GIS-based design for urban heritage routes

Abstract

The technological advances of the 21st century lead us to think about spatial designs that, even when approached from the field of architecture, could require more than physical and palpable solutions, since proposals incorporating processes of a virtual or intangible nature should also be considered. Following this line, this text presents a design methodology for a route-based spatial strategy carried out with the support of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The strategy, based on the new tourist approaches that were accentuated after the COVID-19 pandemic, such as proximity or kilometer 0 tourism, aims to value the Historic Urban Landscape as a touristic product and brings a new vision to the way of “reading the historic city” through a system of alternative tourist routes that include urban spaces and lesser-known architecture. The route design rejects the traditional model based on the isolated visit to cultural landmarks, and the landscape is considered as the common thread of the associated architectural elements. The main contribution of this text is the presentation of a graphical methodology to project these routes based on data analysis in GIS, which uses historical, sensory and mathematical criteria generated from operations with georeferenced data. This study opens the doors to deeper diagnostic and project methodologies in which advanced graphic tools like GIS are imposed as powerful graphic means to generate new ways of offering efficient solutions to contemporary problems.