Why is Transportation Planning important?

Transportation Planning

Introduction

Transportation planning’s related disciplines of land use planning, architecture, landscape design, urban economics and social policy have undergone major internal reform efforts over the past few decades but unfortunately, transport planning seems to be stuck in the 1950s mentality and believes that all the urban problems such as congestion, mobility and economic development has an engineering solution.

Types of streets

Sustainable Urbanism has been identified as the most important environmental concern of the coming century by different experts from different fields whereas transportation planning remains isolated forming a large gap in the strategies of urban sustainability.

Importance of Transportation planning

Transportation is not an end in itself. Rather, it is an investment tool that cities use to help achieve their larger goals. Transportation planners and engineers always focus on the efficient movement of people and goods across the country. However, transportation touches all aspects of city life such as economic development, quality of life, social equity, public health and ecological sustainability.

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Which tools are responsible for shaping our cities?

Identifying factors responsible for shaping our cities

Studying and analyzing the growth of towns at a superficial level gives us a complete idea of the growth of towns and its division of towns depending on its size and population.

To study the growth of towns in depth and to identify the reasons for the development of towns and cities for the way they developed, three tools have been studied. These could be used as design tools for the design of new towns.

  1. Transportation Planning
  2. Land use planning
  3. Food

tools for citiesInteresting facts about how food shaped our cities

  • We consume good wherever we go since it is our need for survival.
  • For consumption we need to produce…
  • With more and more people moving into the cities, the natural landscapes are being destroyed.
  • We consume meat.
  • Animals are fed which increase the need for more crop production to feed animals and then animals are consumed by us.
  • By 2050, it is estimated that twice of us are going to live in the cities. So, there will be 6 billion hungry carnivores to feed by 2050

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Design of towns today | Sustainable Town planning

What is town planning?

The difference between town planning and architecture should be noted. The town planning expresses an era. The architecture reveals its spirit.

Evolution of planning

In the ancient times, the primitive men used to stay in tribes and they formed groups for mutual protection for carrying out business activities and maintaining a social life. The location of the settlements was decided taking into consideration the ease of defense, climatic factors, business facilities etc.

radial network london
Combination of concentric and radial pattern | London

As such cities, are as old as civilization as seen from the verbal connection between the words ‘city’ and ‘civilization’. By civilization, we mean urban civilization. There were obviously human groups before that period.

Designing towns today

Today, designing towns is not as easy as it used to be in the past. We have to deal with problems that did not exist in the past.

The requirements for the design of towns today:

Road network for cars

Town planning professionals have to consider the planning for the next 40 years while they plan the road network for the new city. Designing the road network itself constitutes a lot of complex calculations including increase in population density, wealth, increase in the number of private vehicles, public transport etc.

Public transport

We have to hire transportation planning professionals in order to establish an efficient public transport network for the automobiles. But this is not possible only with the help of transportation planning professionals. Town planners and transportation planning professionals have to work hand in hand in order to complement the road network with the new public transport.

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