Comment gérer la transition urbaine

Abstract

By analogy with demographic transition, the term urban transition refers to the transformation of urban organization, which has been changed by increasingly easy travel resulting from greater vehicle ownership and the accompanying improvements in roads. The rules of the urban economy, to which the housing market is subject are in the long term (over about a century) recombining the elements of the city in accordance with a new geographical scale. The author attempts to demonstrate the structural nature of the process, in contrast to most explanations which merely analyze the current situation and fail to make forecasts The author does so, and concludes that existing local institutions, which are a legacy of a bygone age of transport, are unable to excercise the socio-political control, which could channel the spontaneous market forces. Managing the forms taken by urban development is therefore a matter for those who are responsible for the present form of institutions and cannot therefore be dealt with at a purely local level.