Pensee Journal Vol 76, No. 1;Jan 2014 312 office@penseejournal.com Key factors to improve mobility management in a Mediterranean Metropolis Carme MIRALLES-GUASCH (Corresponding author) Department of Geography, Autonomous University of Barcelona Edifici B-Campus de la UAB. 08193 Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Vallès) Barcelona E-mail: carme.miralles@uab.cat Oriol MARQUET SARDA Department of Geography, Autonomous University of Barcelona E-mail: oriol.marquet@uab.cat The research reported in this paper has been possible thanks to financial support received from the Project CSO2010-18022 (subprogram GEOG. The territorial social and environmental perspective of investigations about mobility and transport. Analysis from the geography) Abstract The aim of this article attempts is to consider if the daily dynamics of a metropolitan region are expressed in terms of proximity and distance travel. To this end, it looks at travel time in relation to social time and the territorial models which define the start and end point of these trips. This analysis focuses on the case of the Barcelona Metropolitan Region, working from its urban models and the mobility patterns of its population. Keywords: Mobility, Transport, Sustainability, Metropolitan area, Barcelona. 1. Introduction Urban policies are increasingly focusing on the link between how the territories are relational with the social process (Cox, 1998; Sheppard, 2002). One of these links is between how cities function and how citizens make use of time. In fact the traditional spatial vectors used for town and country planning, (such as density, morphology, public administration, etc...) are expressed along with the social time vector to the extent that reconciling time also involves reconciling territories. In another words, social processes, are articulated in terms of spaces scales, from the metropolitan area to a neighbourhood (Atkinson, Dowling and Mcguirk, 2009). And this link, often, is expressed in terms of time. This paper departs from the hypothesis that the way in which metropolitan territory is structured, through which these different scales, and how its cities organised their everyday life and has a major bearing on the mobility strategies adopted by them. Their corresponding journeys they make and the time they invest in them, appeared to be components between different social relations and sets of practices located in different kinds of place (Turner, 1986). So, analysing the time spent on everyday life allows for exploring these new metropolitan dynamics. This paper attempts to take this reflection a step further, seeing metropolitan areas as a system of physical territories and social structures which have a two-fold relationship with time. On the one hand, with diachronic time, which shapes landscapes, collective memory and identity. On the other hand, it is related to synchronic time, everyday life time –spent travelling either short or long distances– and a place of near and far connections (Amin and Thrift, 2002). The research explores all of these considerations in the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona (MRB) (Map1), and identifies the urban dynamics and mobility models which define this region in an attempt to analyse proximity and distance in terms of everyday life and its relationship with travel times. It begins from a