtained by many of them, Madrid urban archaeology is an extraordinary example of the consequences of implementing new management models, changing criteria and operating procedures, and also, of course, of the conflicts and debates raised regarding heritage, as well as the importance these interventions have implied, which is the main aim of this work.