European Transport / Trasporti Europei (1997) 06

The observation, in various parts of the world, of the interaction between mobility patterns and urban structure and the analysis of the different systems of regulation adopted can help public planners to interpret better in which direction it is possible and opportune to move in order to program the future of a given territorial system- also from the point of view of transport. Using this analysis as a starting point, some possibilities - each one very different from the other - for the future of France’s mobility and cities are discussed. Consequently these various possibilities are confronted with the principle problems that afflict present day France in order to have an understanding of where it is possible to go from here. At the end of the article, proposals are made for the use of some tools that could help to resolve mobility problems and more generally problems of territorial space in a context of decentralisation: each type of territory has its own problems and therefore requires different approaches. The attention paid to the territory and to the settlement patterns rather than to the phenomenon of traffic calls for unconventional solutions to transport problems. In such an approach the role of the local governing bodies, above all on a fiscal level, is very much emphasised. The large scale of this topic renders the article of interest even outside of the exclusively French context.

The proposed topic is connected to the thinking on fragmentation of urban habitats provoked by infrastructures. The Urban Plan which deals with infrastructures in the area - assets which belong to the community and that make up fixed social capital - can be without doubt defined as a mobility plan. The values of the inhabitants should be found in this plan - if possible ubiquitous and not lacerated by fragmentation. In this article I would like to highlight the fact that the railway infrastructure, and more generally collective transport in its different forms, can be entrusted with the difficult task of re-establishing the equilibrium in a city that does not have a balanced use of the car - an awkward situation but at the same time one which it is becoming used to.