- Facilitation of sustainable urban structure through adequate transport system planning – Example of Riga Northern transport corridor    1783 kb by    Kublacovs, Andis & Pavils, Gatis | andis.kublacovs@riga.lv    Short Outline The case study illustrates how a large-scale infrastructure project – Riga Northern transport corridor – will facilitate sustainable development of the city of Riga and the surrounding region, also decreasing the carbon dioxide emissions. Abstract Current long-term Development Strategy of the City of Riga declares that “Riga should be a convenient and comfortable place to live in both developing into a safe, healthy and attractive seaport city as well as designing Riga’s transport system to be safe and convenient for everyone”. Such a vision conforms with the policy of planning and designing “a low carbon city”. However, one should remember that policies for sustainable urban planning may differ due to specific local circumstances and very important difference is – starting point at the moment of changes. Riga follows the recognised policies for sustainable urban transport planning through development of efficient public transport system, Park&Ride system, bicycle roads etc. But for the city planners here it is obvious that the city’s spatial structure and the fragmented road scheme causes a situation where most of the traffic goes through the city centre. The most densely populated area in Latvia experiences constant traffic bottleneck with high air and noise pollution. It is clear that the abovementioned initiatives will not be sufficient to make Riga more attractive and liveable. Studies show that without basic framework of arterial streets successful and sustainable development of city will not take place. Major missing part in transport system of Riga City is east-west magistral which would bypass the historical centre. As an answer to this challenge there comes Riga Northern transport corridor – an arterial road bypassing the centre of city in northern side and crossing the whole metropolitan area. This new magistral will divert cargo transit away from the historical city centre. Investigations have shown that this new arterial road will provide significant decrease of air pollution and resource consumption and thereby it will efficiently “erase” the most prior environmental hotspot of Latvia – air pollution in the largest urban centre in country. Keywords urban planning transport liveable 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