Chapter III – part two: A large town

Environmental management

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While we were considering the possible grouping of environmental areas, we found ourselves asking how such areas (particularly where the development is fairly new) could be established, and whether anything could be done to accelerate the process, or at least whether anything inexpensive could be done to improve local conditions to cope with the gradual increase of local traffic. This led us to examine two areas in detail. We concluded that there were indeed possibilities of devising a technique which could start the process of upgrading the environment. We have called this technique ‘environmental management’. It should be distinguished from ‘traffic management’, which is solely concerned with the movement of vehicles, and often at the expense of the environment, but it uses some of the same methods. We give below a brief account of the two studies. A more detailed discussion of the closely associated question of environmental standards will be found in Appendix 1.