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Urban mobility
Blue Plan context
Faced with the expected influx of almost 100 million additional city dwellers in the countries of the Mediterranean region by the year 2025, essentially in the southern bank (from Morocco to Turkey), the promoting of a sustainable urban development and the appropriate transports management are among two of the seven priority action areas of the Mediterranean Sustainable regional Strategy Development (MSSD), established after the last report of Blue Plan on the environment and development, and adopted in 2005 by the 21 Mediterranean-rim countries and the EU.
The Blue Plan follows and evaluates the progresses made in the implementation of the MSSD, the follow up being done by area and by time period of two years. The follow up for the themes urban development and transports is included in the 2008-2009 agenda. It is in this context that the specific work on the urban mobility is engaged, at the crossing of the urban development and transport thematic.
From 22nd to 23rd of January 2008 in Skhirat (Morocco), Blue Plan participated, with the World Bank, the city of Marseille, the Moroccan Ministry of Interior, the French Ministry of Ecology, the French Agency for Development, CODATU, Medcities Network and the SMAP, in the organisation of a Regional seminar on urban transport, in the framework of the World Bank's technical support activities, and of urban network Europe MENA's activities.
The work’s planning aims at having a better knowledge of the evolutions of the urban mobility, from the city’s transformations viewpoint, to locate the good practices and organize an experience sharing Mediterranean meeting at the end of the exercise. Blue Plan has made the wish to ensure the concourse of a Steering committee to accompany Blue Plan in its moves, and which will be composed of experts and development partners representatives’.
Reminder of the problematic
By 2030, the urban population of the Mediterranean-rim countries could reach up to 75%. The urban growth, still strong on the Southern bank, is accompanied by an important extension of the urban areas, with a strong majority of illegal settlement. On the Northern bank, it is the urban sprawl that predominates, which can translate, beside the destruction of the agricultural and natural areas, to a strong automobile dependence, a dramatic rise on energy consumption and CO2 gas emission.
The urban spatial organization is clearly a key factor of the travel demand. The distances covered by the inhabitants of the periurban zones are 2 to 3 times longer than the ones covered by the cities central zones inhabitants. If the motorization rates are still weak in the south, they are nonetheless growing very strong.
In the future, this type of spatial growth of the cities will determinate what will be their energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions will vary according as to whether the cities of the south will tend towards the sprawling city model, with long distances, conducive to car dependence, or toward that of a dense city; structured by a land-use planning and a transport supply granting priority to mass transportation.
Blue Plan's urban mobility programme
Blue Plan wishes to objectivize the evolution elements on the people travel in the urban spaces in extension and the impacts, by focusing on the southern cities. The programme, which benefits from the financial support from the DFA, the World Bank and Veolia, is articulated around three activities:
Six towns have been chosen in the South and East: Tunis, Istanbul, Cairo, Alger, Tanger and Lattaquie. It is a small sample, which includes some very large cities as well as middle sized ones. The small and medium sized cities, of less than 300 000 inhabitants (which are the majority in the Mediterranean), are not presented because of the lack of the necessary datas for the studies.
Each case study must give an answer to the following questions:
Each study will be carried out by local two experts- team, composed of an urban land-use planner and of a urban travel specialist. The analysis scale is the one of the town, which can cover several villages or districts or governorates (Grand Tunis, metropolitan area of Istanbul, etc)
The works are followed up by the International Steering Committee.
On the 23rd & 24th of November 2009, Blue Plan organized in Sophia Antipolis a Regional technical seminar on “Urban mobility and sustainable urban development in the Mediterranean”.
Case studies :
| Urban Mobility in Istanbul. Haluk Gerçek et Orhan Demir, May 2008 |  |
| La mobilité urbaine dans le Grand Tunis : évolutions et perspectives, Morched Chabbi et Hassen Abid, May 2008 | |
| Urban mobility in Greater Cairo: trends and perspectives. DRTPC study experts, February 2009 | |
| La mobilité urbaine dans l'agglomération d'Alger : évolutions et perspectives. Madani Safar Zitoun, Amina Tabti-Talamali, June 2009 | |
| La mobilité urbaine dans l'agglomération de Tanger : évolutions et perspectives. Julien Le Tellier, Fathallah Debbi, avec la collaboration de Lahoucine Amzil, October 2009 | |
Local workshops :
Local workshop on urban mobility in Tanger, November 5th, 2009
Local workshop on urban mobility in Algiers, October 15th, 2009
Workshop on urban mobility in Greater Cairo, Cairo, July 9th 2009
Workshop on urban and mobility development in the Great Tunis, Tunis, January 25th 2009
Workshop on urban mobility in Istanbul, Istanbul, June 27th 2008
