Urban Transport in the OIC Megacities
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the urban quality of life and ensuring economic profitability can make a significant contribution to
wider transport strategies. It is suggested that specifically in the case of Islamic megacities, the focus
of such actions should be on curbing car use and motorization levels, coordinating land use with
transport planning and operations, and maintaining the social cohesion and identity. In the longer
term, it should be kept in mind that cities, regardless of their current size, they will continue to be
places of enormous attractiveness for people and so their every aspect should be planned for people
first.
The megacities of the Islamic world have both differences and similarities in terms of the scale and
urgency of their problems as well as their development patterns. This means that different, adapted
policies are necessary in order to address the challenges and use the opportunities of each city.
However, some best practices and lessons can be drawn from the previous sections to be used as
common guide for building a sustainable urban transport strategy. As it has been pointed out earlier,
all best practices and lessons from other cities show that understanding the dynamics of a city, and
most importantly of a megacity, is key to providing integrated planning. Best practice examples from
elsewhere should be examined thoroughly and adapted to the local conditions and when this is
necessary accompanied by supporting measures for this purpose. For example, BRT systems are
introduced in many cities of the developed world and are expected be as successful as that of Curitiba.
However in many cases systems and stations are not properly planned, leading to disruptions in
community cohesion, low response to the demand and lack of integration with other transport modes.
Trying to unravel the complexities of the interrelationships between travel, urban form and
sustainable development is difficult. It is therefore necessary to have a vision of the city in its desired
form. A clear vision is more likely to gather political and public support than fragmented interventions
and it is easier to communicate and follow than uncoordinated sectorial strategies with different
aspirations. Transport provides an essential contribution to city viability (economic sustainability),
vitality (inclusiveness and fairness) and health (quality of life and environmental quality) which are
all element of a sustainable city vision. With a vision as a starting point it is then easier to prioritise
and coordinate the necessary actions to build an urban transport strategy. Some of the OIC megacities,
as well as Dakar, have already developed long termurban visions taking into account transport as well
as transport visions. The most prominent example is probably Istanbul which has developed a
transport vision to 2023, aiming to create a metro network with a length of 641km by the year 2023
as a key step to create liveable and sustainable city in the 21st century (Banister, 2011).
Although most success stories come from the developed world, equally valuable lessons can be
learned from developing world cities and megacities that have implemented successful policies and
strategies. Examples of such cities are Curitiba in Brazil, Bogota in Colombia as well as Islamic
megacities such as Istanbul. However, in every case attention should be paid in the transferability of
solutions from one city to another. Particularly in the case of Islamic megacities, transferability issues
can be related to cultural conventions as well as local identity issues. It is therefore suggested that all
conclusions and recommendations are used taking into account the wider context of each city, which
has also been analysed in the SWOT analyses in previous sections. In the sections that follow, the main
conclusions from the literature review and the site visits are presented using the framework
developed for this report along with recommendations made using the same framework.
6.2.1. Transport network and land use planning
Higher level interactions of transport with land use planning should be understood and coordinated
in order to achieve sustainable urban development. Transport Oriented Development and public
transport accessibility of new housing and residential developments are necessary in order to halt the
excessive use of private cars. Planning for access by alternative modes allows then the adoption of a
series of other supportingmeasures such as maximumparking space standards for new developments
while it facilitates vehicle access restrictions to central areas. At this point, the coordination with land
use and urban planning authorities is extremely important as it contributes to building an integrated