A global take on congestion in urban areas

摘要

The increasing likelihood that an ever larger number of urban inhabitants can afford a private car continues to structure the spatial organization of our cities (Anas et al., 1998) with dramatic effects on their efficiency and development. Even when urban infrastructures are drastically remodelled in favour of the automobile, congestion keeps growing and has become one of the most important challenges for politicians and planners. In addition, it is an ever more important cause of serious health problems (DeWeerdt, 2016), and congestion leads to significant loss of time through traffic jams which has a negative impact on the economical growth of cities.