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, (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.