Car-friendly city
A car-friendly city is a city oriented towards the needs of individual motorized transport. The catchphrase is derived from the title of the 1959 book Die Autogerechte Stadt - A Way Out of Traffic Chaos by the architect Hans Bernhard Reichow , a staunch advocate of this idea. By today's standards, the concept is largely viewed critically, and is presented by many as a warning example of failed urban planning .
Guidelines
In the car-friendly city, all planning measures should be subordinate to the unimpeded flow of traffic in the car, which has become the new measure of all things. Above all, this should be done in conjunction with clear allocation of space and segregation of use . The car-friendly city may thus also be a child of the Athens Charter . The concept was implemented to a large extent during the reconstruction of West German cities that had been destroyed during the war, for example in Hanover (by the then urban planning officer Rudolf Hillebrecht ), Cologne and Kassel , but also in smaller cities such as Minden . Substantial interventions were made in the existing building fabric, with parts of the city being cut up at random.
The purpose of the conception was to adapt the medieval cities with predominantly narrow streets and alleys, which had been laid out centuries before the emergence of the automobile, to modern mobility requirements, in particular to make the cities accessible for drivers and the delivery of goods by truck to ensure. Important components were multi-lane bypass roads (city rings, often using ramparts and former areas of medieval city fortifications), pedestrian zones , underpasses for pedestrians and cyclists (recently also e-scooters), parking garages and parking guidance systems for city centers.
Concepts
The car-friendly city is based on individual and public transport, whereby individual transport can also be bicycle or pedestrian traffic . The basis is a separation of the traffic in order to allow unhindered traffic flows. Different concepts exist u. a. in the weighting of public and private transport. A simultaneous promotion of both types means the construction / expansion of multi-lane roads and also public transport . This concept was followed in the 1970s by large western German cities in particular with the laying of trams underground and the development of so-called light rail vehicles . The one-sided preference for individual transport, on the other hand, means viewing trams and trolleybuses as obstacles to traffic and doing away with them. The bus connections provided as a substitute then have little or no separation from individual traffic (e.g. through individual bus lanes ) and are unattractive as a substitute for people who are used to cars.
A high weighting of public transport can also mean the construction of large-scale P + R facilities or the municipal promotion of network formation and attractive local transport tariffs. The basic consideration here is to avoid motorized private transport by using a high percentage of public transport. To this day, however, smaller cities in Germany in particular do not provide the financing for a well-developed public transport system or are unable to do so because of their financial situation (this situation is different in Switzerland, among others). The provision of sufficient roads is a compulsory service; public transport, on the other hand, often only appears as a supplementary offer for certain groups of people - the compulsory service then consists of a basic offer, special attractiveness is not required.
Car-friendly can therefore mean that individual or necessary public (delivery) traffic has absolute priority and local public transport runs alongside at a low level. There will then be bus networks in public transport with high intervals and bus stations with little use. On the other hand, both types of traffic can have the same priority. In this case, modern roads and, at the same time, high-quality rail networks separate from other traffic are created; however, car traffic is guaranteed optimal quality. The alternative would be absolute priority for public transport.
Underpasses and overpasses were an important part of the concept for separating traffic flows. One of the first street underpasses for pedestrians was built in 1957 at Jahnplatz in Bielefeld, at that time it was celebrated as trend-setting. Today underground routes for pedestrians are viewed very critically; one first had to gain experience with vandalism, drug consumption, graffiti paintings etc. on and in such underpasses in order to arrive at other concepts.
Overpasses, as they are typical for the Nicaraguan Managua, for example , are problematic and are often not accepted by the local population. In addition, climbing stairs at a height of a good four meters is too strenuous for many and not even possible for people with reduced mobility.
Further development
In the early 1960s, the British government commissioned a commission chaired by Colin Buchanan to take stock of urban transport planning to date and to develop proposals for new planning concepts. The Buchanan report Traffic in towns from 1963, which was very well received in Germany, contains further developed concepts. Buchanan was one of the first to distinguish between necessary car traffic (commercial and business traffic) and any car traffic. Since, in his opinion, the majority of traffic problems result from the extreme increase in random traffic, this should be consistently limited. He also made the suggestion of an environment-dependent capacity and speed limit. He proposed drastic restrictions for areas worthy of protection (“environment zones”). The quality of the street space for pedestrians and residents should have absolute priority here. An expert commission of the German Bundestag came to similar conclusions in 1965.
criticism
At the beginning of the 1970s, the car-friendly transport policy of cities in Germany was viewed with increasing skepticism. Critics blamed the dominance of the automobile for undesirable social developments, such as the number of deaths in accidents and the paralysis of urban life.
Nowadays it is widely believed that this planning concept was too one-sided because it ignored people. In particular, the concept is blamed for the negative effects of road traffic in city centers, such as the contribution made by road traffic to high levels of particulate matter , noise and the risk to pedestrians and cyclists. From the perspective of gender mainstreaming criticism is that the model of function-separated and car-friendly city in mobility almost exclusively to automotive traffic and commuter traffic have observed; In doing so, the requirements of the care work and even more so their connection with gainful employment were largely ignored.
Counter-concepts
As a counter-concept was developed by other urban and transport planners and traffic sociologists now the car-free city or the car-free housing defined. In cities like Cologne, concepts are now being discussed in order to find a compromise between increasing the quality of life for residents and maintaining good accessibility for road traffic at the same time.
One of the consequences of the segregation of functions in the car-friendly city is a strict regulation of traffic, in which - theoretically - all behavior is regulated with traffic signs, markings and separate traffic areas. This is seen by critics as incapacitating the population and is responsible for a lack of consideration for other road users. The shared space concept has developed as a counter - concept, which is intended to enable a less regulated coexistence of motorized and non-motorized traffic - and city life in general.
New urbanism
The new urbanism is an overarching theme in the development of today's cityscapes that deliberately moves away from the guidelines of the car-friendly city. After recognizing the structural flaws of the loosened settlements (or satellite towns ) with the separation of functions and oversized traffic axes, which have arisen especially since the modern age and the Athens Charter, this urbanism movement has been taking place since the 1980s (which began with Team 10, among others ) Rediscovery of the perimeter block development and mixed use of quarters and thus urban density. According to this, this type of urban development, which was previously lamented by settlement planners, supports the advantages of urban life in connection with a healthy social and economic mix and considerable savings in resources (travel routes, heating costs, infrastructure costs, etc.) compared to wasteful settlements.
Other countries
France
Georges Pompidou , French President from 1969 until his death in 1974, decisively pushed the modernization of France forward. Repeatedly he called on his compatriots not to remain in sentimentality . With increasing industrialization , many jobs shifted away from agriculture to industry. Pompidou especially promoted the auto industry and private transport. With this in mind, neighborhoods have largely been demolished in many cities to make way for expressways .
literature
- Hans Bernhard Reichow : The car-friendly city - a way out of the traffic chaos. Otto Maier Verlag, Ravensburg 1959.
- The miracle of Hanover . In: Der Spiegel . No. 23 , 1959, pp. 61-63, 66, 68 ( online ).
- Ralf Dorn: On the way to a car-friendly city? For traffic planning in Hanover under city building officer Rudolf Hillebrecht . In: Exhib.Cat .: Getting going . Automobilization after 1945 in the Federal Republic of Germany . Edited by Rolf Spilker, Osnabrück Industrial Museum, Bramsche 2012, ISBN 978-3899462128 , pp. 204-219.
- Christoph Bernhardt: Long buried and yet alive and well. On the contradicting history of the "car-friendly city" , in: Zeithistorische Forschungen 14 (2017), pp. 526-540.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Barbara Schmucki: The dream of traffic flow . Frankfurt a. M .: Campus, 2001, p. 136f. ISBN 978-3593367293 ; Full text on Google Books
- ↑ See e.g. B. Hans Dollinger : The total car company. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 1972, ISBN 978-3763216222 .
- ↑ Susanna von Oertzen: Everything gender or what? - Gender in spatial planning. (PDF) (No longer available online.) November 8, 2006, formerly in the original ; Retrieved May 16, 2009 . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. P. 5 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Charter of New Urbanism - German translation of the Engl. Charter of the New Urbanism
- ↑ Niklaus Meienberg : The Blaring of the Gallic Rooster: Reports from France. Limmat, Zurich 1987, ISBN 978-3-85791-123-1 .
