Chapter II: The theoretical basis

Introduction

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The preceding chapter described our search for a context in which to work. We concluded, since it is obviously the desire of society to use the motor vehicle to the full, that the only practical basis for a study of the present kind was to accept this desire as a starting point and then to explore and demonstrate its consequences. This does not mean that the desire is necessarily capable of fulfilment, nor does it rule out the possibility that society, when it learns the full nature of the consequences, may wish to withdraw or amend its desire. Indeed it can be said in advance that the measures required to deal with the full potential amounts of motor traffic in big cities are so formidable that society will have to ask itself seriously how far it is prepared to go with the motor vehicle. This is the main question involved in the so-called urban traffic problem.

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We also concluded in our general review that our task essentially was to explore a problem of design—the design of physical arrangements of buildings and access ways.

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Within this context we then directed our study more closely to the actual problems arising from the use of motor vehicles in urban areas in order to see whether we could evolve some working principles for dealing with them. We did not do this entirely in vacuo, but by a combined process of searching for principles and studying actual cases. We think it will make for better understanding, however, if we set down the broad theoretical approach first, and follow it up in the next chapter with a description of the practical studies on which it has been tested.