Compare and contrast Buchanan and Monderman’s approaches to the production of social order in public spaces.
Public spaces are places which we have to share with others and where apply shared sets of values or expectations about how people should behave. Social order is very important in social life. Order is part of the way people practice their social existence. It is about how individuals fit together with others and with things around them. Ordering is all the time practised by people and is central to social life. Social order is not easy to make, it involves a lot of things like practices, making everything and everyone fit together and also having in mind ideas about the past and the future (Silva, 2009). Social order needs to…show more content… The purpose of this is to build a natural interaction between the pedestrian and the driver and so the motorists would take more responsibility for their action. In 1982, in the Netherlands Monderman started his experiment. In the small village of Oudeshaske he cleared all the highway and road signs and barriers. That affected drivers, which reduced their speed by 40% (Silva, 2009). His idea of ‘shared space’ was used also in a few other places, like for example in a Drachten experiment. He abolished all traffic lights and all white lines on the road. From then on drivers had to concentrate on their eye contact and that was making this Drachten junction work. Monderman started narrowing the roads and psychologically calming the traffic by putting trees, flowers etc. (Silva, 2009). In Monderman’s ‘shared space’ vision people are civilised and disciplined and take care of others and of where they are. His work has been experimented in countries like Belgium, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands and also UK. It is a foundation of practical and inspirational support. The document ‘Manual for Streets’ from The Department of Transport says that streets are not only to get people from place to place, but also they bring an opportunity for social interaction and together with ‘shared space’ play a vital role in a community (as cited in Silva, 2009).
From the above approaches to the production of social order in public spaces, we have two visions of
