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

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To be able to compare and contrast two views of a relationship, you have to understand who the relationship is between. When you look at traffic and people who are the people we are considering? Is it the pedestrians and traffic or does it include the people behind the wheels of the vehicles on our roads? When looking at the Buchanan Report (1963) and Mondermans Thesis (1980) it is clear we are looking at the order between pedestrians and vehicles. This does not discount the fact that there is a social order between drivers of cars. There are written and unwritten rules which are used and carried out in everyday life on the road. Sometimes these rules are broken or forgotten for instance, when there is an accident. When towns and roads were first built, thought was given to how people moved about on foot or by horse and cart. Consideration was also given to safety and how fire may spread. It was after the Second World War that the use of motor vehicles was on the rise. This can be clearly seen in the figures produced by a survey for the Department of Transport, in 1949 there were 46.5 billion vehicle-kilometres on the roads, but in 1959 this had more than doubled to 104.2 billion vehicle-kilometres (Taylor et al 2009, Table 1 p326). In the 1960’s thought started to go into traffic movement and started to make an effect on how roads and towns were designed. We can see this in the layout of towns and cities today. There is clear segregation between pedestrians and vehicles. In the early 1960’s Colin Buchanan, an engineer was asked by the government to write a report on Traffic in Towns. His report brought about change in how pedestrians and vehicles were viewed and the design of urban space. It was however a very contentious political issue (Taylor et al 2009, p327). There were rising fears that the few roads we had would become congested and

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