Meetings in the vectorstate; about the relevance of urban networks With the introduction of the concept 'urban networks' spatial planning becomes more and more interesting for the traffic planner. For a long time spatial planning perceived mobility as a threat to sustainability, but times are changing: nowadays mobility is more and more appreciated as a positive fact of life. Networks are fundamentally important for the urban organisation. The perception of the city as a radioconcentric node of buildings has become unadequate. It is important to have an imagination of an alternative form of urban organisation. Fast mobility has eroded our old values of 'city centre' and 'periphery', and has replaced them by the new terms 'nodes' and 'lines'. By network-urbanism we get a new vision on the order of the city, an order that could not be seen through by traditional views on the city. In this new order, traffic forms the epicentre of the city. This statement gives clear responsibilities for the traffic planner. Mobility gives shape to our social and physical environment; let us use mobility as an instrument to give shape to the spatial planning too. In this context, the recognition of nodes is fundamentally important; nodes are the city-squares of the 21th century. Nodes in the form of public transport terminals, park-and-ride-facilities, but also as zones along urban highways (as overlapping zones between highway and city), entrances of nature-parks, in fact everywhere where networks intersect and interact in one or another sense. (Author/publisher)
Abstract