Driving Spaces: A Cultural-Historical Geography of England's M1 Motorway

摘要

Historians approaching the topic of Peter Merriman's important study of the M1 motorway between London and the Midlands section of England might remind themselves of two English antecedents: the early modern English turnpikes, which were privately financed, built, and managed; and the landscaping of large tracts of land as parks containing farms, roads, and agricultural land. Somewhat surprisingly, the first section of the M1 to be opened, in 1959, some fifty-five miles long, did not incorporate either idea: the roads were government-built and free to use for anyone with a car, and British landscape designers were largely left out of the design process. Rather than picturesque, the road was to be thoroughly modern, even modernist in an architectural sense, and as straight as could be.