Chapter III – Practical studies

Objectives

163

The general problem in the town centre is the now familiar one of reconciling accessibility and environment. With regard to accessibility, in view of the future great increase of car ownership, the problem is mainly concerned with the provision of sufficient and convenient parking space, and the vehicular access to it. As to environment, we took it to be a reasonable first assumption that the centre of Newbury should be retained broadly as it stands without sacrifice of the buildings of architectural and historic interest and the present character and atmosphere. Two other objectives for the centre were defined: that so far as possible the centre should be made safe, and that living and working conditions should be made secure against erosion by the motor vehicle. These conditions led us at once to the conclusion that for the main streets the choice was limited either to having no traffic in them at all, or a very limited amount under strict control. We adopted the former, and defined the objective as being to have wholly pedestrian streets, but to admit service traffic under strict control where other arrangements were either prohibitively expensive or likely to be long delayed.