Planning for sustainable accessibility: The implementation challenge

The ‘Network City’ planning strategy espouses sustainable accessibility. The aim is to re-orient the existing urban structure by focussing development at places with high accessibility in order to support an effective public and private transport system. The implementation phase calls for changes to planning practices: the need for public transport planning and development change to be mutually supportive; the need for road network planning and road design to place land use-transport integration as the core objective rather than traffic efficiency and for the need to stage development according to planned population and employment targets. This must take place within a new participatory approach. All this requires planners to gain new skills. To achieve this the system of planning must remain strong.