The emissions of traffic and the immissions of noise and exhausts are to a greater extent determined by the transport network, land use, location of developed areas, travel patterns and the interaction between these. Contradictory results exist concerning optimal urban size. The dominating opinion is that compact cities consume less energy per capita than dispersed ones. Some studies have indicated that medium sized cities have the lowest consumption of energy per capita, others have found that bigger cities use less energy per capita than smaller ones. These studies are, however, not quite comparable. In order to make efficient use of scant resources, activities that receive many visitors should be located at junctions in the public transport network, and dense housing areas and near stations and stops. It is possible to control development in particular by using economic incentives, for instance taxes and charges, as well as local and regional planning. A factor that makes environmental work more difficult is that the goals set up by the Swedish Government have gained limited importance in the decisions of the municipal authorities. Long-term planning is the only possible way to solve urban problems, but the usual division into sectors of municipal administration and also of the transport sector could counteract endeavours to find solutions to the problems.
Abstract