The Territorial Cohesion Scheme: Plans for Sustainable Development and Land Use

The french planning system have been reformed in 2000 by the Urban renewal and solidarity Act (Loi Solidarité et renouvellement urbains). The new emphasis on “sustainable development” gives a new youth to the old problem of coordination of transport planning with land use planning. A new master plan, the SCOT (“schéma de cohérence territoriale”, territorial cohesion scheme) is designed to ease the definition of a common project between the different city councils of a same metropolitan area. The SCOT seems to be unable to create, by itself, a more sustainable city and to reduce the need to travel by car. But, thanks to tangle of the local institutions and to the multiciplicy of local project procedures some unexcepted relationships between trafic managers and urban planners may happen.