Traditional transport planning has generated transport systems that propagate an unfair distribution of accessibility and have environmental and safety issues. This book highlights the importance of social and political aspects of transport policy and provides a methodology to support this approach. It emphasizes the importance of co-ordinating urban, transport and traffic planning, and addresses the major challenge of modifying the building and use of roads. The author makes suggestions for innovative and radical new measures towards an equitable and sustainable urban environment.

Many developing countries are building metro systems, which have encouraged economic growth in city centres but are proving enormously costly. This book forms an invaluable study of the arguments for and against metros, based on analyses of the advantages and problems encountered in several cities throughout the world. The authors consider how to overcome some of the difficulties, recognizing the crucial economic role of rail mass transit systems in large cities.

Over the past ten years, the study of mobility has demonstrated groundbreaking approaches and new research patterns. These investigations criticize the concept of mobility itself, suggesting the need to merge transport and communication research, and to approach the topic with novel instruments and new methodologies. Following the debates on the role of users in shaping transport technology, new mobility research includes debates from sociology, planning, economy, geography, history, and anthropology. This edited volume examines how users, policy-makers, and industrial managers have organized and continue to organize mobility, with a particularly attention to Europe, North America, and Asia. Taking a long-term and comparative perspective, the volume brings together thirteen chapters from the fields of urban studies, history, cultural studies, and geography. Covering a variety of countries and regions, these chapters investigate how various actors have shaped transport systems, creating models of mobility that differ along a number of dimensions, including public vs. private ownership and operation as well as individual vs. collective forms of transportation. The contributions also examine the extent to which initial models have created path dependencies in terms of technology, physical infrastructure, urban development, and cultural and behavioral preferences that limit subsequent choices.

Transport is now a critical problem throughout the world, and it is set to get worse. Whether it is traffic congestion, crashes (10 million killed and injured each year), noise, air pollution, landscape destruction, or greenhouse gas emissions (of which transport is the fastest-growing source), the damage and the costs from our current forms of transport are dangerously high and getting worse. Policies and practical measures that can reduce and eliminate these problems are urgently needed. This Reader contains 16 important contributions on how to improve transport globally. They are based on sound science, sound people-centred analysis, and a strong awareness of equity and human rights. And they have been selected for their originality, the importance of the issues they focus on, the quality of their insight and their practical relevance. A further 7 commissioned chapters provide informative overviews of the transport problems specific to each region of the world, while the editors' Introduction and Conclusion frames the discussion and lays out the scale of the challenges we face. As a whole, the Reader demonstrates what steps can be taken to improve both transport provision and use, in both the developed and the developing world, while reducing environmental and health impacts. It will serve as an invaluable sourcebook for anyone researching or attempting to address the issues associated with world transport policy and practice, whether students, planners, business people or policy-makers.

Most cities of the Latin America and the Caribbean region face similar problems, including low quality public transport supply, lack of planning, congestion, and both atmospheric and noise pollution. As a response to these growing concerns, many governments are implementing actions aimed at encouraging the use of more sustainable transport modes and reducing transport dependence on the private car. Despite the advances gained through the implementation of these and other policies in LAC, there is still a long way to go, especially in the promotion of seamless transport systems at the city level, the achievement of financial sustainability, as well as the improvement of urban air quality. This study identifies a number of best practices for overcoming or working around these challenges.

This book contains chapters on each of Latin America's six large cities (Mexico City, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Lima, and Santa Fé de Bogotá). It has four thematic chapters. the first discusses the demography of urban growth in the region and the other three focus on what are particularly sensitive issues in very large cities : public administration, transportation, and land, housing, and infrastructure. (Adapté du résumé de l'éditeur).