Julien Allaire

+33 (0)4 56 52 85 88
+33 (0)4 56 52 85 71
Julien.Allaire@upmf-grenoble.fr
LEPII-EPE - BP 47 - 38040 Grenoble cedex 9 - France

 

Julien Allaire is a PhD student at LEPII-EPE (ex IEPE) since October 2002. He is a graduate from the DEA international political economy of Grenoble’s Pierre Mendes France University and holds a Master of Management from University of Rennes 1. His current research focuses on the link between city and mobility with regards to energy consumption and climate change.

Personal mobility in the urban environment represents an important issue in the transport sector. This sector has undergone a fast growth in developing countries and we can anticipate that during the next decades it will be a huge part of greenhouse gases emissions. The joint evolution of urban forms and mobility modes in urban development is a critical issue for climate change.

City construction around modes of transport creates a dependency to those modes and constrains the use of other modes of transport. During the twentieth century, the private car became the major mode in Western developed countries and it has shaped the city to its use. Various types of urban form can be defined depending on national specificities. Land resources and the history of a city will influence urban sprawl and modal share in cities. Commonly, three different developed urban forms are defined with a lesser or greater car dependency: the American-style city, the European-style city and the Asian-style city. This car dependency, particularly strong in low population density cities, includes obviously an oil dependency.

Our research consists in studying the development of Chinese cities and urban mobility to better understand the Chinese urban form as it has been forming during 25 years of social and economic transition. How has Chinese socialist urban organization been persisting through this quarter century of considerable urban development? How does the coming of automobile in Chinese cities act on urban change? What will be the consequences for oil consumption in China?
While environmental constraints associated to climate change are increasing, this thesis identifies political instruments that aim at bending the greenhouse gases emissions curve of the transport sector. Our research will offer a modelisation of the transport sector in the POLES model developed by LEPII-EPE.