From: Javier Domínguez Martínez
Date: Mon, Dec 4, 2017 at 10:10 AM
Date: Mon, Dec 4, 2017 at 10:10 AM
CITIES GROWTH AND URBAN MOBILITY
Gran Vía Street, in the 30's
Gran Vía Street, today
Project of Gran Vía Street transformation
Some days ago, we were talking in class about the world's biggest cities by population and its growth. I've thought it over and I would like to connect this topic with the urban mobility and the outlook for the cities future.
As you know, the cities are swelling - according to some studies, urban population are going to rise by 2.5 billion by 2030 - and therefore the car usage will soar. Due to the expectation of this scenario, some challenges come for the biggest cities such as air pollution, climate change, traffic congestion, …
Talking of traffic congestion, in the 60's and 70's the cities tried to solve these issues by constructing more and larger highways in order to respond to the emerging of private vehicle travel demands. Nevertheless, this path seems not to have solve the issues that were supposed to sort out. This way, I do believe that not only haven't this measures solved these issues but also they have made it worse.
Consequently, nowadays some cities have begun to choose other way to solve the growth of urban mobility demand. Thus, the traditional public transport – underground trains, buses or trams – is improved at the same time that other systems or urban mobility are developed such as shared bicycles or shared electric vehicles programmes.
These measures are usually combined with traffic restrictions such as congestion charges (London), alternate circulation permission depending on the vehicle plate number (Athens, Paris), restricted areas (Madrid).
On the whole, I do believe that there are going to be a lot more changes in our urban mobility habits and only the future will show us if nowadays trends will solve current and future urban mobility needs.
Links with some videos and articles:
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