Urban Transport and the Environment in Developing Countries: Complexities and Simplifications

Environmental impacts of urban transport in developing countries are well known; and this is demonstrated in many examples from major cities. Mitigation policies and countermeasures together with the relevant complementary requisites are applied, with varying extents of success. Prevailing barriers and constraints of implementation are discussed. A concept of the need for arriving at a generic policy goal calling for achieving applicable, implementable, successful and sustainable policies is explained; focusing on the questions that the analyst shall face, and should answer in advance, in order to achieve such novel goal. The numerous actors and variables as well as the various effects are categorized. The complexity of the analyses necessary for design of policies and estimating their effects is explained and a simplification procedure for application in the developing countries context is given, focusing, among others, on the importance of setting out attainable objectives. The paper ends with a word on international cooperation between cities and between researchers.