Sick Transit . . .
By KENNETH J. ROBINSON
EVERY day for the last few weeks tightly- packed audiences have sat in a darkened room just off a big London square, laughing hysterically at the realistic reconstruction of motor accidents. The place? The Ritz cinema. The film? Harold Lloyd's World of Comedy—an edited selection of humour of the Twenties, when a car smash was a sophisticated joke, not a sick one as it would be today.
No doubt a lot of people have been lurching helplessly away from this picture—with its hilarious, historic shots of Los Angeles before machines took over from human beings—only to be sobered up outside the cinema by the noise, smell and discomfort of Ernest Marples's ingenious one-way traffic systems. But although the Transport Minister's diverting plans are shaking the foundations of buildings and speed- ing vehicles on their way towards new residential by-passes—like the now famous one at Highgate Village—they are said to be no more than temporary measures. Temporary measures can, however, last a long time.
But if you have been following the news recently and have seen the reports on urban redevelopment by Colin Buchanan (the Trans- port Minister's chief adviser), the Ministries of Housing and Transport and the Civic Trust, you will realise that the country now has the basis for a plan that is more than temporary—a workable, long-term plan, or series of plans, that could bring efficiency to the transporting of freight and pleasure to the transporting of people. Mr. Buchanan's contribution is a brilliant scheme—worked out by his research group—by which every town centre could be subdivided into sections served only by the motor traffic that was needed. His Ministry also issued a plan- ning bulletin* a few days ago, in association with the Housing Ministry, advising local authorities on the means they could use—everything from co-operation with private developers to com- pulsory acquisition of sites—to renew the town centres that are threatened by obsolescence, decay and traffic congestion. Almost at the same time the Civic Trust published a 300,000-word report,t prepared by an independent committee, which not only filled in some of the gaps left in the Ministry's bulletin—it recommended, for example, methods for financing development— but also published awful warnings about the
Government's neglect of dead towns in the north and west.
Neither the Ministries nor the Civic Trust has presented such a clear-headed plan as Colin Buchanan's for redeveloping our town centres. He begins by discarding the popular idea that long before our road traffic has trebled (in an estimated forty years) we shall be taking to the sir in private bubble planes. And although he has a lot of sympathy for the private motorist (as he should have with public transport in its present state), he does not offer motorists free- • Planning Bulletin I. Town Centres: Approach to Renewal. (H.M.S.O., 5s.) ,t Urban Redevelopment. (Civic Trust, 3s. 6d.) 'Up! Rebuilding Britain.' (In Twentieth Century, Summer issue, 5s.) dom for all in his scheme for properly-balanced towns. What he does offer is the best possible conditions for as many people as possible.
He has, in fact, taken the same logical approach to vehicles that is to be found in approaches to the welfare of human beings. A house, a public building or a housing estate is usually designed to cater for the safety and health of the people using it. Mr. Buchanan believes we should be no less considerate to the same people when they sit at the wheel of a vehicle. Such things as noise nuisance, fumes and the safety of pedestrians should, in his view, be measured so that we can determine how much traffic ought to be allowed into any area.
Mr. Buchanan makes the further suggestion that car drivers should be subject to the same discipline when using a town's roads as they are when, as pedestrians, they use a building. He envisages that on each side of the main circula- tion roads in our town centres there would be limited access to a group of the town buildings— limited to those people who had business there. As these areas would not contain through roads, the control of vehicles would be fairly simple.
This is good, sensible stuff. And so is Mr. Buchanan's suggestion that we need better public transport. But we cannot make public transport pay while the private car owner can still go where he likes. Yet if we had to wait until Mr. Buchanan's segregated zones were ready before limiting the use of private cars we should probably be in a chaotic state. The formation of Buchanan's 'environmental areas' will, of course, involve redevelopment of build- ings and roads. The refurbishing of town centres is going to happen anyway, as Mr. Buchanan says, but how can we stop it being done bit by bit, as land falls vacant and developers swoop in, eager to rebuild at the 10 per cent, extra cubic space they are permitted?
It came as something of a pleasant surprise to find sensible proposals about this in a bulletin issued jointly by the Ministries of Housing and Transport. This booklet, which has been sent to all local authorities, tells towns how to change their centres into efficient places that are safe for pedestrians. When you look at the simplicity of the proposals it seems incredible that it has taken so many years for them to be put down on paper.
Even the dimmest town councillors must feel, as they read the Ministries' illustrated bulletin, that they ought to have thought of this before.
All it asks them to do is to draw a sketch map of the town centre and mark on it—and on sub- sequent versions—those parts that need preserv- ing, removing, improving or rebuilding. With such a map, the bulletin points out, a local authority will know what it is up to when it is approached with planning proposals by private developers. The authors of the booklet recognise that there is often too little planning skill in a town and they recommend the setting-up of urban redevelopment teams, in county authori- ties, for the use of all district councils. They recognise too that the dear old money-grubbing developer is a good ally for the town that wants to redevelop sensibly, and they suggest means by which the council and the queue of developers can get together with profitable results for all.
Not everyone will agree with the Ministries' suggestion that the private developer who has Co- operated amicably with a local authority could, perhaps, have a little more of the land he requires 'assembled' for him by the powers of compulsorY purchase. Those who fear the consequences at such a suggestion are partly afraid that propertY owners would suffer unjustly. And not everyone will agree that town renewal 'cannot he carried through without private enterprise. There is a lot to be said, as the Civic Trust has pointed out, for local authorities doing their owl developing and using the money they make out of it for essential services such as housing. One difficulty here is that under existing law, if the local authority borrows money to acquire land, it cannot defer loan charges until development has been carried out and it can afford to Pay them. But as Dr. Hill said, in a publication: that came out the day after he had resigned, details are now being worked out for giving local authorities better borrowing powers. If this comes to anything, then a town will be able to acquire land more easily and postpone its development—perhaps by a private developer-- until adjoining land has been similarly acquired: the whole lot can then be rebuilt in a way that will benefit the town With all this good advice flying about there is a chance that the penny will drop in the minds of local government officials: it has, after all, dropped just a little way in central government minds. The very publication of the official bulle- tin, Approach to Renewal, is astonishing because it is a team effort by two Ministries. For a long time critics of the present planning set-up have pointed to the absurdity of the Ministry' of Housing acting separately (on matters of housing, offices, etc.), from both the Ministry .of Transport (whose road plans are tied up with new buildings) and the Board of Trade (which handles the location of industry). The Civic Trust's most recent publication on urban renewal says that the planning work of all three ought to be dealt with by existing staff, in a new Minis of Land Development. The authors believe that such a Ministry should help each toWl- through a regional team of experts, similar to those proposed in the joint Ministry bulletin-- to do some first-class redeveloping, and it goes into more detail than the Ministries on the try question of the financial haggling necessary'. also makes a point that is not mentioned at ail in the planning bulletin : it insists that one waY of stopping the congestion of people and traIl in our southern and midland towns is to en: courage development in the areas to the flat" and west that are being evacuated because of the dying-out of industries. There, then, in over-simplified form, is our transport problem and its solution as seen hY official and unofficial experts. Both the probletrie and the solution are bound up with our approach to architecture. The only snag ts tha, the solution requires a certain amount of forree sight at local authority level: foresight to ensli a that apparently-effective half-measures, /Ike traffic diversion or a new filter road, do 11°` ight hinder long-term planning Without fott-s every local authority will one day find ils sireeis snarled up our the centre of cities,
Previous page
