Public Transport Oriented Planning. What Urban Design Parameters, What Results? Confrontation between France and the Czech Republic.

International audienceThis paper aims to extend current researches on strategies for urban development around transit stations, especially on creating more walkable neighborhoods with good transit connectivity. Within a several-hundred-meter scale, besides the main spatial characteristics like density and mixed-use, we focus particularly on the aspect of transit-station-pedestrian accessibility, such as distance and time, road safety and comfort, aesthetics and legibility. A comparative study is proposed between France and the Czech Republic whose modal split evolution in the past few decades was clearly different. Even though during the former period of planned economy in the Czech lands, transport and urban planning were rather separated, our first observations show that some of the specific collective-housing-urban-quarters from this period had been built purposely around the tramway infrastructure. Moreover, inside of these quarters, some pedestrian-friendly-accessibility aspects can be identified. These statements can be found very interesting nowadays, when building of pedestrian-friendly housing-urban-quarters around tramway infrastructure is often outside of authorities interests in the Czech Republic, and simultaneously, the French cities are trying to find some "best practices" in urban planning which could help to favor the role of tramway in their global mobility