Limes city
The Limes city or residential city limit , according to the North West city , the second largest large housing estate in the Rhine-Main area . It is located in the northern area of the city of Schwalbach am Taunus on the western outskirts of Frankfurt am Main . The settlement was built between 1962 and 1973 based on an urban design by Hans Bernhard Reichow . In 1959 he won a corresponding urban planning competition . The settlement comprised 3,000 apartments on around 100 hectares and was designed for around 10,000 residents. At the end of 2004, however, only 6662 people lived in the Limes city. This is mainly due to the aging population of the district. The proportion of the population of residents over 65 years of age was around 24% in 2004, compared to a district average of around 18%. With the onset of a generation change and the expected influx of young families in the coming years, the population is likely to rise again.
History of origin
In the 1950s, as everywhere in Germany, there was a housing shortage in the Rhine-Main area . In addition to the general lack of living space, many people wanted to leave the narrow inner cities and move into an apartment in the “green”, a phenomenon that is also described as suburbanization .
The community of Schwalbach had about 4,000 inhabitants at that time, was conveniently located on the outskirts of Frankfurt and had large land owned by the state. The state-owned development agency Nassauische Heimstätte therefore chose Schwalbach as the location for a residential city in the country, which should take into account the latest findings in modern urban planning . A nationwide architectural competition was supposed to determine the best design. The winner was Reichow, who previously helped build Wolfsburg and planned the famous Sennestadt near Bielefeld. Reichow was also one of the most important planning theorists of the post-war period; his work Die Autogerechte Stadt (1959) had a great influence on the West German urban development of his time.
The start of construction on the Limes town was celebrated in May 1962 with a large folk festival. At the end of 1964, the first tenants moved into the residential area, which was by no means completed. Construction was not completed until August 1973 with the inauguration of the town hall. The meanwhile elevation of the mother community Schwalbach to the city (with 13,900 inhabitants at the time) on May 9, 1970 was the high point of a rapid development.
Structure of the Limes city
Reichow was a supporter of an organic art of urban architecture that united the city and nature into an " urban landscape unit". Numerous green areas structure the settlement. The footpaths and bike paths are separate from the streets.
The main access is via a ring road ( east and west ring ). From this, ten spur streets branch off inwards, the outer buildings are just as close to the ring. The backbone of the leaf-shaped facility is formed by a park with a continuous footpath and bike path ( Mittelweg , figuratively the "leaf stalk"), which is connected to the ring road and the turning hammers of the spur roads by further footpaths.
The north-east boundary of the residential area is an allotment garden, the north-west the Schwalbacher Wald, the south-west another park ( Europapark ) with a sports field and swimming pool (closed since 2001, reopened as a natural pool in 2014). In the southeast, at the transition to the old Schwalbach, the market square , is the entire public infrastructure of the residential town: kindergartens, schools, youth center, Protestant and Catholic church, shopping center, S-Bahn station, post office, library and town hall. The design of the market square was the result of another architectural competition.
Around a third of the buildings are single-family houses, especially in the north of the settlement. To the south, the building density increases and increases, up to the former Black Giant , a monumental high-rise residential building on the market square, which has meanwhile exchanged its famous black facade for a lighter and more colorful one.
Limesspange and Limesbahn
The name Limesstadt was a working title that was ultimately retained due to Roman finds and its good marketability. The Upper German-Raetian Limes ran more than 10 kilometers north of Schwalbach through the high Taunus . The name was also applied to the two major transport projects with which the Limes city at the southern end was developed: the Limesspange expressway and the Limesbahn , now part of the Rhine-Main S-Bahn as S3 .
Web links
- City of Schwalbach via the Limes city
swell
- ↑ Schwalbacher Perspektiven - Altenplan - The demographic upheaval and its consequences for the city. Study commissioned by the city of Schwalbach am Taunus, 2005
Coordinates: 50 ° 9 ′ N , 8 ° 31 ′ E