During the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a lot of discussion about keeping interpersonal distance to prevent the virus from spreading. To keep this interpersonal distance, authorities at different levels have taken measures to reduce people’s interactions, such as reducing capacities, curfews, pop-up cycle lanes, temporary pedestrianisation, and lockdowns. Many of these temporary measures have been perceived from a static view. Nevertheless, in a scenario of “new normality” or in the face of a possible new pandemic, the amount of data (big data) generated by different sources, such as sensors, in large cities has extraordinary potential to be used together with tactical urbanism for quick adaptation. The aim of this study was to gain insight into the aforementioned issues by analysing spatio-temporal patterns of pedestrian mobility and developing a variation of the pedestrian level of service measure; the pandemic pedestrian level of service (P-PLOS). This measure provides a dynamic view of pavement capacities according to the interpersonal distance recommendations during the pandemic. P-PLOS was tested in the city of Madrid based on the pedestrian counter data that was provided by the local government through its open data website. We found that the application of P-PLOS, together with street design, allows for knowing where and when it is necessary to take tactical urbanism measures in order to maintain or improve the level of service, as well as where it is necessary to take measures to reduce pedestrian flow.

Although widely, as well as recently explored, the concept of urban resilience still poses important issues in terms of its operationalization. For this reason, best practices that show how the resilience concept has been turned into planning practice are much needed. This article presents and discusses the case study of the Charca de Suárez Nature Concerted Reserve, an urban wetland situated along the Andalusian coast (Spain), to contribute to filling the gap on the operationalization of urban resilience at the local planning level. In the Charca, an adaptive co-management and design approach has been successfully put into practice to foster local urban resilience. Starting from some recent key studies on planning and management policies for urban resilience, we propose a framework to read, understand and evaluate the Charca experience, and more generally, resilience-based projects. The analysis highlighted the following crucial key aspects for urban resilience in the Charca case study: A collaborative governance model; and the building of community-capitals. The Charca de Suárez Nature Concerted Reserve can actually be acknowledged as an innovative planning practice, a source of inspiration for visions and experiments oriented to urban resilience.

Over the past decades, a large number of Spatial Planning Observatories (SPOs) have emerged in Europe in response to certain factors, such as the growing complexity of urban systems, the development of GIScience or European Union territorial policies. Previous studies have shown that SPOs have little effect when confronted with planning practice. It is believed that one of the main reasons is that the maps held by SPOs are not always focused on decision making; however, this argument has not yet been sufficiently proven. To address this problem and inspired by the doctrine of performance-based evaluation for spatial planning, we assess the performance for planning that a relevant number of European SPOs have according to their maps. The assessment takes into consideration two assumptions: (A) maps must be of continuing relevance to the situation as it evolves; (B) maps must help in defining operational decision situations for different focus groups (decision makers, planners, the public). We find that SPO maps could be excellent tools for planning, although an important number of improvements are still needed. In this sense, we discuss the potential role of SPO maps in addressing a collaborative dialogue between key planning agents in analysing urban dynamics, as well as in fostering new urban governance processes through the consideration of public participation.

The ecological value of some fine-scale landscape elements tends to be overlooked when they are found in highly human-influenced landscapes, such as peri-urban agricultural ones. These landscapes usually fall beyond the scope of the defined categories of landscape protection, and are thus mapped as areas of little or no ecological interest in the context of extensive analysis. In this paper, we present a method for assessing and visualizing the existing nodes in the field pattern of a peri-urban agricultural landscape. Nodes are identified from the field pattern and characterized according to the presence of relevant features and land uses from the viewpoint of their ecological functions. The method is applied in the Vega del Guadalfeo (south of Spain). Our results show an innovative map of the Vega which may be interpreted as its eco-structure; a model based on nodes to represent the ecological value of the peri-urban agricultural landscape.

The concept of agro-urban open space (AUOS) is presented as a multifunctional component within the context of how agricultural land uses contribute to the creation of open spaces. This contribution is represented through specific multifunctionality mapping, underlining the importance of spatial representation at a local, and even a plot, scale when dealing with agricultural multifunctionality. To this end we have undertaken a review of agricultural multifunctionality and open-space concepts to locate existing deficiencies as far as the required spatial dimension in planning is concerned. Issues such as permeability, access and other elements enhancing open spaces have been assessed to obtain partial maps and a final map showing the general values for AUOS at a plot level. The proposed method has been tested in a Mediterranean delta, the Vega del Guadalfeo, on the coast of the province of Granada in Spain. We found sugarcane and subtropical farming to be the main contributors to AUOS. The AUOS map presented here constitutes a visual tool for the location of multifunctional spaces, which may be taken advantage of by local planners given that they are working at the same scales.