Further Buchanan Plans Wanted

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31001, 5 March 1966, Page 16

Further Buchanan Plans Wanted

“The Christchurch City Council should engage the services of Colin Buchanan and Partners, a firm of international standing, to take their plan to a further and more detailed stage, at least for the two central environmental areas,” says the City Planning Study Group in a report submitted to the City Council this week.

“The hopes of the groups and many others that Professor Buchanan would find Christchurch a suitable place in which to apply the principles of planning for the motor age (which he and his team so ably devised in their extensive researches for the Ministry of Transport in Britain) have been realised,” says the commentary on the Buchanan report for Christchurch.

“If Professor Buchanan’s recommendations are approved, there will remain a great amount of detailed planning to be done, requiring a bold and authoritative lead,” the report says, made over the names of Messrs P. J. Beaven and H. G- Royds. “Innovations such as stopping off streets, drastically changing established patterns of movements of vehicles.

creation of pedestrian precincts, and the rigorous disciplining of traffic movements generally will probably engender endless conflict of opinion and argument” For this reason the further stage of study is urged. The group says that with the assistance of local planners. much of the work could be done from the firm’s offices in the United Kingdom, although in the later stages it might be necessary for a representative to visit Christchurch. New Principle The Master Transportation Plan for Christchurch has not followed Professor Buchanan's approach to the trafficenvironment problem, the report says. Professor Buchanan expounded the principle of deliberate canalisation of longer movements of vehicles from one locality to another on to a network of roads designed for movement and the deliberate creation of areas within the network where, with extraneous traffic withdrawn on to the network, the needs of the environment

could predominate over the movement of vehicles. “What is now required is a revised approach to the study of the basic data already in the possession of the Regional Planning Authority,” says the study group. Cathedral Square Professor Buchanan found the Square to be “a drab, noisy and dangerous place,” the report says. (Clause 103) He objected to the Cathedra] being the centrepiece of a traffic roundabout and also to the idea of resorting to pedestrian subways. He went much further in saying “we think it should go without saying that in the present case pedestrians should have the freedom of the Square.” The study group agrees with these sentiments and the doubt expressed by Professor Buchanan that traffic can be excluded completely from the Square. The group’s plan submitted to the professor suggested free pedestrian use of the Godley plot and the area eastward of it with traffic allowed in the western part.