A Smart City Initiative for Participatory Urban Accessibility Planning and Management

Abstract

Social awareness towards maintaining urban accessibility is a growing concern in modern societies. This consciousness opens up necessary research fields in regard to the possibilities of new technologies to provide innovative methods for monitoring and preserving the accessibility of urban areas. Because of that, the present research focuses on the synergy of the use of new technologies and the information provided by citizen themselves that allows to meet the real needs of people with movement disabilities in a dynamic manner. The methodology proposed in this work allows the deployment of information and communication technology for the analysis of the urban user’s experience and accessibility to movement, allowing accurate information on urban barriers to be obtained directly from citizens. In addition, it not only provides information on accessibility issues, but also allows the monitoring of their effectiveness over time. In this respect several case studies have been carried out in different urban environments to validate the proposed methodology. First, the system was tested in the environment of the University of Alicante in Spain, detecting existing accessibility issues in different scenarios of the University Campus. The evaluation was focused on the analysis of students and lecturers’ daily paths across the campus (outdoors) and their movements inside of the buildings (indoors). Afterwards, the sample was expanded to the identification of the degree of inclusion in one of the city’s neighbourhoods. As a result, the authors determined that Technology today is a great ally to promote citizen participation actions, becoming an effective channel for communication between citizens and Administration, and involving the citizens as the core of all the processes concerning the city from planning and design to management and maintenance.KeywordsInclusive cityCitizen participationSensing technologiesSmart citySocial inclusionTechnology-aided urban designUrban accessibility.