Transport and environment: urban utopias, real cities, possible cities

Motorized transportation of freight and passengers is one of most highly pollutant urban activities. Relationships between transport and the environment are mediated by styles of management of distance's friction, which derive from forms and functionality of cities and regions. Both urban form and functionality are vectors and results of the modes of production and social occupation of space, associated patterns of mobility and energy consumption at each moment and place.. Redesign and planning of spatial and functional territorial rationalities - central locations, localization and space allocation to diverse activities, connectivity, land policies, technological, social and spatial management of distances, urban networks - are a prerequisite for a progressive 'virtuous' transformation of that original conflict and for guiding transitions of urban-regional systems towards more sustainable structuration, functioning and growth patterns, much more effectively than 'merely' technological improvements.