Beginnings of Urban Planning

Oxford has a long history of Urban Planning. Its functionality as a town has changed greatly since its founding, and the city planning has changed to accomadate this. This change in functionality has largely been the result of a change in the planning of the town, the most important changes coming in the childhood of the town. Without realizing it, King Henry II set the foundation for one of the greatest instututions of learning in the world when he relocated british students from Paris to Oxford in 1491. The subsequent building of the numerous colleges in Oxford has forever changed both the urban landscape of the town and its population. Maybe the first Urban Planner in Oxford was its first governor, Robert d'Oily. He built the city's first bridges, allowing for beter transport through the city.

There were also salient modern contributions to the landscape of the town. One of these was the establishment of a permanent "Green Belt" around the town in the 1950's. Town officials were worried about "reckless development" in the city, and in an effort to preserve the natural beauty of both the city and the surrounding area, the set a limit on development by the creation of a zone that was to be left without significant development. The city is largely classified into three major zones, the southeast, central, and north. The southeast is largely dominated by colleges, with much of the landscape being alloted to the colleges. The colleges basically dominate the urban landscape of this area, especially on High Street. Known by locals as "The High", it has been called by many "The lovliest street in all of Europe", because of the wonderfully preserved midevil and renaissance architecture. It is also home to many wonderfull inns and shops. Another wonderfull feature of the street is the steady curve, a left over from the days when Oxford was literally a ford for Oxes. The street used to run along the coast of the river Cherwell, and has always been a heavy traffic road. The street has changed slightly since the picture at left was taken, and is now only open to delivery vans and buses in the especially beautiful section from the western end of the High to Longwell streets. City officials were concerned with the growing traffic in the area, and changed it in a move to preserve the natural beauty of the area. I believe that this move also had economic considerations in addition to the aesthetic ones, because tourism is a significant part of the local economy. Preserving the beauty of the town will guarantee that the tourists will keep coming, and High street is one of the best attractions of the town.

Current Plans

Most of the planning of the 20th century has been centered on bringing new buisness into the city of Oxford and the county of Oxfordshire. Many of these new jobs have been created by virtue of the University. For example, They created new presses to compliment the Oxford University press, which has been in existance since 1478. The county council has a great deal of pull, and has created a plan for the county as a whole. The Millenium Plan focuses around diversifying the economy of the area by bringing in new, high tech buisnesses. Oxfordshire has done a good job of this, as there has been the recent additions of AEA Technology, Oxford Instruments Group and Yamanouchi are amongst the county's largest employers. It is also home to researchestablishments of international importance, such as the Rutherford Appleton Labs at nearby Chilton, and the Joint European Torus Project (JET), the state of the art EU nuclear fusion research project.While ten years ago Cambridge was the undisputed leader for high tech industry, Oxfordshire is increasingly being recognised as the dominant player. The County Council's planning and economic development strategies are credited with encouraging the spread of these industries across the county rather than just around the city.

The Oxford Transport Strategy was adopted by the city of Oxford with the goals of achieving significant environmental improvements in Oxford city centre, whilst allowing continued growth of the city centre economy. They cited many reasons for the plan, including increasingly poor conditions in the city centre, particularly for pedestrians; high levels of traffic-related air pollution throughout the central area and the increase in the number of buses in the main shopping streets; and an unacceptably high number of road accidents, especially in High Street. There was overwhelming public support for the strategy, which is still being implemented today. Some of the steps being taken to improve the situation include improving the busing system, closing of some streets to everyday traffic, and encouraging people to use bikes for transport by increasing the number of public areas for locking up your bikes.