Urban air pollution and urban daily mobility in large Tunisia's cities

Abstract

This paper analyzes the evolution of gas pollutants emitted by urban road traffic in Tunisia's large cities. It represents the first Tunisian study aimed at testing the sustainability of the urban mobility. It illustrates the negative environmental impacts of the rapid urbanization and the growth of motorization realized in recent years in some developing countries. In Tunisia, the two phenomena have been accompanied an economic growth and especially an improvement of the per capita GDP realized during the three last decades. The article tests the existence of the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis and analyzes the sustainability state of urban mobility in Tunisia's large cities during the 1989-2008 periods. The main results show an inverted U-shape relationship for SO2, CO2 and SPM, N-shaped for O3 and L-shaped for NO2. The more use of private cars and the high urban density in large Tunisia's cities; have led to the congestion problem. Then in order to ameliorating the urban air quality in these cities depends closely to behavior and several instruments should be applied to make more sustainable the daily mobility.