The key issue to solve urban traffic congestion is that deeply understanding the mechanism for traffic congestion formation and evolution, then make scientific manage and control strategy. In this paper, some basic concepts for urban traffic congestion, and the progress on studies for urban traffic congestion propagation and dissipation control strategies are firstly given, then the works by our group in urban traffic congestion propagation and dissipation control strategies are mainly introduced. It includes establishing the congestion propagation model by combine the micro and macro methods, analyzing the formation and evolution law of urban traffic congestion induced by accident, identifying the congestion bottleneck with high traffic demand, proposing dynamic congestion dissipation control strategies