Usage of Space

Due to the severe increase in the use of vehicles from the 1950's the Government initiated plans for the development of a new road structure to help manage the interactions between pedestrians and motorists.   Cars in particular rose from 20.3 to 402.4 billion vehicle-kilometres, (nearly 2000%), in the period from 1949 to 2006 (Department for Transport 2007). Although all other forms of vehicles increased, none increased as excessively as the usage of cars, which demonstrated societies preference to the use of private and flexible transport. The rapid increase in the use of cars led to a fear of crippling congestion in the future if the supply of roads was not increased to match demand.
  The assumptions were that more roads needed to be constructed and that towns needed a new approach to be implemented to allow for the increase in cars. In the early 1960's the UK Government commissioned the engineer Colin Buchanan to start a report, (Traffic in Towns), which intended to create a new structure for urban space. Monderman's thesis was later developed to critically counter act the ideas set out in The Buchanan Report. The Buchanan Report   is a modernist approach, which focuses on the segregation of pedestrians and vehicles, whereas Monderman's thesis is a flexible approach to the ordering of traffic, which is highlighted by the Drachten experiment (2004).
  The modernist and flexible approaches are similar in as far as they both confront the issues that arose from the increase in vehicle usage and that they both take regard for the safety of human life by aggressing the issue of traffic. The modernist and flexible approaches were both created focusing on the ordering of traffic, and deal with the same issues of social interaction, creating social order and managing traffic. Even though though both Buchanan and Monderman seek to resolve the same issues, they go about this in very different ways and their views of how society should be ordered conflict on different...