It only took forty-five years for Bangkok, thirty-seven for Dhaka and twenty-five for Seoul to achieve the same demographic leap forward (UN-HABITAT, 2004).ĢIt is undeniable that such massive and rapid urbanisation raises daunting problems in at least two areas. There is no precedent in history for such rapid growth, at least not on this scale: it took one hundred and thirty years for London to grow from one to nearly eight million residents. In countries of the South, urban population growth is five to eight times faster than in industrialised countries 1 (UN, 2007). Taking in two billion new urban dwellers means building and providing for the equivalent each year of seven new cities of ten million inhabitants, that is seven "Shanghais" or "Jakartas", or ten "Londons" per year. Almost all global population growth will be in the cities of the South, where population will double from two to four billion people. In 2030, the global urban population will number 4.9 billion people, i.e. Today, half of the world's population lives in urban areas. 1 The rate of urban growth is 4.1% for the least developed countries, 2.53% for developing countries (.)ġIn the third world, urbanisation transition is massive, extremely swift and concentrated in very large cities.We will then be discussing the set of tools which city planners can make use of, analysing their pertinence and the possible interconnection between transport policies and land use policies capable of redirecting urban growth towards sustainable paths. We will be pleading in favour of urban planning which explicitly integrates interaction between transport and land use. We will then consider possible solutions to curb non-sustainable urban developments (Part 4). We will then review recent forms of urban development, which are a source of concern (Part 2, and the pessimistic aspects of this finding (Part 3).
We will be discussing the role of average density and its determinants, the influence of urban structures, defined as the spatial distribution of activities and households, and finally, the structuring effects of successively dominant transport technologies. Based on a critical review of the literature, we will begin with a recapitulation of what is known today of urban transport energy consumption determinants (Part 1). We will be focusing on urban transport energy consumption since this is the greatest challenge and an area in which policies adopted in the near future will have a crucial impact on long term energy consumption. The following article is an analysis of urban sustainability with reference to the threat of climate change.