Vejnettet og det urban-rurale landskab

The western culture of planning has a tradition of considering infrastructure predominantly from technical, technocratic or historical perspectives that removes the focus away from infrastructure’s role in the mediating between culture and nature and in the production of the “city” (see Graham & Marvin). This is particularly the case when it comes to the road network, which planning tends to live a life of its own. Hence new road connections are still primarily viewed as missing links of a hierarchical network with origins that go back to the sixties, and are being planned with the aim at solving specific traffic problems or improving the general transport economy (Smets, p. 124).
This article will however focus on the influence of modern road systems on the form and structure of the city through a description of how these systems respectively transform the relationship between space and form and space and time. With this description it becomes clear that the development of modern road systems, which can be linked to the realisation of the functional divided city, has created a modern city which form and structure compromises the simple dichotomies city-country and centreperiphery of the traditional conception of the city. In this perspective the modern city appears more like an urban-rural landscape where urban and rural elements constitutes a complex patchwork.
The character of this urban-rural landscape challenges the division among the traditional disciplines of urban and landscape planning, while at the same time pointing at the road network’s potential as a common platform for planning. A potential that only can be exploited if a more comprehensive conception of the influence of road network in the urban-rural landscape is established.