Coordinating transportation and urban planning: from ideologies to local realities

International audienceIn Europe, the idea that coordinating transportation and urban planning is a necessary condition for setting sustainable urban development into motion has spread throughout academic and professional circles. This idea is largely supported by the observation that the only metropolitan areas which have succeeded in containing automobile use (Bale, Berne, Zurich, Karlsruhe...) are those which combine public transport development with various kinds of automobile use restrictions as well as urban planning and development measures. Despite a consensus that it is necessary to better coordinate mobility management with the development and organization of urbanized spaces, debate over the objectives and means behind this coordination remains relatively limited. In this research project, we have examined the actors in charge of urban travel and development in four French and Swiss metropolitan areas, and addressed questions about the relationship between the city and transportation over the last forty years. How has the shift in perspective - from adapting the city to the automobile toward promoting sustainable cities and mobilities - been translated into action? And what of local issues, visions, and coordination practices surrounding transportation and urban planning? What factors favor this kind of integration, and can we identify sources of inertia and causes of public action fragmentation? In this comparison, we have focused on the question of public policy change, considering either the concepts and the methods underlying the coordination of local urban planning and transport policy. The temporal perspective of analysis appears to be particularly appropriate for our problem, as the transport and urban planning coordination problem has persisted throughout the entire period, while referring to objectives and means of action that a priori (i.e. if we judge by the legal texts and administrative circulars which define them) have changed profoundly