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Transport policies for improving air quality are increasingly being implemented in city centres across the world. While the effectiveness of those policies is markedly affected by a strong social controversy, one missing element is the role that stakeholders engagement can play in identifying impacts and potential implementation strategies. This paper diverges from other commonly accepted approaches by allowing stakeholders evaluate a set of transport policies for improving air quality. The city of Madrid (Spain), where there is a clear intention to restrict traffic in its centre, was taken as case study. Local stakeholders were engaged in a series of semi-structure interviews and a final face-to-face workshop to evaluate the potential impacts, acceptability, and feasibility of eight transport policies. Results show two distinct viewpoints: stakeholders from public institutions and eco-mobility sectors; and stakeholders linked to retail, logistics, and car-sharing services. Consensus between those two groups was hard to achieve for three specific policies: (i) license-plate restrictions; (ii) charges to motor vehicles; and (iii) development of walking and cycling infrastructure. The paper outlines the methodological process, reflects on the usefulness of stakeholder engagement in the policy-making process, and concludes with a discussion on the acceptability of the evaluated transport policies in the local context of Madrid. • A total of eight transport policies for improving air quality are evaluated. • A collaborative approach is used based on semi-structure interviews and a face-to-face workshop. • A total of 28 key stakeholders are engaged during an ex-ante evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a methodology for the development of urban energy balances, which has been applied to the city of Madrid for the last ten years and is consistent with the guidelines of the International Energy Agency. The methodology is structured into three major modules: energy imports into the municipality, energy generation from either internal or external sources, and final energy consumption. The paper shows results for the most recent year for which data are available, as well as historical series for the period 2006–2015. It also includes a comparison of the main energy indicators with the national situation. The experience acquired during the ten years performing the energy balance in Madrid served to improve both the greenhouse gases and the air pollutant emission inventories, keeping their consistent with the energy balance, as well as to diagnose the city's current energy situation. This assessment was used to define a series of policies, energy saving and diversification measures, collected in different municipal plans, with the aim of decreasing the external energy dependence and the energy consumption, thereby lowering greenhouse gases emissions. Maintaining the same methodology and updating the historical series each year also allowed tracking the city's energy policy, as well as the evolution of the main energy indicators (i.e. per capita consumption and energy intensity). The methodology could be replicated in other cities worldwide, yielding improvements in their urban emission inventories. • Methodology to develop municipal energy balances • Ten years of experience in its application to the city of Madrid • Breakdown of final energy consumption by source and activity sector • Importance of being consistent with the municipal atmospheric emission inventory • Municipal energy balance as a useful tool for decision-making [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last three decades, the most populated Spanish cities have experienced significant spatial, social, and economic changes. The new urban economies have played an essential role in the acceleration of such transformations, entailing a range of both positive and negative impacts at the spatial, social, economic, and environmental levels. This paper presents a quantitative analysis of how the advancement of the globalization and deindustrialization processes has encouraged social polarization in the cities of Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia, as well as a significant increase in intra-urban socioeconomic residential segregation. The article concludes by arguing that the increase in levels of social inequality and residential segregation reflects the trend towards polarized urban models, which reproduce in urban space the differences observed in the social structure. • Large Spanish cities have experienced significant changes due to globalization and deindustrialization processes. • The advancement of structural processes has led the emergence of a polarized occupational that tends towards greater wage inequality. • Social inequality has become a structural phenomenon in Spanish global cities • Residential segregation has increased due to the gentrification and touristification of urban centres and the suburbanization of poverty. • This dynamic indicates the emergence of polarized urban spaces, which reproduce in the territory the differences observed in the social structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local scale is increasingly taking the lead in the food system transition to sustainability with a focus on city-region based food provision. Short food supply chains (SFSCs) are key in this approach. This paper has an explorative rationale to better understand the role of the local and regional policies fostering SFSCs. This paper focuses on SFSCs; specifically, on barriers, and measures to deal with these barriers, from the local government's point of view. It considers why municipal measures to support SFSCs could be enhanced from the city-region food-systems (CRFS) approach, particularly, this study elaborates on the CRFS approach as a framework to tackle barriers and leverage potential solutions for municipalities to foster SFSCs. A mapping of SFSC public local initiatives in the Region of Madrid along with 35 semi-structured interviews to council members were conducted. Municipalities face, among others, issues related to the limited production, budget, and demand constraints. Regional legislation or improving the access to information about measures to support SFSCs, along with higher inter-municipal and cross-scale collaboration, are some actions that imply a territorial approach. The results give insights of how the CRFS approach has a great potential to address the necessities and barriers of municipal food policies. • Local authorities of the RofM can play an important role in fostering SFSCs. • Production issues, legislation and lack of resources are their main barriers. • Inter-municipal and cross-scale collaboration are key to foster sustainable LFS. • Urban and rural towns share common objectives, but they differ in their approach. • City-region food-system approach can help to overcome municipalities' challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial distribution of commercial activities is vital to support healthy lifestyles and to achieve livable public spaces and environmental, social and economic sustainability in our cities. However, commercial activities require a constant flow of expenditure for their own viability. As a result, understanding the spatial and temporal distribution of expenditure is fundamental, although the lack of detailed, complete data sources has impeded this task until now. Bank card data paves the way for a new urban geography of expenditure, thanks to its fine spatial and temporal granularity along with the uniform coverage of all commercial sectors. In this paper, we analyze temporal, spatial, and spatiotemporal distributions of expenditure at the intraurban scale of the city of Madrid (Spain), combining spatial statistical tools (Getis-Ord General for global autocorrelation and Getis-Ord Gi* hot spot analysis for local autocorrelation) with k-means cluster analysis and spatiotemporal tools (Time Series Clustering analysis and Temporal Hot Spot Analysis). Our analysis confirms the strong center-periphery gradient described in previous literature, but with a CBD integrated by distinct specialized areas. The paper demonstrates that bank card data has a great potential to support a new geography of expenditure that could strengthen decision-making in planning and retailing. [Display omitted] • Bank card data supports novel, improved, geographical analysis of expenditure. • Spatial and temporal granularity gain detail, also disaggregated by sector. • Center-periphery gradient patterns, but a greater complexity within the CBD. • Spatiotemporal analyses uncover areas with similar expenditure across time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

City characteristics and transport policies influence individuals' decisions to own and use private vehicles, thereby impacting on externalities and quality of life. This research explores to what extent car ownership is influenced by the implementation of transport policies aimed at improving urban sustainability in the city of Madrid. Through the calibration of a Multilevel Ordered Logit Model, household car ownership is explained in terms of sociodemographic characteristics, city built-environment variables, transport network attributes, and policy-related variables. The results indicate that built environment factors play a key role in explaining car ownership trends. Moreover, ceteris paribus policies aimed at deterring private vehicles' use seem to discourage households from purchasing cars. • Madrid implemented on-street parking regulation and a LEZ intended to reduce the use of private vehicles in the city center • This paper conducts a multilevel ordered logit model to identify the explanatory factors for car ownership trends in Madrid • These policies lead to lower car ownership rates in the households located inside the area where they are implemented [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While commerce is one of the key activities in cities, its spatial description still requires further attention, especially by considering the different dimensions of commercial space: physical, economic and socio-symbolic. The latter is becoming more and more important in an era where consumption is at the centre of social relations. Further, although data availability has been an enduring obstacle in commercial research, we are witnessing the advent of new data sources, and social-network big data is an opportunity to unveil the places to which consumers attribute prestige or symbolic capital, at the extent of entire metropolitan areas. This paper compares the physical, economic and socio-symbolic dimensions of commercial spaces through the analysis of three different commercial data sources: cadastral micro-data, business register and social-network big data. For the case of Madrid Metropolitan Area, the three databases are compared with correlation analysis and density maps, coming out as partly redundant and partly complementary. Getis-Ord's hotspot statistics integrated into a cluster analysis enable a comprehensive understanding of commercial environments, enriching previous spatial hierarchies. The spatial distribution of symbolic capital unveils a relation with socio-spatial segregation and paves the way to new reflections on the spatiality of consumption as a social practice. Unlabelled Image • 'Old' commercial data and social big data come out as only partly redundant. • The integration of old and new databases results in a comprehensive commercial space typology. • Social big data enables the analysis of metropolitan symbolic capital spatiality. • Consumption-related symbolic capital spatiality is related to socio-spatial segregation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to and use of the built environment is a basic human right, recognised globally in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and a f undamental objective in an increasingly ageing society. Spanish legislation, acknowledging that challenge, has mandated built environment accessibility 'subject to reasonable adjustment'. This paper formulates a methodology to assist policy makers and urban planning authorities to clarify what, in the context of small establishments, is meant by reasonable adjustment which, further to international policy recommendations, is a strategy implemented by public authorities to enforce accessibility requirements as opposed to privately instituted litigation. Unlike other contributions, the new methodology proposes characterising statutory reasonable adjustment on the grounds of an analysis of municipal records (120 dossiers for Madrid and metropolitan area) and the variables associated with the term. The results included flexibility requirements, accessibility adjustments, economic viability by activity involved and factors affecting overall accessibility. Research has confirmed that regulatory development, urban planning and enforcement by public authorities favour improvements in accessibility. The difficulties involved in complying with requirements revolve around wheelchair users, even today. In the present case study, investments in accessibility comprised about 0.5% of property values. • Assessment methodology for the decision-making process in small establishments • Explanatory variables based on the concept of reasonable adjustment • Accessibility solutions, economical viability and overall accessibility are evaluated. • Validation of flexibility in the accessibility requirements set out in technical codes • Reference for public policies to promote accessibility in built environments [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of the symptoms of obsolescence shown by housing estates built in the 1960–70s, numerous approaches have contributed to the debate on this urban form characteristic of functionalist urbanism. The study of open spaces—an aspect that, to a large extent, is responsible for the quality of housing estates—is still an ongoing research approach. However, fifty years after their construction, it is possible to see how its initial homogeneity has led to very different situations that are difficult to categorise. Only by addressing the specific urban processes that each housing estate has undergone will it be possible to promote conservation and regeneration strategies that are suitable for each case. This paper aims to develop a methodology that will help to offer a diagnosis of the urban quality of housing estates. The approach is based on urban morphology from a diachronic perspective, since the transformation processes are assessed from the initial situation to the present one. Through the basic elements that define the urban form the proposed methodology works with nine 'physical' variables. The specific analysis provided by the methodology helps in the definition of regeneration strategies for open spaces. The methodology was tested for three case studies in Spanish cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, based on spatial analysis and planning instruments review, presents some of the problems in green spaces planning in Madrid (Spain) throughout the 20th century. Three paradigmatic cases are studied. A profile of each system is presented, describing the background of the urban project, the planning evolution and the characteristics of the current situation. Urban Green Spaces (UGS) provisions of each zone were analyzed and compared. The work focused on the neighborhood level to better understand the critical factors behind the success or failure of UGS planning to determine what system is the most resilient to planning and management changes. The results show that the green structure of the three zones was defined in their respective master plans, but planning was not respected in any of the three cases studied. It appears that the most important factor affecting UGS systems is the building pressure on the territory planned. Guaranteeing the public access and use of such spaces is a very effective planning measure, as well as taking into account natural areas existing, such as forest areas and rivers. This is a strength of planning that helps authorities to design relevant UGS planning, which can then be effectively applied. • Green spaces are urban areas especially sensitive to non-compliance of urban master plans. • Guaranteeing the public use of urban green spaces is a very effective measure to maintain the proposed urban planning. • To preserve urban green system, a strength of planning is taking into account natural areas existing (e.g. forest, rivers). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years the sharing economy has become established in different modes in the urban transport system, and claims to be reducing the number of cars and contributing to lower traffic pollution. Free-floating carsharing (FFCS) is a new and more flexible type of carsharing that is driving the growth of carsharing markets around the world. While there is a very extensive literature on traditional carsharing, more research needs to be done on the new FFCS trip profile in order to estimate its spillover effects on the urban transportation system. As FFCS systems are based on ICTs, new web-based methodologies (instead of traditional surveys) are the best approach to analyse them. This paper contributes to the existing literature with a spatial evaluation of the FFCS trip profile, obtaining a temporal distribution of the main flows throughout the FFCS service area. The added value of this research is that it provides the first spatial analysis of a FFCS system in Spain using rental data collected from the operators' websites. The results clearly show the prevalence of the short-distance FFCS trip that is faster than available public transport and whose origin and destination are closely dependent on parking availability. • Car sharing systems have become an important tool for urban planners to reduce pollution in big cities. • Little research, even in Madrid, has been devoted to analyse the spatial distribution of real FFCS flows. • A web based platform has been designed to collect operators' data in Madrid and estimate real flows. • Results clearly show the prevalence of a spontaneous and short-distance FFCS trips. • Origin and destination of trips are quite dependent on availability to park and independent of public transport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]