Buchanan, Sir Colin

Buchanan, Sir Colin (1907–2001). Scots architect and planner. In 1958 he published Mixed Blessing: The Motor in Britain, as the result of which he was appointed by the then Conservative government urban planning advisor to the Ministry of Transport and leader of a group formed to study the long-term problems of traffic in towns. The resulting ‘Buchanan Report’, entitled Traffic in Towns, had the rare accolade of being published as a book by Penguin in 1963, and marked the beginning of an era when traffic was no longer to be given priority and urban planning was not to be completely dominated by traffic engineers (as had been the case until then). Buchanan became (1963) Professor of Transport at Imperial College, University of London, and set up his own planning consultancy, as Colin Buchanan & Partners, producing development plans for cities in the UK (e.g. Cardiff) and abroad. Many of the lessons learned from his work in the 1950s and 1960s seem to be becoming forgotten in C21.

Bibliography

The Times (10 December 2001), 15