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Compare and Contrast Two Views of How the Relationship Between People and Traffic Is Ordered.

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Compare and Contrast Two Views of How the Relationship Between People and Traffic Is Ordered.
Compare and contrast two views of how the relationship between people and traffic is ordered.

This essay will compare and contrast Buchanan, an engineer who reproduced a report on 'traffic in towns' and the Dutch engineer Monderman's ideas of 'shared space' by looking at the strengths and weaknesses of their research and what differences and similarities they have to each other using examples to reinforce the information.

The relationship between people and traffic is down to how people behave on the roads they use and how they deal with the rules associated with this, as well as accepting that others need to use the same space whether this is at the same time or separately. Traffic is viewed in Buchanan's report as an agent because it has an active role in shaping the way people live, how space is designed and how people interact with each other and with their environment. (Silva, 2009, P. 329).

Table 7.1 shows that in a 57 year period the number of motor vehicles on UK roads grew by more than ten times from 44% of cars and taxis in 1949 to 79% in 2006 '(Department of Transport, 2007, p.124, Table 7.1, quoted in Silva, 2009, p.326)'. These figures are bound to affect order on the road, but it was not until after the 1960s that considerations for traffic movement were to affect the design and regulation of roads and streets. The first relates to an influential report by Buchanan called traffic in towns, published in 1963; which predicated the segregation of pedestrians and cars. The second based on the idea of shared space derived from the work of Monderman, who in the 1980s devised the principle of the naked street, which has become influential in urban planning in the early twenty-first century. (Silva, 2009, P. 325). Foucault and Goffman are relevant to both Buchanan and Monderman through their identities as traffic engineers. They share an area of knowledge with Foucault, who influenced the study of social order since the 1970's (Silva, 2009, P.

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