PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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Orbital motorways do not necessarily lead to an increase in equality in the distribution
of intra-metropolitan accessibility, for this will depend on their location within the
metropolitan area: … the further in they are, the more traffic they will attract and the
less extensive will be the area over which greater equality is brought about in the
decentralization of accessibility.
These conclusions thus seem to confirm the worry expressed by the NGOs that
urban ring roads bring about problematic shifts in travel patterns. The second example,
Linneker’s and Spence’s study on the regional development effects of the M25 London
orbital motorway, is of limited transferability since their computer model heavily relied
on regional employment data whose dynamics are rather particular to the British case. In
addition, their results ran counter to previous research in the area, and their ultimate,
“safe bet” conclusion was restricted to the insight that “accessibility improvements are
not mono-causal and unilateral in their impact” (p.90). Taking a rather different
approach, Van Nes’ (2002) Ph.D. thesis used the so-called space-syntax approach
developed Bill Hillier and his colleagues at University College London – a method
normally mostly used to predict “the likely effects of architectural and urban design
choices” (Hillier 1999:345) - to present eight different European case studies on ring
roads and urban change. Her research uses historical data on shops and puts it in relation
to changes in the configuration and integration of the overall street grid. Although they
do not take into account the influence of land use and transport policies on shop
relocation, her space syntax models are able to explain significant differences in the way
the ring roads affected the various town centers. One of her main conclusions is that
“apparently, it is not the ring road that attracts the establishment of new retailers and
shops, but the way in which the ring road is connected to the urban grid on which it was
imposed” (van Nes 2002:18). Finally, Falleth’s study specifically investigated suburban