L'usage de l'automobile et la structure spatiale en Chine : le modèle de ville compacte en question

The "compact city" model – that is to say, a dense city with mixed uses – has been presented in the literature in recent years as a "sustainable urban form" in Western countries. The question arises to what extent such reasoning is transposable to China. In the first part of the paper, we review the debate on the compact city of the last twenty years. Then, we present Chinese cities' characteristics as far as compacity is concerned : high densities and mixed land uses, a strong regulation power and public property of land. However, some recent trends, such as sprawling and the increase of automobile possession, show that Chinese urban form tends to converge towards the occidental model of urbanization. In the last part of the paper, we test empirically the link between urban form and daily mobility in the Chinese case. Our analysis tend to confirm some preceding results : high densities and polycentrality induce a decrease in automobile use and reduce air pollution.