[Urban atmospheric pollution: sources, pollutants and evolution]

(Sub) urban air pollution (AP) is one of the most common and important forms of AP. This paper shortly gives some informations about the main sources of AP (mainly car traffic), the essential determinants of AP (emissions, meteorology, ..), the complexity of effluents and emissions (leading to the choice of AP indicators), the notion of exposition, and the recent evolution of environmental concentrations of air pollutants. Important progress were made towards emissions of industrial and heating sources, with a substantial decrease of SO2 and particulates air concentrations; but despite a marked improvement of fuels quality and of unitary vehicles emissions (and a correlated decrease in Pb and CO emissions) car pollution remains important in terms of photo-oxidant air pollution (CO, NOx, COV, O3); the good use of car in urban area must be reconsidered.