Over the past 50 years, transport planners have tended to focus on reducing congestion to improve people’s mobility within cities. But increasing road capacity, vehicle speeds and parking spaces have not solved urban traffic. Building more roads and parking just attracts more cars and locks cities into expensive, unsustainable sprawl.
City governments cannot improve urban accessibility on their own. They need supportive policies at all levels of government to encourage mixed-use development, discourage private car use, boost public transport use, and make it easy to walk or cycle. National governments have a particularly crucial role to play when it comes to reforming policies and governance systems to nurture compact, connected cities.
New research from the Coalition for Urban Transitions presents the results of a survey of 77 transport experts from 26 countries. These transport experts were asked to identify the key policies that national governments could deploy to foster more compact, connected cities.
Read here to see their top five recommendations.