- Brasilia’s urban mobility plan: review and speculations - an environmental approach    817 kb by    de Souza Tenorio, Gabriela & Germano dos Santos Júnior, Reinaldo | gabi@unb.br    Short Outline Brasília has 2.5 million inhabitants and in May 2007 it reached the mark of one million cars, the same year that its Urban Mobility Plan was created. The Plan expects a reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases. Will it be achieved? Abstract The quest for a city that emits fewer portions of greenhouse gases is not just a matter of improving what we have already got in terms of public transportation policy: it is a matter of changing paradigms. Aiming on technical and energetic efficiency of the public transportation vehicles (by renewing and integrating the fleet); on favoring traffic fluidity (by building viaducts, bridges, bypasses); on offering more alternatives on the same direction (by creating lanes and building parallel roads) is not only a narrow vision of the problem, but a fragile basis for political decisions, that ignores all the contemporary debate on the role of private/public mobility in the city. This paper discusses the Urban Mobility Plan for Brasília, Brasil – called, by the local government, Brasília Integrada (Integrated Brasilia). Brasília is a sparse metropolis with 2,5 million inhabitants, where distances between home and work are big, and the expansion trends, instead of reverting this panorama, are only making it worse. The Urban Mobility Plan was created in 2007 and intends “to improve equity and quality of life for the population”. It expects a (not specified) reduction in the amount of toxic gases emitted to the atmosphere and explains that this will be achieved by the actions that will increase traffic fluidity and decrease traffic overcrowding. Nothing is mentioned about what to do with the extraordinary and rising number of private vehicles in the city (a million in May, 2007), that will feel even more free to circulate with all those convenient solutions. Having in mind that any omission related to the private vehicle fleet is an action that favors it, and, thus, will be environmentally dangerous and non inclusive, this paper will then analyze the Plan’s goals and its implications, as well as the conclusions of its Strategic Environmental Evaluation Report. Keywords Brasília, Urban Mobility Plan, Environmental approach Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2009: Low Carbon Cities   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper