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Epistemological versus Pragmatic and Teleological Approaches to the Concept 'Traffic Cultures' by Christos N. Taxiltaris

  1. As a first attempt one could formulate an empirical and descriptive definition of the concept of culture in accordance with the one provided by D. Lee. We could of course incidentally refer to other approaches of the concept:
    1. Epistemological approach (G. Bachelard's applied rationalism) according to which cosmos and culture are two mobile schemata that change continuously being in close interdependence. New relationships are brought about contributing to art and knowledge of every era.
    2. Pragmatic and teleological approach (H. Marcuse) in which culture is presented as a set of moral, aesthetic and intellectual values evoked by the society in order to organize, distribute and handle its functions. In other words, culture is defined as a process of humanization on a social scale. As an extension of this approach, one can distinguish the classic dichotomy of the German ideology between culture and civilisation (conflict between values and praxis) according to which culture constitutes a component of human autonomy and integration while civilisation refers to the domain of necessity, labour and ultimately to the restriction of freedom.
  2. Consequently if we insist to define concepts of traffic culture, it would probably be more accurate to talk about traffic civilisation and urban movement or mobility culture. In support to this is the fact that movement is a social category (but also intellectual, moral, psychological), while traffic is a motion that derives from operational value and computational use.

    Movement is a complex qualitative urban phenomenon and as such of interest to the theoretician and planner of urban systems. Traffic is a quantity which primarily concerns the designer and the manager of urban systems.

  3. Thomson's thesis concerning the close relationship between urban planning and urban transportation planning is absolutely correct, since it imposes a co-examination of their pathology (urbanization density-saturation of transport infrastructure which could be evaluated as expressions of civilisation).

    However, it could be useful apart from a culturalist approach (Morris, Ruskin, Sitte), to investigate specific parameters of the problem, which for the great majority of the public is presented as a hermetic determinism. The specialist either as an urban planner or as a transportation planner produces civilisation even culture, just like an architect, painter or musician...He is thus responsible for the management of his/her intellectual tools and products of art.

    So let's talk about us, the specialists and not only about the others, such as politicians, people....as well as about our responsibilities for the production of civilisation and culture expressions:

    1. Obviously there exists a dominant planning culture which in Greece is an amalgam of functionalism, empiricism, activist positivism and mercantilism. However, little by little a neo-rationalist tendency emerges. It goes without saying that the respective operational deontology (or anti-deontology?) is adjusted to the dominant planning culture.
    2. The planner's public and social role is really limited between the strategic marketing and an elliptic variant of the advocacy planning.
    3. The specialist, hypothetically speaking, without the specialist's identity feels at least awkward facing planning theses of the culturalist or anthropocentrally oriented tendency (Poete, Lynch, Mumford).
    4. The urban mobility phenomenon is not regarded as an expression of culture and for this reason it is relegated to the urban functions to be simply administrated.

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