Advance Notice:

TRAFFIC IN TOMORROW'S TOWNS: conference and memorial event for Sir Colin
Buchanan (1907 - 2001)

20 November 2002                Imperial College London

PROGRAMME

0900    Registration:
1000    Welcome:
        Sir Richard Sykes DSc FRS, The Rector of Imperial College
1005    Introduction:
        Chairman, Dr David Quarmby
1015    The message of Traffic in Towns 1963. How do its conclusions and
underlying assumptions look after 40 years?
        Professor Peter Hills, University of Newcastle
1035    Urban Mobility World Wide - How does it look today?
        David Bayliss, Halcrow
1055    Discussion
1115    Can planning reduce traffic problems? Goals, role and effectiveness
of regional planning 1963-2020
        Sir Peter Hall
1135    Better roads - an essential ingredient of any transport plan
        Sir Christopher Foster RAC Foundation:
1155    Discussion
1215    Lunch
1340    Securing safe streets and good urban environments.
        Speaker to be announced
1400    Where, when and what will road pricing contribute to solving traffic
problems?
        Professor Stephen Glaister, Imperial College London
1420    Discussion
1440    More or less traffic in towns?
        Malcolm Buchanan, Colin Buchanan and Partners
1500    Discussion
1520    Chairman's concluding remarks
1530    Tea and registration
1600    Memorial event.
        Readings and tributes from those who knew or worked with Colin
1730    Drinks and refreshments in the Senior Common Room

Sponsored by: Colin Buchanan and Partners, Imperial College, Institute of
Logistics and Transport, Institution of Civil Engineers* Institution of
Highways and Transportation*, Royal Town Planning Institute*, PTRC,
Rees-Jeffreys Road Fund, Transport Planning Society.
* Member of the Urban Design Alliance
This event is being organised to further the objectives of the Urban Design
Alliance Sir Colin Buchanan (1907 - 2001)

Trained as an engineer, an architect and a planner, Colin Buchanan's
interests were wide and multi-disciplinary. This breadth is reflected in the
topics selected for discussion at this conference.  Colin Buchanan's
interest in traffic began well before the war when he was a young engineer
working for the Ministry of Transport. His first book Let us take the road,
was concerned primarily with the rapidly increasing problem of road
accidents, but he failed to find a publisher.  After the war, he returned to
the civil service, enthusiastically getting involved with the implementation
of the Abercrombie plans for London and the South East. During this period
he broadened and rewrote his book, which was eventually published as Mixed
Blessing - the motor in Britain in 1957.   After a period as a Planning
Inspector, he became influential in the world of transport and planning from
the publication of Traffic in Towns in 1963. He then left the civil service
and from that time until his retirement from active professional life he
formed the consultancy Colin Buchanan and Partners, helped to found PTRC,
started the Transport MSc course at Imperial College, dissented on planning
grounds from the majority findings of the Roskill Commission on the siting
of London's third airport, and established the School of Advanced Urban
Studies at the University of Bristol.

Speakers

Peter Hills

David Bayliss is a transport engineer who has spent most of his working life
dealing with transport in London as Chief Transport Planner of the GLC and
Director of Planning of London Transport.  He is a Director of Halcrow
Consulting and Visiting Professor here at Imperial College.  He had the
privilege of knowing Colin Buchanan through his work on London.

Peter Hall is Professor of Planning at the Bartlett School of Architecture
and Planning, University College London, and Director of the Institute of
Community Studies.  From 1991-94 he was Special Adviser on Strategic
Planning to the Secretary of State for the Environment, with special
reference to London and South East regional planning including the Thames
Gateway and the Channel Tunnel Rail Link.  In 1998-99 he was a member of the
Deputy Prime Minister's Urban Task Force.

Sir Christopher Foster is currently chairman of the RAC Foundation and
chairman of its recently published independent inquiry, Motoring Towards
2050. After an economics fellowship at Jesus College, Oxford, he  became
Barbara Castle and Richard Marsh's chief economist and special adviser at
the Ministry of Transport. In the 1970s he was a professor of economics at
LSE as well as Crosland's adviser on housing, local government and land
taxation. In 1978 he became head of Coopers and Lybrand public sector and
economics division where he remained a partner ( except for three years on
the management board of BT) until 1994. At various times he has been on the
boards  of the Post Office,  Coopers and Lybrand, the National Provident
Institution, the RAC and Railtrack, also on the Audit Commission, the
E.S.R.C and the London Docklands Development Commission.

Stephen Glaister  CBE is Professor of Transport and Infrastructure at
Imperial College, London. He specialises in the economics of transport and
the other regulated utilities. He was a non-executive director of London
Regional Transport from 1984 until 1993 and in July 2000 he became a member
of the Board of Transport for London. Between 1993 and 2001 he was an
economic advisor to the Rail Regulator.

Malcolm Buchanan transferred from the Transportation Branch of the GLC to
CBP in 1974, after Sir Colin had retired.  With his fellow directors he has
seen the firm expand (and sometimes contract) from about 25 to its present
200 staff in three companies. He remains committed to and absorbed by
professional work, managing studies, acting as expert witness and working
overseas -last year directing CBP's review of the transport strategy for
Shanghai, a city of 16m people, with ambitions to encourage car ownership.