Professor Sir Colin Buchanan
Colin Douglas Buchanan was born in 1907 in Simla, India. Educated at Berkhamsted School in Hertfordshire, he then read Engineering at Imperial College before taking up a position in the Public Works Department of the Government of Sudan.
He returned to the UK in 1932 and worked with a planning consultants company in Essex. In 1935 he joined the Ministry of Transport. It was at this time that Sir Colin became interested in the dangers and problems of traffic, and after the war he moved to the Ministry of Town and Country Planning in London where he was involved with planning in the Greater London area.
As a result of Sir Colin’s emerging views regarding the need for traffic policies consistent with planning and environmental policies he was moved to the Planning Inspectorate, where he found himself dealing with an increasing number of controversial planning inquiries.
Ernest Marples, then Minister of Transport, moved Sir Colin into the Ministry of Transport and told him to assemble a team of his choice and “to study the long term development of roads and traffic in urban areas and their influence on the urban environment”. The resulting report presented a new and comprehensive view of the issues surrounding the growth of personal car ownership and urban traffic in the UK – issues that authorities in Britain and around the world continue to confront.
It was the publication of this 1963 report, the seminal “Traffic in Towns”, that made Sir Colin famous overnight.
He was offered and accepted a new Chair of Transport at Imperial College and in 1964 formed the consultancy, Colin Buchanan. His services were sought in connection with traffic and planning problems in towns and cities throughout the UK, Europe, Kuwait, Algeria, Kenya and Turkey. Many of his plans aroused controversy, but many others were successful in securing the redevelopment of cities and regions, employing the control of and provision for traffic, and better conditions for pedestrians. Sir Colin’s influence went far beyond the schemes with which he was personally involved.
In 1973 he became the first director of the new School of Advanced Urban Studies at Bristol University. He was also chairman of the Council for the Protection of Rural England 1980-85 and President of the Royal Town Planning Institute, which awarded him its Gold Medal. He was appointed CBE in 1964 and knighted in 1972.
Sir Colin retired to Boars Hill in Oxford in 1983 where he continued his hobbies of carpentry, photography and travelling Britain and Europe in his motor caravan as long as he was able.
Professor Sir Colin Buchanan, founder of Colin Buchanan, died peacefully in his Oxfordshire home on Thursday the 6th of December 2001. He was 94 years old.