Talk:Traffic in Towns

A fact from Traffic in Towns appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 14 January 2008, and was viewed approximately 1,114 times (disclaimer) (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Traffic in Towns, a 1963 report by the UK Department of Transport, warned of damage to town centres by car traffic, and offered solutions to the problem?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2008/January.

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Controversy section

Would it be good to have a controversy section where the issues around whether Traffic in Towns was a 'good thing' or a 'bad thing'. I was at a lecture recently where the speaker blamed Bucanan and the publication for virtually everything that was wrong. It we included the comments on cycling it would make cyclists blood boil etc and there are other comments about how we need to embrace this new world, however there are also big warnings, some of which we have already quoted. I controversy section would allow one to explore the claims and counter claims in more detail and help arrive at a more considered opinion about the legacy and indeed possibly how little the issues have actually changed about balancing and responding to events.PeterIto (talk) 12:44, 18 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I get the issue that criticisms sections are generally not liked on WP. Instead we should work the issues into the main copy to cover off any issues that arose. Regan123 (talk) 19:06, 18 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

many articles have a controversy section where there has been a clear & genuine controversy - but the problem with these sections is that they are often develop into WP:OR or soapboxing. To do this right needs a good breakdown of issues supported by lots of credible, citable material, not just a few blogs and people flying kites. Having said that, IMHO the problem with Buchanan was that his work wasn't properly understood (viz next comment), and he was quite right when he claimed he never advocated all the things that people now attribute to him! One of those things was the bugbear "predict & provide" - I can't ever recall hearing that expression when I was working on what we'd now call P&P projects back in the 80s. I find the ultimate irony was that Buchanan subsequently worked against many major developments that he thought would turn out with bad environmental consequences. (Or perhaps this was a genuine contrariness that he shared with his uncle, the infamous civil engineer?) Ephebi (talk) 20:31, 18 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Systems Perspective

I was taught from an early age by Geoffrey Vickers that 'Traffic in Towns' was an early example of the application of systems thinking to an area that normally used linear thinking where problems could be 'solved'. I now have his copy of Traffic in Towns (he was my grandfather) and he has marked many of the sections where he picked up on Buchanan's understanding of the circular systemic nature of the transport problem, some of which I have already added to the article. He mentions Traffic in Towns in his book 'The Art of Judgement' which was published in 1965 (two years after Traffic in Towns), as mentioned recently here [1](2005), briefly here [2](2005) and here [3](2005), but this last one needs a subscription I don't have. It would be interesting to see if others have also analysed the systems perspective of this work PeterIto (talk) 16:31, 18 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

now that's a new perspective (to me, at least). But now you mention it I guess it does have more than a germ of systems thinking in it - all those links & positive feedback loops, etc... and IMHO this may well have partly explained why TiT was sometimes misapplied or misunderstood by practitioners and policy makers who just tried to deal with 'their' dimension. Possibly not unrelated was the fact that Buchanan was a multi-disciplinary chap and hence could think in those different manners. Sounds like you've got some interesting citable material to add ;-) Ephebi (talk) 19:58, 18 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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