Search Results

This chapter looks at the problems brought in by traffic congestion thought to have been created by population density and the concentration of business in small central districts. With the chief patrons of regulation being the chambers of commerce, deconcentration of business districts was not an option, so congestion needed to be eased without a reduction in population density. Leading expert on street traffic, Miller McClintock, stated that deconcentration was the main cause of traffic congestion. Engineers used traffic surveys to work out the causes of congestion. One solution was to clear the sidewalks of all obstacles in order to create space for pedestrians. Also, around this time the first traffic light system was used. However due to its system of simultaneous signal changes, efficiency was yet to be achieved. The chapter goes on to discuss other avenues through which traffic congestion was tackled, such as parking measures.

This chapter discusses traffic control measures taken to increase traffic efficiency. One such measure was the professionally timed traffic light. This provided increased efficiency and safety on the streets. However, engineers warned against the use of traffic lights at every single intersection. The chapter also looks at how the burgeoning automobile industry affected the railway industry, and then goes on to discuss how saturation in the automobile industry was expected and how this might affect traffic congestion. Despite the industry’s flattening of sales, many would continue to reiterate that saturation would not happen. However, the inevitable space shortage due to an increase in the number of automobiles on the road greatly affected its future. The chapter ends by looking at the Major Traffic Street Plan, which was drafted at the height of the traffic control consensus and which was a deviation from conventions of traffic control.

This concluding chapter discusses the importance of the police. It provides an evaluation of the overall performance of the Delhi police and an analysis of police station-wise crime. The chapter also shows different steps they have undertaken to help fight crime in the city. The first is the general expansion of the police force. This has provided a greater number of police officers to help, detect, and prevent crime; more police stations in various sections of the city and the addition of specialized police units for specific types of crime. The second is placing effective pressure on the recorded criminals and budding gangs through community policing. The third is on the proper management of traffic congestion and regulation. The final step in fighting crime in Delhi is maintaining law and order.

What about cars is bad? In turn, what should transportation planners do? In the early years of the automobile era, the transportation planner’s job was to develop street and highway networks. Sometimes the thinking was as simple as drawing lines on a map to connect concentrations of trip origins and trip destinations, and then building highways along the path that most closely corresponded to those lines. Air quality problems were not conclusively linked to automobile travel until the 1950s. Issues such as the displacement of persons from residential neighborhoods and the impact on habitat were secondary concerns at best until the 1960s. The primary, almost exclusive, focus during the first decades of the automobile era was to build a street and highway network that could accommodate a new mode of transportation. This began to change by the late 1960s. Planned highway networks neared completion in many cities. At the same time, the broader social costs of transportation became more apparent. Automobile emissions are a major contributor to urban air pollution. Traffic congestion has been a perpetual problem for several decades in most cities. Neighborhoods severed by highway projects often quickly deteriorated. Scholars and policy analysts now ask whether transportation resources are fairly distributed across different segments of society and how transportation access is linked to labor market success. As all of these issues have moved to the fore, transportation planning has increasingly focused on how to manage the social implications of transportation projects. Modern transportation planning now necessarily focuses as much on managing the social costs of travel as on facilitating travel. Because 87 percent of all trips in the United States in 1990 were by private vehicle (mostly cars and light trucks), the social costs of travel are, first and foremost, the social costs of the automobile. Public concerns regarding air quality, congestion, neighborhood stability, and equity gave rise to new regulatory agencies, technological innovations, and legal frameworks for transportation planning. Yet the demand for cleaner, less congested, more fair transportation systems persists. This is the context for the new urban designs. They seek, in large part, to address the social costs of automobile travel.

This chapter focuses on the Trans-Asia Highway project that seeks to create an economic windfall by clearing traffic congestion in and out of the city. It examines the particular role that roads play in Vietnamese social space. It discusses how roads in Vietnam have formed an important yet largely undertheorized element in the social organization of space that needs to be added to accounts of Vietnamese village morphology. The Trans-Asia Highway upgrade was directed by urban, regional, political, and economic planners; financed by the government and the Asian Development Bank; and supported at least ideally by large sectors of the population. However, the continuing expansion of the road demands the obliteration of the local space it has helped to produce.

This chapter considers the problems of traffic congestion and rising sea levels plaguing Miami. Traffic congestion has become the major immediate problem in Miami, and the urgency to alleviate it is heard daily and at all levels of government and citizen groups. The root causes of the problem are sustained population growth and endless high-rise construction in the condominium canyons of Miami Beach, downtown Miami, and other areas. Rising sea levels also represent an existential threat. Aside from the limestone underneath, the area is bound by the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Florida Bay to the south, and the Everglades to the west. There is nowhere to run. The chapter discusses the four solutions proposed so far to this looming threat: denial, technology, infrastructure above the sea, and exodus.

This chapter provides context for Clarence Samuel Stein's engagement with and translation of Ebenezer Howard's proposed Garden City and for his advocacy of these ideas in his projects, service, writings, lectures, and consulting activities throughout his career. Stein promoted Garden City as an “ideal system” for neighborhood preservation, housing reform, traffic congestion mitigation, and park design. What struck Stein about the Garden City—rechristened Regional City—was its spirit of cooperation and community, the balance between open spaces and development, and the notion that distinctive planned new towns served as the building blocks of the region. This chapter reviews the Garden City concept with a focus on its adoption and evolution in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. It also considers the initiatives of the Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA), where Stein served as founder and informal sponsor, including the Radburn Idea.

This chapter discusses the city of Heston, a developing and prospering city which is faced with the issues of aircraft noise, traffic congestion, pollution and strong sense that the quality of life has diminished and is still diminishing. Until very recently, whites and Indians have lived there together in a stable, social and secure community with a good quality of life. In a sense, Heston exemplifies a peaceful, contented, middle-class multicultural way of life. But many people, from different ethnic and cultural groups, are now very discontented. They wanted to move out because they feel that the area is going downhill and some that remain see this as a failure. Most of the interviewed cited the arrival of asylum seekers whom they blame for rising crime and harassment. While many were discontented, some felt relatively content. The newest arrivals were the most contradictory and the least consistent. Some found the place as convenient without feeling any long-term commitment to the area and some were downwardly unhappy and felt isolated. Heston is a community in danger of ceasing to be a community; that community might well rebuild itself elsewhere, but Heston's future lays in the balance.