Width street (function)

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Wide road is an urban planning in the context of traffic planning wider than other streets road in cities . A distinction must be made between the high medieval broad streets in Central Europe and later street systems that were even more planned in terms of urban planning, also outside Europe, which primarily served to improve the flow of traffic in contrast to the market function of the Middle Ages.

history

Already during Roman times streets were given the street names In lata platea or Platea lata , especially the military roads . In the Roman cities there were basically two broad streets, namely in north-south direction the Cardo maximus and in east-west direction the Decumanus maximus, which were given the greatest width. Both intersected at right angles where mostly the center of the city was. So who laid Romans in Cologne , the width of road on. It was 50 Roman feet (14.80 meters) wide, making it one of the widest streets in Cologne at that time, and was likely to have been built between 31 BC and 14 AD. In the Middle Ages , the “lata platea” was literally translated as “breiderstraissen”, “breidere straissin” or “up der breyderstraissen”. Some citizens named themselves after the street, for example the brewer E (c) kbert de lata platea (he lived before 1302). Increasing urbanization resulted in increased traffic, so that urban roads in the late Middle Ages had to be built much wider to handle traffic. In cities with a medieval core, the wide streets were created at a time when the long-distance trade was still using streets as street markets , i.e. before marketplaces were created in the High Middle Ages . The proximity to the market was the reason why the magnificent town houses stood on the broad streets and marketplaces ; these were usually the long-distance traders. In old Berlin , the Breite Strasse was called Große Strasse until the 17th century , and in Magdeburg to this day, Breititer Weg. Both emerged from street markets.

Wide roads

  • Brasilia - Eixo Monumental (March 2014)

  • Buenos Aires - Avenida 9 de Julio (opening ceremony October 1937)

  • Paris - Avenue Foch (May 2008)

  • Paris - Avenue des Champs-Élysées (June 2002)

  • Cologne - Kaiser-Wilhelm-Ring (green area; April 2010)

  • Berlin - Strasse des 17. Juni (March 2005)

  • Dublin - O'Connell Street (1964)

The avenue des Champs-Élysées , laid out in Paris in 1670 as a central traffic axis, is 70 meters wide and was the widest street in the city at the time. The Broadways in the United States - like the famous Broadway in Manhattan - are an example of a street being named for its main characteristic. “The Breite Straße is named after its nature”. The street in New York City called "Heerestraat" (Herrenstrasse) or also "Breede Weg" (wide way) was named Broadway in 1677 for a section, which was only introduced in 1804 for the entire street. Despite its name, at 22 meters wide, it is not the widest street in New York today. At 85 meters, the widest street in Berlin is Straße des 17. Juni, which was laid out in 1697 . However, their continuous width is almost always 50 meters. O'Connell Street in Dublin , built from 1777 onwards, is the widest street in Ireland with a maximum width of 49 meters, but not in Europe, as is often claimed. This is the avenue Foch in Paris, opened on March 31, 1854, with a width of 120 meters.

The widest street in Germany is the Königsallee in Düsseldorf with an almost continuous width of 87 meters . The Avenida 9 de Julio ( Buenos Aires ) brings with it 20 lanes to 140 meters wide when the two - mitrechnet parallel streets - otherwise hot end. The street, which was planned in 1888, was not started until 1936 and opened on October 12, 1937, for which 40 houses had to give way. Until 1960, it was the widest street in the world with up to 28 lanes in places. The Eixo Monumental (monumental axis) in Brasília , opened to traffic on April 21, 1960, has 12 lanes and is the widest street in the world with a width of 250 meters. The Avenida Presidente Vargas ( Rio de Janeiro ) was 80 meters wide when it was opened on September 7, 1944, the widest street in Brazil, until it was replaced by the Eixo Monumental.

Wide streets emerged from three urban planning situations. The roads could either be built without any structural obstacles standing in their way, or they were subsequently inserted into an existing development as a breakthrough; then buildings had to be demolished. A third situation arose with the demolition of city ​​walls . The resulting rampart area provided space for wide streets. That was the case with the construction of the Parisian Grands Boulevards from June 1670, with the Vienna Ringstrasse from March 1858, or the Cologne Ring from June 1884.

purpose

Following the events of the February Revolution in 1848, the French architects and engineers Grillon , Callou and Jacoubet presented a road concept for Paris in June 1848, with the help of which “troops could move faster and be transported 'en masse' through Paris to their destination reach". On August 8, 1848, this road concept was presented to the Minister of the Interior. But it was not until the Parisian city planner Georges-Eugène Haussmann , after his appointment as Prefect in June 1853, that he began to consistently design broad and straight streets in order to disentangle the confused medieval Parisian street pattern and enable a shorter connection to the newly built train stations. The word avenue meant “wide street in a city” in French in the 19th century, the literal translation “rue largeur” has remained uncommon as a street name. The main goal was now the shorter traffic routing; Carrying out troop transports faster in the event of uprisings was at most a secondary objective.

In the modern urban planning concept, wide streets have the purpose of creating more space for through traffic through several parallel lanes in order to reduce traffic jams. Wide streets were either part of an overall urban planning concept (Brasilia) or were subsequently added to an existing urban structure, which is why buildings had to be demolished (Buenos Aires). Most of them have a median to separate the lanes . A “wide street” is - measured against the rest of the cityscape at the same time - an above-average wide street. It is often the main street, both in cities and in villages. Public facilities (e.g. town halls) and shops are often located on it.

See also

literature

  • Artur Hoffmann: The typical street names in the Middle Ages and their relationship to cultural history. With special consideration of the Baltic Sea cities. (Phil. Diss.), Königsberg 1913.
  • Dietz Bering, Klaus Grosssteinbeck: The cultural history of street names. New perspectives on old terrain, gained from the example of Cologne. In: Mutterssprache , 104, H. 2, June 1994, pp. 97-117.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ferdinand Franz Wallraf, Contributions to the History of the City of Cologne , 1818, p. 142
  2. ^ Gustav Zeiss, Römische Alterthumskunde, edited in three periods , 1843, p. 333
  3. ^ Carl von Veith, Das roman Köln , 2013, p. 13
  4. ↑ Klaus Katzur, Berlins Straßenennamen , 1982, p. 39
  5. ↑ Leipziger Zeitung No. 104 of December 30, 1858, photography from Broadway in New York , p. 417
  6. ↑ Google Earth. Retrieved December 8, 2018 .
  7. ↑ The New Guinness Book of Records, 1988, p. 302
  8. ↑ Edme Jean Louis Grillon / G. Callou / Théodore Jacoubet, Études d'un nouveau système d'alignements et de percements de voies publiques faites en 1840 et 1841 , 1848, p. 26
  9. ^ Donald J. Olsen, The City as a Work of Art , 1986, p. 44