Portuguese Cities Research Articles

ECOVIA: COIMBRA'S INNOVATIVE PARK-AND-RIDE SYSTEM

In 1997, Coimbra, the third largest Portuguese city, inaugurated an innovative, integrated park-and-ride system named ECOVIA. The system is based on a large fleet of quick and comfortable mini-buses leaving every 5 minutes from strategically located park-and-ride facilities to the city's central area. This paper describes the operation of the system and presents the results of a survey conducted to identify the main characteristics of the system's users, their evaluation of the quality of the service, the recognition levels of the system, and the reasons why it was not chosen by some potential users.

Energy planning in urban historical centres A methodological approach with a case-study

The paper aims at the presentation of a methodology for energy planning in urban historical centres, using the historical centre of Coimbra, an old Portuguese city, for illustrating purposes. The paper starts with a general perspective of the problems associated with planning activities in historical centres. It describes a methodological approach and general procedures used in the formulation of a mid-term energy plan and presents its main prospective items – identification of objectives and recommended measures, and evaluation of measures’ impacts. It also draws a picture of the standard steps to be given and procedures to be adopted in similar plans. It then presents the formulation of the mid-term energy plan for the historical centre of Coimbra. Difficulties found and anticipated are listed and directions for circumventing them and for future methodology improvements are also presented.

A hazard model analysis examining inferential evidence of migration from the Port-city of Viana do Castelo, Minho, 1834-1931.

"This paper is an attempt to analyse the determinants of out-migration of the elite from the Portuguese city of Viana do Castelo [from 1834-1931]. The data used are derived from a reconstruction of this electorate using record linkage methods. Indirect evidence of emigration is available from passport books, and evidence of death is available with cemetery lists. The paper discusses methodological issues in the estimation of hazard models of duration spent under observation in the elite. The analysis suggests that, while out-migration was not significantly dependent on age, or marital status, there were large occupational differentials, and significant period effects." (SUMMARY IN FRE)

Trends in the Organization of Mental Health Care in Portugal

In the past 25 years, 3 periods can be identified in the organization of mental health care in Portugal: decentralization of hospital, institutionalized care (1963-1971), integration of mental health into the general health services (1971-1984), and the present situation. Before 1963 the needs of the Portuguese people for mental health care were very poorly met through uncoordinated subsystems generally oriented toward the provision of very specific types of care and benefiting only limited groups of the population. Outpatient psychiatric care was exclusively curative, complying with the demands of patients or families and based on the classic biological-medical approach to therapy. By 1963 the principal subsystems providing ambulatory care at the community level were: (i) psychiatric consultation within the network of the social security medicosocial services for workers and their families; (2) private psychiatric facilities, used mainly by the upper socioeconomic classes; (3) outpatient services (dispensaries) at state mental hospitals and mobile teams providing psychiatric consultation in the country's larger towns; and (4) special services by private psychiatrists for state employees, and psychiatric care within the medical services offered by several public enterprises or organizations. Psychiatric inpatient care was provided by 5 large state mental hospitals, with about 3,700 beds, located in the Portuguese cities of Lisbon, Oporto, and Coimbra, and 6 large private psychiatric clinics (owned mainly by religious orders) with a total of 3,100 beds. In general, these mental hospital facilities offered a very undifferentiated and traditional type of institutional care.

Designing a Railway Station: The Developnent of an Interactive Computer System to Evaluate Alternatives

This paper describes a project aiming to develop an interactive computer-based system to support the design studies of Campanha Railway Station the main station serving Oporto area (the second largest Portuguese city). This computer system includes facilities to generate lay-out solutions and to define future traffic scenarios and a simulation model that enables designers to assess the performance of the solutionThe paper reports the development stages of the project, namely the role played by a prototype in the early stages of specifying the computer system.