Sir Colin Buchanan

Pioneering town planner whose landmark report sparked the great debate about
cars in cities
•
• Neil Parkyn
• The Guardian, Monday 10 December 2001 10.23 GMT
• Article history

A single document - Traffic In Towns, the Buchanan Report of 1963 - has ensured a place
for Professor Sir Colin Buchanan, who has died aged 94, in the history of town planning in
Britain and, indeed, worldwide. Almost 40 years after its publication, the vision and sweep of
this volume, very much Buchanan's personal achievement, remain undiminished, and its
thinking completely up-to-date for the current debates on transport and our urban
environment.
The report made Buchanan world-famous. For the first time, it presented, in an accessible,
readable and intelligent way, the whole picture of how transport and cities were inter-related,
and what options could be pursued to accommodate economic growth, as well as individuals'
aspirations to greater mobility. Many of its propositions already existed in one form or
another, but Buchanan's masterly synthesis, supported by his colleagues under the leader of
his steering group, Lord Crowther, set out the options available to society when striving to
cope with what Buchanan dubbed "the monster we love".

Subsequently, Buchanan suffered to a degree from misunderstanding - or wilful

misinterpretation - of his main thesis. His argument, lucid and entirely understandable, was
that existing towns and cities had a finite physical capacity - based on their existing urban
fabric, character and buildings - to absorb motor vehicles. If society, he argued, then wishes
to have greater mobility and full access to front doors, this can certainly be achieved, but at
an enormous cost, both financial and in terms of loss of existing buildings and character.

Buchanan himself never promoted the ultimate scenario of comprehensive redevelopment to

favour access for the car, but the abiding image of multi-level traffic networks, complex
interchanges and high-capacity urban roads proved a seductive one for the new breed of city
engineers, who instituted major road building as their personal set of grands projets, while
Buchanan maintained that the quality of our urban environment - our public realm - was, in
fact, the true measure of civilisation.

The Buchanan report became one of the most surprising bestsellers ever printed by the
Stationery Office. The level of interest led, in 1964, to an abridged version being published in
paperback by Penguin Books - unprecedented for a government report - and the report was
translated into several languages. Copies of the full report are still harboured carefully on
planners' bookshelves around the world, and occasional requests for signatures in them,
more than 30 years later, testified to its place in planning literature.

A larger-than-life figure, Buchanan came from one of those dynasties of Scottish engineers
who shaped so much of the British empire. Born the son of the water engineer in Simla, he
was brought up in India before going to Berkhamsted school, from which he undertook an
engineering training at Imperial College, London (1926-29).

With employment prospects in Britain bleak, he spent two years working on highway
planning and bridges with the Sudanese public works department (1930-33), returning to
undertake regional planning studies with the Essex firm of F Longstreth Thompson. After
buying his first car, Buchanan took up camping, making his own tents with a sewing
machine; do-it-yourself, carpentry, caravans and motor-homes remained enduring passions.
From 1935 until the outbreak of the second world war, Buchanan worked in the Exeter office
of the Ministry of Transport, where he was responsible for trunk road improvements all over
the south-west. His interest in traffic and road safety grew through photographing traffic
conditions and accident blackspots, and he visited Germany to see the autobahns.

A combination of an inquiring mind, an overseas childhood and a deep vein of stubbornness

led to his questioning accepted wisdom on the role and impact of the motor vehicle in towns.
He also had a lively curiosity about the behaviour of human beings and their motor vehicles;
on one occasion, in search of suitable illustrations for his personal research into driver
behaviour, he photographed a ministry superior unknowingly, while the latter was performing
a dangerous manoeuvre on the road.

This love-hate relationship with the car was allied to a passionate interest in what is now
called environmental planning, especially the theories of the Swedish urbanist Alker Tripp,
whose concept of promoting cities as a set of environmentally protected precincts was to be
taken up with great subtlety and power in the 1963 report.

Buchanan's war service, latterly as a lieutenant-colonel in the Royal Engineers (mentioned in

dispatches), included the construction of a remarkable bridge over the White Nile, as well as
several major civil engineering projects in the Sudan. Returning to Britain in 1946, he
became a civil servant with the Ministry of Town and Country Planning (later the Ministry of
Housing and Local Government), and again fostered typically forthright views on a wide
range of topics, many strictly beyond the usual remit of engineers. This assured him
unpopularity in certain official quarters.

In 1958, his book Mixed Blessing: The Motor In Britain appeared. This, and his 1960 report
on the redevelopment of London's Piccadilly Circus, led to the change in Buchanan's
fortunes from that of an unwilling occupant of technical backrooms to an international
celebrity.

As minister of transport from 1959-64, Ernest Marples raised the profile of his office with a
wide-ranging and percipient intelligence. Preparing for a trip to America in 1960 - and
anticipating a debate triggered by increasing prosperity and car use in Britain - he asked for
some background reading on urban transport, particularly on the impact of the car. Three
books were produced, of which two were by Buchanan. On his return, Marples called in the
author, despite the misgivings of his officials, and the Traffic In Towns group was born, Buch-
anan cannily retaining the right to select his own team.

The report led directly to Buchanan and some of his colleagues establishing the transport
department in the engineering faculty at Imperial College, where he became professor of
transport in 1963, and the next year he set up the consultancy of Colin Buchanan and
Partners.

Among the commissions that followed were the large-scale regional plan for South
Hampshire, which included ground-breaking analysis of options for urban structure to allow
for growth and prosperity in this prime development corridor, and studies of historic cities
such as Bath and Canterbury, in which the difficulties of reconciling movement by car with
the conservation of the existing fabric were already obvious. The firm also emerged a leader
in international consultancy, with projects in Kuwait (from the early 1970s), Saudi Arabia,
France and the Netherlands, besides numerous British towns and cities.

Yet for all his increasingly establishment credentials, Buchanan remained something of a
maverick. As a member of the Roskill Commission for the Third London Airport (1968-70), he
produced a strongly dissenting report, preferring a site on Foulness to one in the Vale of
Aylesbury, despite a serious bout of arm-twisting from his chairman.
As early as 1958, as a planning inspector, Buchanan had questioned the need to locate a
nuclear power station at Trawsfynnydd, in the Snowdonia national park, while his colleague
from the Ministry of Power could see no reason why not. Typically, Buchanan's case was
based upon a brand of common sense perfectly understandable to laymen - why should a
site of such physical beauty be compromised by an enormous structure, however well
designed?

His appearances at public inquiries, or his written evidence, were always marked by great
clarity, wit and considerable personal style. And the technical arguments were, as ever,
impeccable.

Buchanan spanned the apartheid between civil engineering and planning in many ways,
including his presidency of the Royal Town Planning Institute (1963-64), his numerous
articles, publications, talks and his advice to young professionals. Leaving Imperial College
in 1972, but returning as visiting professor from 1975-78, he was, from 1973-75, professor of
urban studies and director of the school for advanced urban studies at Bristol University.

On retirement from his practice in 1983, he expanded his pursuits and made occasional
appearances on behalf of local communities against unthinking road-building programmes.
He remained formidable, being roundly applauded by a public meeting in Oxford in 1993
after raising some eloquent points in response to proposals presented by his son, Malcolm,
on behalf of the family firm. This was typical of the man, in its combination of a deep
conviction about the way we live in towns and cities, and an enormous sense of fun and
mischief.

Buchanan's wife Elsie, whom he married in 1933, died in 1984. He is survived by his sons,
Malcolm and David, and daughter, Susan.

· Colin Douglas Buchanan, civil engineer and town planner, born August 22 1907; died
December 6 2001