Contenu du sommaire : Transports aux Suds. Pouvoirs, lieux et liens

Port interfaces and spatial configurations: African instabilities
The now widespread shift of the role of ports towards one of interface with worldwide networks is making complete the emergence of spatial logics that go beyond those of the traditional hinterlands. Starting out from port-related services, competing spaces are generated according to the strategies applied by the different transport operators. West-African ports have fully entered into the global process of integration of maritime and onshore segments. These ports are major historical interfaces of African integration into the world economic system. They are now the arena where private operators implement their strategies, developing on the wave of free-market measures stimulated by structural adjustment plans. The authors use the example of some private-sector transport initiatives to examine the impact of these port transport services on the configuration and positioning of certain spaces in Africa. The adaptation of strategies to the African context helps establish operators' practices born of change and instability. The consequence of this action carried by the new private forces appears to enhance systems where spaces and axes shift, to the detriment of stable and fixed land dynamics.

Transport facility and multi-centre development: an American experience
A case study, concerning the Mall of America (Minnesota), is used to examine the process that led to the integration of a central transport facility into the plan for a shopping centre. The article first describes the background to the creation of this Mall, then highlights the reasons for grafting the transport facility on to it. Analysis of this case indicates three contributory factors behind the creation of the Mall of America. It brings out the importance of the weight of the political will of the Metropolitan Council to make the transport installations a driving force for multi-centre development.

The “Greater Istanbul” coach station, an impressive hub of movement
The new “Greater Istanbul Coach Station” is a stunning example of a central transport facility, with high social density, the meeting point between networks of international, national (i.e. inter-city) and local (i.e. intra-urban) traffic. The new facility was opened recently and is already suffering from certain dysfunctions. It serves an area whose radius extends beyond Turkey's borders, but henceforth it is also incorporated, by tramway links, to a local transport system. That is in a perpetual state of reorganization. As private car ownership is still relatively low, and the railway network little developed, a large proportion of inter-city passenger journeys are still made by bus. The economy of inter-city road passenger transport services therefore exerts a strong effect on urban areas as do people's mobility patterns on a variety of scales.

Privatise for better regulation? Durban's wager for public transport
Durban, after the example of other large South African cities, is faced with the urgent need to set to work a transport policy that would contribute to the process of socio-spatial desegregation of post-apartheid urban areas. The gamble taken by the city council consisted of ceding its bus company to the private sector in order to create the possibility to set up a regulatory body for the whole of the local transport sector: the eThekwini Transport Authority. The article first describes the history of public transport in Durban. From this base its explores the terms and processes of privatisation of the city council service and those which prevailed in planning and setting to work the regulatory Transport Authority.

Requiem for a coach station
The development of the central coach station in Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast, and associated activities strongly reflect the particular context and processes that have formed the way it functions. The facility's role is much wider than that of a simple point of departure, arrival or for passing through, served as it is by most of the country's main coach routes. Night-time activity generated by its improvised bars, stalls and traders offers a grassroots response to deficiencies in the city's provision for social life and facilities in its otherwise extravagant planning and development policy. This relative success of urban integration, in an active area sprung from external influences and almost entirely formed by the informal sector, must not, however, be allowed to mask the severe structural fragility from which it suffers. Such weakness lies first in the economic precarity of all the businesses encountered there. It is also fostered by a multitude of conflicts of interest. This article sets out to decipher these. The current crisis has clearly put a brake on the usual running of this original hub of activity.

The streets of Dakar: places for negotiation of passenger transport services
The situation of city passenger transport in Dakar is a strong reflection of the law of a deregulated market. In the face of growing demand for urban mobility, a diverse supply is emerging and evolving. The public passenger transport system is in an obvious state of collapse. In this context, consolidation of transport services offered by small-scale private operators in Dakar represents a sizeable potential for economic gain, the fruit of daily negotiations between professionals, State agents and and transport users. Study of the transport system by examining the places where it is generated helps understand the governing principles. Their deployment over the whole of the city and its suburbs and the multiplicity of the people involved and economic interests derived from passenger transport makes it worthwhile to observe them. The emergence of public places, which have become major points in the private-sector mass-transport network, results from the decisions made by the professional operators or from the various demands expressed by their urban users. These places, strategic spaces in their role as links in the city service network, also have their emblematic figures, the coxeurs or touts. The setting-up of a geographical information system at transport points allows analysis not only of the vitality of the private transport sector, but also the geographical distribution of the supply and social and spatial inequality of access to transport that is deepening in the Dakar agglomeration

The zemijan taxi-bikes in Porto-Novo and Cotonou
This article features the study of the transport points generated by the zemijan, the taxi-bikes of Porto-Novo and Cotonou in Benin. A description of this means of transport and of the general background to its development is followed by an examination of the changes that led to the zemijan's emergence as a response to a need for mobility. The paper finally deals with the interrelationship of these services with the city council's policies in order to bring out prospective overall solutions to the problem of urban mobility.

Mobility patterns, transport and transnational agents in the migration field between Mexico and the – United States. The question of the circulation of individuals, their patterns of return journeys and of comings and goings between the places where they have settled and the towns or villages of origin has come fully into the scope of the field of analysis of international migrations. The way the migratory process between Mexico and the United States has developed is particularly interesting on this point: regular journeys of migrants are now more intense and more complex and the variety in the means of transport used prompts new questions and inspires revised frameworks for analysis. With this as background, the article focuses on the relation between these steps taken for mobility and the adoption of different means of transport between the two countries. The emergence and development of transport activities self-generated by the migrants is examined, among other aspects. This leads to a deliberation on the way in which the infrastructures for mobility constitute a form of permanent link-up between the places and the production and reproduction of the trans-national systems that they support.

Between “North” and “South”: the dynamic international activity of Turkish passenger transport carriers. Like a number of “intermediate” countries, Turkey manifests some large contrasts between under-development and integration into the global economy, between tradition and modernity. The transport sector, both domestic and international, provides a good example of these rapid, sometimes chaotic developments, which bring deep changes to society and the economy. There are a number of milestones that mark these transformations: 1923, founding of the Republic; 1950, changeover to a multiparty system and first liberalization; 1980, liberalization and deregulation to allow full entry into the globalization process. The article gives an overview of the general structure of the transport sector before focusing on a specific actor, the Association of International Transport Operators (Uluslararasi Nakliyeciler Dernegi). This increasingly powerful federation of professional road transport carriers seeks to carry significant weight in the new approach to the concept of civil society developing in Turkey.