Chapter 4: Some lessons from current practice

Europe: West Germany

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The war-damage in many German cities was far greater in scale than in this country, so it is interesting to see what use has been made of the comparatively greater opportunities. It is a mixed story, as it is with our own bombed cities, and it can be said that nothing radically new or revolutionary has emerged in the course of reconstruction.

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One of the most important features of the work has been the widespread acceptance of pedestrian shopping streets, even for the main shopping streets of the large cities. This is not by any means exclusive to the bombed cities—many which suffered no serious damage are now finding it desirable to close their main streets to traffic during shopping hours.

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At Cologne, the main shopping street (Hohestrasse), wholly demolished during the war, has been rebuilt on its old line as a narrow croaked street with a strong medieval character. During working hours, it is closed to wheeled traffic by the simple expedient of inserting posts in slots at either end. Servicing of the shops has to be done in the early morning or at night. It would be wrong to say that the street is a fake, it is based on one kind of shopping street that many people are known to like— a narrow, intimate, snug, varied, bustling street—but without the conflict of vehicles and pedestrians. Eventually, when the central area plan is completed, both the main shopping streets of this city of over ½ million inhabitants will be wholly for pedestrian use. The same environmental concept is being applied at Essen and Bremen, and in a number of other cities. Where it has not been applied in a major reconstruction, as at Hanover, the contrast is painfully obvious. This last city is interesting because an inner ring road has been built to quite high standards of performance, but many vehicular routes (including the main shopping streets) cross the ring, and these are filled with traffic to the great detriment of the environment. It does seem as though it is quite insufficient to try to ‘relieve’ roads of traffic by some kind of diversionary system. A positive idea must be formed of the amount of traffic tolerable in the road that it is desired to relieve, and a definite plan laid to reduce the traffic to that figure and to hold it there permanently.

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In much of the reconstruction in Germany, even though there had been almost complete obliteration of the buildings, there has been a marked sensitivity shown for the mediaeval street pattern, and it is this that is often reemerging in the form of narrow streets for pedestrians only. The keynote of the reconstruction therefore is the horizontal separation of pedestrians and vehicles. A great deal of ingenuity is shown in the layouts for feeding in vehicles to service access points to the rear of or underneath buildings, and to ingeniously contrived and tightly planned parking places and garages. The way in which the past is thus brought into the present, even though the building fabric has been almost completely renewed, is impressive; it imparts a character to the redevelopment which is missing from much of our own stereotyped redevelopment based on a standard layout for a shopping street.

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The respect shown for old street patterns means, of course, that little has been attempted in the way of two-level reconstructions which would have been the other alternative, and which would have resulted in greater capacities to accommodate traffic. Even so, the volumes of traffic which it is expected to be able to handle are impressive.

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The concomitant of these high traffic volumes is that highway networks of considerable elaboration are being planned (Figure 226), and the great costs and difficulties of driving these through standing property are being accepted. But the inquiring visitor finds everywhere the same consistent policy that since there cannot be any question of accepting the full potential flood of centre-bound car commuters, the maintenance of mass transport is absolutely vital. An interesting consequence of this viewpoint is that most cities have not merely retained their tramway systems, but propose to elaborate them. In some cases new tracks are being laid down in the central reservations of new major roads; and in many towns there are plans for putting the tramways underground in central areas. This policy seems to have been most carefully thought out in the years after the war. It was adopted and pursued in the face of the knowledge that most other countries were planning to do away with trams.