If you needed any proof of the close relation between traffic safety reform and zoning reform, the very first National Conference on Street and Highway Safety from mid-December 1924 saw a report that asserted, even created, a strong link between traffic safety, city planning, and zoning.
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| Traffic safety and zoning nexus, Dec. 1924 |
It's right there at the inception of our autoist paradigm!
Even though the conference was on safety, the primary problem to be solved was congestion and facilitating through-travel. In this report especially "safety" is deceptively understood and mystified.
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| Flow, not safety, is the main thing |
Yet they understood the inefficiency of cars, "uneconomical in [their] use of street space per passenger." They also correctly identified the problem of "day storage space for automobiles" and did not mainly use the term parking, which laundered the notion of storage and absorbed it into the beautification of lawn and curb strip shrubbery.
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| They understood the geometric inefficiency of cars! |
"Traffic movement is the primary consideration in designing streets": Again, not safety, even though that was the primary aim for the conference.
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| Optimizing street design for flow and speed |
Playgrounds are framed up not as any health measure for kids, but as a way to keep children off the streets so they don't slow cars. Playgrounds are another pedestrian displacement system!
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| Playgrounds as anti-congestion more than pro-safety |
In a little bit of an anticipation of the Strong Towns critique, they identify that infrastructure service "to each small suburban community can not be financially self-supporting."
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| Fiscal inefficiency of thin, sprawly development |
The document also undermines its conclusions when it admits a very large majority of respondents said "congestion pedestrian traffic does not hamper business" and is even "advantageous to storekeepers."
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| Heavy foot traffic = pro-business! |
We'll return to this conference and this report in the future as they sketch so many of the themes we still struggle with today!
Previously:
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