The Attractive City - Traffic integration or segregation for the sustainable city
Overview
Background & policy context:
Sweden’s growth and employment is dependent upon attractive and competitive city regions. That is one of the reasons why “The Attractive City” project is undertaken. The project is a joint undertaking between the National Rail Administration, the National Board of Housing and the Swedish Road Administration in co-operation with the Municipalities of Jönköping, Norrköping and Uppsala and the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions.
Objectives:
In the project the focus is on laying the foundation for development, attitudes and regulatory systems that facilitates interaction between the private and public sectors, between the individual and the common cause, between different sectors and interest groups as well as between the national, regional and municipal perspectives.
The purpose of the study is to discuss the competing concepts of:
- Traffic integration and filtering of car traffic, with the traditional, mixed use urban street as the main object of interest,
versus:
- Differentiation and segregation of different types of traffic, with the hierarchical road system as the main system solution.
Methodology:
This is a literature study of the principles of urban transport network design.
The study looks at the international and Scandinavian professional debate about these two major concepts listed under “Objectives” above. It tries to distil the most important arguments of the debate, and to look into available theoretical and empirical evidence of the merits of the different principles and the various design solutions that have been proposed for the traffic system.
As the starting point of the analysis of the principles of urban transport network design, the project looks for solutions that will contribute to the development of a sustainable city and transport system. This means that car traffic volumes and speeds should be significantly reduced in comparison with existing cities and towns. An earlier study by the project’s author is used to define the more detailed environmental criteria against which the different solutions and network design principles may be evaluated. Then, literature on the effects of different design principles and traffic parameters is reviewed, in order to find the types of solutions that are most in line with the objectives of the sustainable and environment friendly city.
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