jueves, 30 de julio de 2009

The Urbanism based in the traffic



Este artigo, integra a parte conceitual de minha tesina para obtençao do DEA na larga caminhada para chegar ao título de Ph.D. que ainda falta muito. Trata-se de uma reflexao sobre o modelo do uso massívo do automóvel e as primeiras análises sobre seus eminentes problemas, como o "Relatório Buchanan".

Around the sixties, first in the United States and then, as these urbanites and their new techniques, arrived in Europe, the planning of cities was dominated by a new generation of analysts of the urban traffic. The publication of Mitchell and Rapkin in the year of 1954, of the book Urban Traffic: A function of the land use, it was the mark to convince to the engineers of the importance of the land use like generator of the traffic. These analyses have been possible, with the computers model for simulations of the traffic, based on the studies of Voorhees (1955) where it presents the general theory of the movement of the traffic. The interaction among the traffic, the territorial ordination and the land use, they passed to cohabit in the urban planning.

In 1961, the British Ministry of the Transport took charge to a committee of specialists the study of the problems outlined by the increment of the use of the automobile in the modern society and particularly its incidences on the different types of mass. At the end of 1963, the titled report was published Traffic in Towns. This work that had directed for Colin Buchanan, an unknown urban engineer, the "Buchanan's Inform", it was a best seller. Their argument was subtle, according to him; the urbanite should establish a group of fixed rules for the urban environment: you could only absorb more traffic if massive reconstructions were undertaken, and if the community didn't want to make it should be diminished [1].
In the report he comments:

"[...] The Street against the pedestrian - most of the accidents of pedestrians takes place in the streets of more communication that bound the analysed sector or in their crossings.

The noise of the circulation has particularly annoying effects and it becomes difficult to converse in Oxford Street. And it is also in Oxford Street where the visibility is more hindered because of the automobiles that constitute an off wave, in march or still that prevents to see who go shopping in the other side of the street [...].
"

This urban model based on the use automobile increased the segregation a lot and it has created urban areas transformed into areas with a different social and economic system. Areas that move almost at levels of subsistence that depend eternally on the public sector, where the opportunities of improvement are already by means of the internal organisation or of the external intervention they are minimum. The degeneration of many of these areas is so serious that in fact they have become separate territories that remain to the margin of our social and economic life.

In the United States, while the cities had grown according to the fluctuations of the market and that they didn't have minimum powers of planning, they were not able to or they didn't want to make investments in structuring the residential neighbourhoods around to its. Many of the public transportation nets failed because they didn't adapt to the models of the dispersed use of the floor and they didn't offer an attractive alternative to the car. Therefore, it seems to be that the North Americans didn't not only adopt the European urban lifestyle, but rather it happened just the opposite. And although some of the means of European public transportation were able to attract passenger, all they, as the North Americans, had public subsidies. It seemed that to both sides of the Atlantic the city in the freeway won to the city structured traditionally. People had decided it with the wheels; to be more necessary, those that had them had voted with them and every day there was more people than they had automobile.[2]

[...] The invention and the pathological development of this instrument of transport (the car) they are a typical product of our generation, and their evolution, one of our biggest prides. However, it is evident that is not possible to make inhabitable our cities while it exists. Not even a government, for authoritarian that was, could face the problem with drastic solutions. Twenty-five cents of each American dollar wore out in something related with the automobile. Their suppression would mean the bankruptcy of the country. The tragedy of the men of my generation is that we are helping to create a world in which we don't believe [...][3].


"The necessity to reconstruct the daily space arises because this urban model, this city to pieces, this scattered space doesn't work, it is like a broken machine. An ineffective machine in which is invested more and more time and energy and it doesn't solve or it facilitates the basic necessities of their inhabitants: Necessities of accessibility, sociability and, in definitive, what you can consider quality of life."[4]


1 HERBERT, D. T. and JOHNSTON, R. J. (1978) - Geography and the Urban Environment - Progress in Research and Applications. Batty, Michael - Urban Models in the Planning Process John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., London.
2 HALL, Peter (1996) - Cities of the tomorrow - History of the urbanism in the XX century Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, Spanish Edition - Translated by Consol Freixa (1996) Editions Serbal, Barcelona.
3 CANDELA, Félix (1985) - www.epdlp.com.
4 CHOAY, Françoise (1965) - L'urbanisme utopies et realités - (The urbanism utopias and realities) - Spanish Edition - Translated by Luis del Castillo (1970) Editora Lumen, P. 392 and 402 - 406.

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