Prospects for daily urban mobility

Abstract

This research was supported by a DATAR (the French organization for regional development) research grant, with the aim of defining a basis for the prospect of mobility in large conurbations. The first part of the research is devoted to cross‐section comparisons between countries as regards land use and related mobility schemes. As a result of the comparisons, we suggest considering mobility and land use as co‐produced by political, economical and cultural determinants. This comparative exercise is used, in the second part, to build very different images of three possible futures for French conurbations, respectively labelled, ‘Saint Simonian or modernist’, ‘Rhenan or conservative’, ‘Californian or post‐modernist’. Each of them is supported by three different dynamics as regards the economic context, the land use and transport planning. They are characterized by a set of discriminant options related to urban planning, road and public transport issues, telecommunications options. The concluding part analyse...