Urban Sustainability in the Global South and the Role of Integrated Transport Solutions - Experiences from Latin America with a Focus on Chile's TranSantiago

Achieving urban sustainability will be a major challenge in the coming decades. Especially in the Global South the dramatic increase in urban population is demanding intelligent policy solutions in order to prevent urban collapse. Integrated urban transport systems that provide for intelligent mobility solutions play a key role in the search for sustainability. Latin America in particular has seen the implementation of visionary urban transport systems in the cases of Curitiba and Bogota, where Bus Rapid Transit has emerged as a promising transport mode for developing cities with limited funding opportunities. This research thesis portrays and analyses Santiago de Chile's new integrated transport system, TranSantiago, and identifies three key components, which have been neglected in the case of Santiago and that are essential in the context of achieving urban sustainability - visionary leadership, institutional stringency and widespread public participation. TranSantiago must be considered a total failure when compared to the initial aims and objectives, taking into account the huge social cost and the lack of environmental or economic benefits that the system overhaul has created.