Vejnettet og det urban-rurale landskab

Abstract

The western culture of planning has a tradition
of considering infrastructure predominantly
from technical, technocratic or historical perspectives
that removes the focus away from
infrastructures role in the mediating between
culture and nature and in the production of the
city (see Graham & Marvin). This is particularly
the case when it comes to the road network,
which planning tends to live a life of its own.
Hence new road connections are still primarily
viewed as missing links of a hierarchical network
with origins that go back to the sixties, and
are being planned with the aim at solving specific
traffic problems or improving the general
transport economy (Smets, p. 124).
This article will however focus on the influence
of modern road systems on the form and structure
of the city through a description of how
these systems respectively transform the relationship
between space and form and space and
time. With this description it becomes clear that
the development of modern road systems,
which can be linked to the realisation of the
functional divided city, has created a modern
city which form and structure compromises the
simple dichotomies city-country and centreperiphery
of the traditional conception of the
city. In this perspective the modern city appears
more like an urban-rural landscape where
urban and rural elements constitutes a complex
patchwork.
The character of this urban-rural landscape
challenges the division among the traditional
disciplines of urban and landscape planning,
while at the same time pointing at the road networks
potential as a common platform for
planning. A potential that only can be exploited
if a more comprehensive conception of the influence
of road network in the urban-rural landscape
is established.