Energy, transport and externalities: optimal location and travel behaviour and policies in urban space.

Summary The main objective of this thesis is to shed light on the fundamental characteristics of individuals' rational behaviors in order to specify the mechanisms of structuring locations and movements in urban space at equilibrium. The aim is then to compare these equilibrium structures with the socially optimal structures for the community, and to identify in this case the "externalities" at the origin of the divergences between the two types of configuration. In a more normative approach, the final objective is to determine the public policies to be put in place to modify (or at least influence) the "mass behavior" of location and displacement of individuals in order to restore the urban collective optimum. In this perspective, all the theoretical analyses of the thesis, conducted within the framework of spatial and temporal dynamics, are situated in the neoclassical paradigm of welfare economics. . Our research is structured around two parts, a division based on the distinction between location and displacement issues, with the understanding that there are very strong causal relationships between the two research areas.