The emergence of the car-oriented city: Entanglements and transfer agents in West-Berlin,East-Berlin and Lyon,1945–75

Introduction

Expanding automobile urban infrastructure was one of the key strategies in urban reconstruction in the industrialised countries as part of the urban renewal order of the 1950s and 1960s. ¹ But whereas the planning model of a “car-oriented city” circulated in the transnational discourse of experts, the concepts that were developed for the regulation of the car traffic showed big differences in European countries and cities.

In the case of divided Berlin, historians have found out that in the fields of architecture and urban planning, generally speaking there was a considerable exchange of knowledge through the Iron Curtain. ² But when it comes to traffic infrastructure and planning for urban mobility, a traditional picture of a strong separation prevails: West-Berlin is deemed – and today deplored – as having been a “car-oriented” city, shaped by the Federal Republic’s car mania and an enthusiastic copying of the USA-example. In opposition to that, East-Berlin’s planning is identified with a rejection of individual motor traffic and a strict orientation on the Moscow model that privileges representation of the socialist state in urban space. This article argues that the planning model of the “car-oriented city”, too, trespassed the dividing wall, ³ and it was common by planners in both parts of Berlin, being all of them involved in the transnational professional discourse.

Assuming this background, the driving questions for this paper are thus: How did they participate, and which positions did the planners in the West and in the East adopt towards the transnationally circulating model? What impact did it have on their own plans?

Using different sources, these questions will be investigated focusing on the (i) reception, (ii) appropriation and (iii) transformation of the planning model “car-oriented city” by three leading urban planners who were key figures of Berlin’s urban reconstruction in post-Second World War period. To open up the European dimension, the city of Lyon will complement the analysis of West- and East-Berlin as a French reference case. France is especially suitable for comparison because it is a Western country with a considerable motor industry, but also with strong influence of the central state on urbanism showing structural similarities with Eastern Bloc countries. Despite the differences in scale and status, Lyon was chosen not only because of its reputation as France’s s most “car-friendly” city, but also because, just like in Berlin, the local government undertook a profound restructuring of the city centre in the 1960s.

Together with the surrounding communities, Lyon was to become a “regional metropolis” of European importance with up to three million inhabitants. An improvement of the traffic connections played a central role in this transformation. Moreover, the exchange of planning knowledge with West-Berlin contributed to the realisation of its famous multi-modal traffic construction Centre d’Echanges de Perrache in 1976.

Planning experts as transfer agents

With the growing historical interest in the relationship between societies and their (material) infrastructure, traffic planning became a focus of urban history in the beginning of the twenty-first century. ⁴ In this context the role of experts in car traffic infrastructure and their transnational exchange of knowledge has also been highlighted. Especially the diffusion of planning expertise from the USA to European countries became a main field of research. ⁵ However, the dominance of USA-influence seems to simplify and obscure the manifold ways of exchange and the circulation of the planning model “car-oriented city” between other countries, including the Eastern Bloc. A helpful starting base for the comparison of the influence of the planning model in Swiss and East- and West-German cities was set by Ueli Haefeli and Barbara Schmucki. ⁶ Other researchers have shown the ambivalent attitude of planners in different European countries towards the effects of growing motorisation way before the 1970s. ⁷

Despite these and other studies, the viewpoint of anti-car-activists of the 1970s with its black-and-white antagonisms that oppose the “car” and “humans” in cities still dominate even the scholarly debates today. ⁸ But, in a critical perspective, even the key term “car-oriented city” is a product of this tradition: Although it was introduced by a book on urban planning in 1959, ⁹ it was widely used only ex post as a critical term.

It is therefore necessary to begin with an analysis of the planning guidelines followed by planners in both parts of Berlin and Lyon to identify the influence of transnationally circulating planning knowledge on local “car-oriented” structures. A key concept evoked by planners in all three cities is the “disentanglement” of traffic, a spatial separation of the different means and speeds of traffic. This concept, it will be shown, combines functionalist ideas from classical modern urbanism with the model of density characteristic for the 1960’s discourse on urbanism.

Another danger is that predominating narratives springing from the car-critical tradition level out local differences: Even if general trends have been identified correctly, this does not have to mean they had the same impact at the same time on all places alike. ¹⁰

The recognition of the importance of the local level in the transnational circulation of urban planning helped to establish a model of the circulation process as a variable and divers one, in opposition to one-way flow of information. ¹¹ Especially in the field of mobility and traffic planning, transnational exchange played an important role for the reputation of experts, whose image as apolitical professionals allowed them to gather knowledge even across the ideological borders of the system confrontation. ¹²

For studying the influence of the “car-oriented city” on Berlin’s and Lyon’s development, the model of “circulation and appropriation” presented by Mikael Hård and Thomas J. Misa provides a helpful theoretical framework. ¹³ According to their hypothesis the transnational circulation of ideas stimulated homogeneity, whereas the processes of appropriating these transnational models according to local needs triggered difference and originality. As a result, internationally discussed models did not automatically “land” in places but had to be modified, promoted and implemented by local actors who worked as mediators between the transnational flow of the discourses and the interests and ideas of urban communities in the individual city.

As “transfer agents” these stakeholders have been given a key function in the concept of policy transfer by Eugene McCann and Kevin Ward. ¹⁴ Those transfer agents could hold various positions within or outside the planning apparatus and operate in structures of given conditions, institutions and – sometimes conflicting – interests. ¹⁵ Inspired by this concept, this article will focus on three transfer agents involved in the process of circulation and appropriation of the “car-oriented city”: Werner Düttmann in West-, Hans Gericke in East-Berlin and Charles Delfante in Lyon were the heads of urban planning in the three cities concerned. Whether they ever communicated directly with one another in the studied period of time is not recorded. They might have attended the same international conferences; they probably took notice at least of the works carried out under the other’s responsibility. But the three planners surely were connected through the transnational experts’ discourse they all participated in, leading to a convergence of their respective projects planned and carried out. All architects by training, they acted as mediators between the specialists working in and the politicians in charge of the administration. To put the transfer agents with their conceptual work and transnational activities in the centre means to a certain extent to neglect the multiple other forces that form traffic space in cities. Political decisions with effects on traffic building, lobbies’ influences, financial incentives and shortcomings, economical demands and the ceaseless bureaucratic work of the administrations concerned will only appear at the margins of this article, although their influence can never be overestimated.

Setting the course for motor traffic in post-war West-Berlin

After the Second World War, the debates about the reconstruction of Berlin began with a model of a future city whose base were big arteries for motor traffic: The so-called Collective Plan, designed 1946 by a team of architects led by Hans Scharoun, suggested a complete remodelling of the city into functionally differentiated cells connected by a rectangular network of highways. ¹⁶ Although a realisation of the Collective Plan was never earnestly intended, the vision of a renewed Berlin with a modern infrastructure for individual motor traffic remained formative.

This became apparent in the successive reconstruction of the district of Charlottenburg that was developed as the new centre of the Western part of the divided city. A 1947 competition produced far-reaching plans envisaging flyovers, tunnels and highways cutting through the urban fabric. ¹⁷ Again, only fragments were carried out. But in 1955, a central traffic junction was remodelled into the gigantic roundabout of Ernst-Reuter-Platz for constant motorised flow. ¹⁸ Nearby, West-Berlinʼs most important prestige project in traffic infrastructure, an urban highway, was launched. Already in the post-war edition of the Athenʼs Charter, critically revised by CIAM-architects in 1948/49 and published in German in the influential journal Bauwelt, the backward condition of European city streets had been lamented and wider roads exclusively for car traffic demanded. ¹⁹ Since then, traffic experts and the car lobby did not cease to call for urban reconstruction in favour of motor traffic and especially road building. US-American cities were their central point of reference. ²⁰ German traffic planners operated with traffic statistics from the USA assuming they represented the Federal Republic of Germanyʼs (FRG) future. ²¹ The car lobby promoted bursaries for engineers and study tours for politicians to the USA and published aerial photographs of elaborate traffic architecture. ²²

Now, although the motorisation rate in 1955 was still a modest 1:23, West-Berlin was one of the first European cities to construct an urban highway – planned, of course, still with the idea of a whole ring including the Eastern part of the city in mind. Despite ever-escalating political tensions and opposing ideals in architecture, street planning remained a field where experts in East and West continued to rely on a comprehensive traffic plan for their projects. ²³

This consent also served as a base for an urban planning competition called “Capital Berlin” in 1957, organised by the West-Berlin Senate, the city’s government, alone. Responsible for the competition was the administration for building and housing, led since 1955 by senator Rolf Schwedler, a civil engineer by training. ²⁴ Schwedler was also the head of traffic planning and in the context of the competition, he laid special stress on building a new traffic infrastructure as a foundation for all other projects. ²⁵ The demands of modern car traffic made necessary a fundamental reconstruction of the city structure, especially in the centre, Schwedler explained. But instead of car mania, defensiveness characterised the senator’s attitude: A restoration of the old city centre would lead to unmanageable congestion or to a desertion due to parking problems. American cities and “European metropolises” served Schwedler as examples, albeit warning ones, as he focused on “the dangers of modern traffic for cities”. But, according to the senator, these dangers could be averted: with a “real disentanglement” of the different means of traffic. ²⁶ This model included not only new streets, but also the extension of the underground railway. ²⁷

The key figure of West-Berlin’s urban renewal: “Senatsbaudirektor” Werner Düttmann

For the implementation of the “disentanglement” planning model, senator Schwedler recruited a new head architect (“Senatsbaudirektor”) in 1960: Werner Düttmann thus held the most important position in city planning during West-Berlinʼs urban renewal period until his resignation in 1966. Düttmann bypassed the usual career tracks after having worked in the administration’s lower ranks for some years. There he had been responsible for the design of the centre of the huge new roundabout Ernst-Reuter-Platz. Parallel to his administrative job, the architect had pursued his own projects and became well-known for his contributions to the great International Building Exhibition in West-Berlin’s Hansaviertel (Interbau) in 1957. Moreover, traffic architecture played no small role in Düttmann’s portfolio: Besides the roundabout, he had co-designed a tower for traffic control on West-Berlinʼs shopping boulevard Kurfürstendamm, and for the Interbau an entrance to an underground station combined with a library. Contemporary press articles expressed hope that Düttmann would improve the architectural quality of traffic building. ²⁸ Among his colleagues, Düttmann was known to be a passionate driver. ²⁹

Although he didn’t develop projects outside Berlin, Düttmann stood out because of his international competence. He had studied urban planning in Great Britain, worked with US-architect Hugh Stubbins on the (in)famous Berlin Congress Hall (collapsed in 1980) and undertook several study tours abroad, as the press pointed out. ³⁰ Also, his work was early recognised internationally. ³¹

Central to Düttmannʼs thoughts was a particular concept of urbanity shaped by density of building and of “content”, which the architect defined as “material and intellectual production”. ³² In his vision of urban life, a large number of cars played a vital role, ³³ even if that meant traffic jams at peak hours. ³⁴ To preserve urban density, Düttmann could even find a positive aspect in the division of Berlin: “Several German cities would need to be walled in so that they are forced to tidy up inside and do not overgrow the countryside”, he polemized. ³⁵ US-American cities also served him as a negative example. Though Düttmann, too, feared the danger of a “traffic heart attack” that had “killed” numerous cities “in all civilised countries”. ³⁶ He warned of suburban development like in the U.S.A.: “We believe to know that this way out is not a way”. ³⁷ Instead, Düttmann advocated a “planning model for the re-organisation of our city, organisations that preserve the inherited, vital character of this city while being able to take account of the changes in our technical, economic and social relations”. ³⁸

In Düttmann’s time of office road building took off. The urban highway system was continued, streets were enlarged and the tramway replaced by buses. Senator Schwedlerʼs approach of “disentanglement” was continued, providing infrastructure for smooth flow of cars by spatial separation of the different traffic means and speeds. The first spectacular building was the Rudolf-Wissel-Bridge, a 950-meter-long part of the urban highway much praised for its elegance. ³⁹

A good example of the “disentanglement” planning model provides the further restructuring of the new city centre of West-Berlin. The Boulevard Kurfürstendamm now had direct access to the highway. But measures were taken to avert thorough-traffic from the most commercially used part. A parallel street was enlarged and redirected as a relief road, cutting through grown city fabric. ⁴⁰ Connecting streets also were enlarged. A footbridge allowed shoppers to cross the Boulevard safely and nearby a new tunnel allowed fast transit by car. ⁴¹ All tramway rails in the area were successively dismantled until 1967.

Still, the building senator and his right hand were less embracing of modern motor mobility than it seems in hindsight. Their attitude was instead also marked by worry and caution. “The challenge for man is to master technology and to keep his human dignity in the process. That is a problem urbanism has to deal with”, Schwedler declared. ⁴² Already in the early 1960s, Düttmann assured: “[S]erving a megacity exclusively by individual transport is neither possible nor desirable”. ⁴³ Following the disentanglement-model, the underground railway as “comfortable and effective” modern mass transport was deemed the perfect complement of intensive road building. ⁴⁴ Consequently, the centre west got a new underground line to complete the overground traffic buildings.

Transnational dimensions of West-Berlinʼs traffic planners and plans in the 1960s

Düttmannʼs balancing act between accommodating growing car traffic, embraced as modern and urban, and preventing it from marginalising other urban functions had a double international dimension. First, the modernisation of Berlinʼs infrastructure served to support the plannerʼs claim of placing Berlin as the rightful German capital among the important metropolises of the world, despite its economical and building backlog, and despite the division. Second, while emphasising their awareness of the dangers of growing motor traffic, planning officials gave a confident impression of adopting the best possible solution. This argument gained authority by transnational expertise that Düttmann referred to: For a pedestrian shopping zone in a new housing district Düttmann got inspiration from Swedish planning, to predict the future development of motor traffic he relied on the British expert Colin Buchanan, ⁴⁵ and to silence critics he bragged about his personal acquaintance with the prominent critic of American urban renewal Jane Jacobs. ⁴⁶ West-Berlin planners attended international conferences to present and discuss their projects. Within this strategy, the USA continued to have a special role as representing the FRGʼs possible future. Not only the car lobby, but also the public administration of Berlin sent experts there to study urban traffic infrastructure. Unlike the lobby organisations’ delegates, and contrary to the interpretation of established research, ⁴⁷ the Berlin Senateʼs experts reinforced the ambivalent image of the head planners: The car infrastructure they visited they deemed exemplary, but they warned of the fatal consequences for cities if cars remained the only means of transport. ⁴⁸

One of the solutions to connect infrastructure made for car traffic and public transport the experts had studied in the USA they directly transferred to Berlin: After the wall had been built in 1961, West-Berliners were discouraged to use the urban railway because it was run by the East-German transport company. To replace this important means of transport, bus lines ran on the urban highway and even stops were built on it, just like the travelling experts had seen in Detroit. ⁴⁹ As ideological as the treatment of the urban railway was the attitude towards East-Berlinʼs planning. Although for traffic infrastructure, Western planners continued to rely on the arrangements made with their counterparts in the East, in public they demonstratively ignored any concrete planning and building in the other part, contenting themselves with references to clichés like the monumentality of state-socialist architecture. ⁵⁰

However, a less biased look over the border reveals striking similarities in the traffic planning model and its underlying assumptions and concepts.

Hans Gericke in East-Berlin: Planning a car-oriented capital of the German Democratic Republic

This became apparent in East-Berlinʼs plans for the centre of the capital of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The East-Berlin magistrate paralleled the “Capital Berlin”-competition in the West with an international competition for the new socialist city centre in 1958. In the same year, a new city architect was appointed: Hans Gericke, who had been town council in the central district Mitte and occupied an influential position in the Building Academy of the GDR before holding the office of the head architect from 1958 to 1965, almost simultaneously to Düttmann, and under the same terms of a radical modernisation of the city. ⁵¹

Long-term vice-president of the GDRʼs Architects League, Gericke influenced architecture in Eastern Germany mostly through his theoretical work. He engaged in the transnational exchange of planning knowledge and was, for example, a regular participant of the congresses of the Union Internationale des Architectes. At least as much as the professional debates Gericke valued the first-hand insights he gained from visiting the cities that hosted the congresses. In professional and mass journals he then reported about the urbanistic problems and solutions in capitalist countries. ⁵²

After the competition for a new centre, Hans Gericke was responsible for a synthesis of the winning designs with the demands of the political leaders. It was his task to consolidate the plans for a centre both representative and functional, including traffic planning, and to coordinate the work of the architectʼs collectives and administrative departments involved.

Despite the small number of private cars, the danger of a car traffic “hypertrophy”, a collapse through uncontrollable growth, looming over the future centre was a central concern to GDR-planners. ⁵³ Like their colleagues in the West, they developed their concept from a defensive position that must have had its roots in the perception of experiences made elsewhere – in the developed capitalist countries.

The solution East German planners found to prevent a possible collapse based on the principle of disentanglement, “the separation or at least decongestion”, of the different means and speeds of traffic. ⁵⁴ Public transport was put more central than in West-Berlin, but the Eastern planners also were convinced that it needed to be removed from the surface and instead should run above or below the ground. The tramway was to be successively dismantled in favour of urban and underground railway, complemented by more bus lines. ⁵⁵ Bypass roads should secure fast access to the centre while keeping thorough-traffic off smaller streets. In the land-use plan following this planning, there is even direct access to an urban highway designated from the edges of the centre. ⁵⁶ Relief roads were envisaged to secure the cultural and commercial functions in other streets. ⁵⁷ Moreover, in the final version of the planning, approved by the magistrate in 1961, an adjustment had been made and the future motorisation rate now conformed to that planned with in West-Berlin: 1:5. ⁵⁸

Inspirations for modern traffic planning from beyond the wall in 1960’s East-Berlin

The look over the wall became an integrated part of traffic studies and planning in the GDR and East-Berlin ⁵⁹ in the decade of radically modern plans for the capital. ⁶⁰ Descriptions of traffic in capitalist cities served similar means as West-Berlin plannersʼ reference to the U.S.A. First, in terms of technical equipment and the supply of individual cars, the conditions observed there were interpreted as the GDRʼs future. Second, the effects of a mobility relying on individual motor traffic on cities were used as a warning and thus a reason for urban reconstruction. ⁶¹ What follows, though, reminds readers again strongly of the arguments produced in West-Berlin. The author stated a discrepancy between the growing need for mobility and the existing traffic infrastructure, just as Düttmann had done. ⁶² Eastern planners agreed with their Western counterparts that the only solution could be the construction of new infrastructure and “never a restriction of the demands”. ⁶³ A comment by Hans Gericke makes clear that the plans were aimed at road building, and not only, as often assumed for the GDR, at public transport. ⁶⁴

Although confined to compliance with the official goals of real existing state socialism, Gericke promoted an understanding of urbanity similar to Düttmann’s, which combined elements of classical modern urbanism ⁶⁵ with visions of “the vibrant life of a new time”. ⁶⁶ “Life itself”, Gericke wrote, “instructs us planners to understand urbanism as a humanistic challenge that is more than just the mechanisation of the multiple functions in a city”. ⁶⁷ Like the younger generation of modern architects in the West, Gericke favoured a planning model generating urban density. He used descriptions of the suburban sprawl around London ⁶⁸ and in capitalist countries in general ⁶⁹ to warn his colleagues in the GDR not to exercise too strict a separation of the urban functions. The bleakness of the suburbs, he reported from abroad, went along with a traffic collapse in the centres. Gericke had no doubt that in a couple of years the number of private cars in the GDR would approach Western standards. ⁷⁰ But in his argumentation, the backlog concerning car-production turned into an advantage, as it gave GDR-planners time to pick and realise traffic solutions from other countries that would avoid the detrimental effects of modern mobility. The comparison with the promising approaches and the noxious effects of capitalist urbanism were used to justify the choices his administration had made for Berlin.

The model aspired on both sides of the wall in the 1960s was an integrated mobility system with efficient public transport that would take up most of the commuter traffic, and a general possession of private cars, but which would be used mostly for leisure and special occasions. In urban space, this was expressed by a disentanglement of the traffic means, not least a differentiation of the urban road network, as Gericke pointed out, presenting the GDR-version of the shared planning model to an international audience. ⁷¹

Of course, concerning urban and traffic planning there was also regular exchange between the experts within the Eastern Bloc. The discussions there were clearly influenced by transnationally circulating models, and the solutions approved in Moscow tended to converge with those favoured in Western European countries. ⁷² The dismantling of the East-Berlin tramway was repeatedly encouraged by Soviet Union planners and then presented to a French audience, ⁷³ who had themselves seen tramways long banned from their cities.

A cosmopolitan functionary: Charles Delfante as head architect of Lyon in the 1960s

In Lyon, tramways had already been dismantled by 1956. But the great reconstruction into what was known to be Franceʼs most car-oriented city was yet to come. In 1957, Louis Pradel became mayor and was confirmed in office in the following three elections. Critics accuse him to have reigned as “car-friendly mayor” for two decades until his death in 1976. ⁷⁴

Whereas the reputation of the Lyon city authorities was in this concern similar to West-Berlin, the strong influence of the central state evokes the administrative situation in East-Berlin. Charles Delfante as the leading figure in Lyonʼs urban planning had in fact been sent to the city by the French ministry of construction to become the head of the bureau of urbanism, a joint institution by the central state and the city with far-reaching competences. ⁷⁵ Before coming to Lyon in 1961, Delfante had worked as a freelance architect and as an urban planner in different cities for the ministry. In Lyon he was head planner until 1978.

Three major projects marked Delfanteʼs work in Lyon: the foundation of a planning and administrative area including the city and the surrounding municipalities; Grand Lyon, the reconstruction of Lyonʼs central area with the creation of a new administrative and commercial quarter; and the progressive reorganisation of the traffic system with an urban highway at its heart.

To obtain inspiration for these far-reaching projects, Delfante and his staff travelled all over Europe and to the U.S.A. to study the urbanistic solutions there. ⁷⁶ As a long-time editor of the influential journal Urbanisme, Delfante stayed well-informed about the transnational plannersʼ discourse and the realisations it bore elsewhere. He also actively sought information from other European countries, especially Germany, when it came to traffic planning: He requested pictures of a model for an urban highway from the city of Nuremberg ⁷⁷ and studied the “car-oriented” town of Sennestadt, planned by the creator of the term, Hans Bernhard Reichow. ⁷⁸

Urban development in the U.S.A. Delfante saw as an alarming example, whose “slavery to the automobile” needed to be avoided. ⁷⁹ Warned by this anti-model, Delfante declared to always put the character of Lyon first before the demands of traffic. ⁸⁰

This was a daring point of view, as the urban renewal he planned was profound. Lyon was the first French city to place its complete historic centre under a preservation order in 1964. But the rest of the city became the object of extensive restructuring measures. The commercial centre on the Presqu’île (half-island) between the rivers Saône and Rhone was deemed insufficient. As a decongestion measure, a second centre on the left bank of the Rhone, La Part-Dieu, was planned on old military terrain. While Part-Dieu was adapted to motor traffic from the beginning, the Presqu’île became subsequently equipped with wider streets and new parkings. In his concepts, Charles Delfante showed himself adherent of the transnationally circulating “disentanglement”-model: Fast was separated from slower traffic and parking space transferred to the lower level on the river banks or below ground under a square, allowing pedestrian use on the surface. ⁸¹ Lyonʼs head planner used the international character of the planning model as an argument to win the public for the transformation: “All experts in the whole world are convinced that a hierarchisation of the different means of traffic and the spatial separation of the flows of traffic are absolutely necessary”, he wrote. ⁸²

Connecting the Berlin philharmonic to Lyon’s traffic hub Perrache: The transfer agent René Gagès

Since the 1950s, the National Roads Administration had demanded a car-tunnel underneath Lyonʼs characteristic hillside for a smoother flow of regional traffic. ⁸³ The city authorities long were reluctant towards such plans but had to change their attitude when in the second half of the 1960s a motorway was built to connect Paris and Marseille. The new motorway passed directly through Lyonʼs centre, leaving its use as an urban highway within the cityʼs premises an obvious solution. Faced with a growing number of inhabitants and cars and the need for better connections to the surrounding communities, finally the interests of Lyonʼs urban planners and the national roads administration’s experts converged: ⁸⁴ The motorway through the centre was built with a tunnel, inaugurated in 1972. A huge multimodal traffic building completed the motorwayʼs cut through the Presqu’île: The hub Lyon-Perrache comprises six levels above and below ground and houses the highway, a bus and coach terminal, a train station, parking and shopping decks, and on the top floor a public garden with a kindergarten. Nowadays, the underground and tramway also stop there.

This buildingʼs history complements the picture of the transnational circulation of the planning model focusing on disentanglement of the different means of traffic. The transfer agents presented until now took part in the international discourse by conferences, study tours, formal and informal exchange between experts and publications, but their field of action stayed locally bound. Perrache shows how a planning concept circulated and evolved with an architect working in different places. René Gagès began his career in Lyon in 1950 and took part in the competition “Capital Berlin” in 1957. He stayed in West-Berlin and opened up a company with the German architect Volker Theißen. In 1963, he was mentioned in the competition for the planning of the new airport Berlin-Tegel with a round “circulating machine” to which the airport finally realised bears some resemblance. ⁸⁵ In the late 1960s, Gagès designed two tower blocks for a residential quarter planned by Werner Düttmann. But according to Gagès, his greatest influence was Hans Scharoun, responsible for the car-oriented “collective plan” for Berlin’s post-war reconstruction. Moreover, he named Scharounʼs modern organic Philharmonic Hall as most important inspiration for the Perrache hub. The knowing eye can detect resemblances, for example in the stanced-metal facade covering the two buildings of such different vocation. ⁸⁶

The 1970s: Farewell to the “car-oriented city”?

When the multimodal hub was inaugurated in 1976, the planning philosophy of the past two decades already underwent a critical review. In the 1970s, the “car-oriented city” suddenly became a term frequently used by planners, but as something they distanced themselves from. In line with the new trend Delfante assured his Lyon audience, that abroad “everyone knows that public transport is the way to salvation for big cities” ⁸⁷ and in West-Berlin even traffic planners started to see motor traffic as a nuisance to city life. ⁸⁸

The focus of the public critique was the carsʼ consumption of urban space. The modification of the planning model to answer to the double challenge of changing demands concerning public space and the accommodation of still growing motorisation was again a transnational process. In contrast to the common narrative, the resulting planning model was no turnaround, but a continuation of the planning concept of disentanglement, as the example of pedestrian zones shows.

In Lyon, while the Perrache hub was planned, the whole Presqu’île centre underwent reconstruction. Along with a de-densification and an improvement of the roads, Delfante used the opportunity to push a project that had begun to take shape years before: In post-war modern urbanism, locomotion by foot was charged with meaning and referred to the possibility of spontaneous encounters and community-building. Since the 1960s, most new urban developments included traffic-free open spaces. Sharing these ideas, Delfante had also mentioned the “virtues of marching by foot” in articles on future urbanism. ⁸⁹

When public opinion turned against the effects of car traffic in cities, Lyonʼs head planner launched his plans for establishing a pedestrian zone right in the centre. Again, international examples served as an inspiration and as an argument to convince Lyonʼs citizens, again German cities were his major point of reference. Preparing the ban of cars from the central commercial street, Delfante inquired about the design of pedestrian streets from the city of Cologne, ⁹⁰ ordered an advance-study for Lyon including experiences in Munich ⁹¹ and went on a study tour visiting several cities in the Ruhr area. ⁹² In articles and speeches Delfante then presented the examples as models of progressive urbanism that Lyon had to follow if it wanted to stand up to international standards. ⁹³

Lyonʼs pedestrian street opened in 1975, shortly after the very first pedestrian street in France was inaugurated in Rouen. In numerous lectures and articles Delfante evaluated the Lyon experience with pedestrian zones and fed them back into the transnational expert’s discourse. ⁹⁴

But the novelty of the pedestrian zone meant no renunciation, but instead an intensification of the disentanglement planning model. “The car, unnecessary object in 1932 […] is today more indispensable than our underpants”, Delfante affirmed the role of individual motor traffic. ⁹⁵ Consequently, the space taken away from cars in the centre was restored to this use at its edges or invisible in buildings and underground: Elaborate garages, many designed by Delfante himself, were erected, another square equipped with an underground parking and the centre stayed walled in by high- and speedways.

The 1970s shift in the transnational expertʼs discourse did not go unnoticed by GDR-planners. In spring 1974 they reported about discussions concerning the model “car-oriented city” from an international traffic planning conference in Budapest where experts from Eastern and Western Europe met. The GDR-participants resumed that the model had been “dismissed by all participants”. ⁹⁶ Self-confidence spoke from the East-Berlin planner’s report on the conference, as the new emphasis on public transport and pedestrian traffic matched with GDR-urbanism. ⁹⁷ In the centre of the GDR’s capital, vast spaces were reserved for walking, as Gericke had already recommended in his concept. ⁹⁸

At the same time, East-German planners continued to interpret the higher motorised Western countries as the GDRʼs future concerning traffic. Although the motorisation rate in the GDR was still less than 1:10 in 1970, a “full motorisation” of 1:3.5 in the near future was made the basis for planning, just like in the Federal Republic that had already reached 1:4. Consequently, the creation of new parking space to cope with the expected increasing number of cars following the disentanglement-model remained of great interest to Eastern planners, as well: From the Budapest conference, they brought back the idea of a park&ride system, ⁹⁹ the Palace of the Republic was designed with the possibility of retrofitting an underground garage, and hotels and representative institutions obtained carefully designed multi-storey garages.

In West-Berlin, the disentanglement-model also continued to be realised behind the rhetoric shift. When the first pedestrian zone was opened in 1978, it was accompanied by a parallel new thoroughfare for cars with a tunnel to avoid junctions. At the central Kurfürstendamm, pedestrian traffic was given more presence by the dismantling of the pedestrian bridge and the closure of a communication road. Nearby a wasteland used for parking was remodelled into a green space with an underground garage. This shows how well the new pedestrian-friendly image went together with a more elaborate automobile infrastructure.

Conclusion

The head planners of West- and East-Berlin and Lyon took great interest in traffic planning as a central element of modern urbanism in the post-war period. Therefore, they made sure to stay informed about the latest developments of the transnationally circulating model using professional publications and formal as well as informal channels of exchange with other experts on the occasions of international conferences and the collaboration with freelance architects working in different countries. Special importance was given to the inspection of realisations of that planning model in other places on study tours and conferences visits, or simply by requesting planning material from the responsible institutions.

This did not only raise public esteem of planners as competent, but it also gave them the confidence to put forward their own positions concerning different aspects of that model and develop a version they deemed suitable for the city they worked in. Remarkably, in this process of appropriation the critique of aspects perceived as privileging car traffic played an important role even in the 1950s and 1960s. But Düttmann, Gericke and Delfante never questioned the tacit assumption that the higher motorisation rate in other countries and cities represented a future for their cities they had to deal with. Moreover, the planners used the transnational character of the planning model as an argument to implement their own concepts and squash possible oppositions against the extensive restructuring.

The planner’s ambivalent attitude towards the planning model drove all three cities to the development of a modified model focusing on “disentanglement”. This nevertheless meant the re-allocation of urban space in favour of cars. A virtue of the model was its apparent neutrality: “Disentangling” does not reveal a preference for any of the means of transport that are to be put in better order. This flexibility allowed for the planning principle to outlast the 1970s shift in traffic planning.

The similarity of the concepts adopted in both parts of Berlin and Lyon indicates that despite the ambivalent attitude shown by the transfer agents, the impact of the transnationally circulating model was more direct than the planners acknowledged. The continuity of the guiding concepts of transport planning after the head planners changed in West- and East-Berlin 1965, respectively, 1966, and the ease with which René Gagès transferred his concepts from Berlin to Lyon approve this argument.

On the other hand, all three planners gave special attention on contributing to the transnationally circulating planning model by presenting their plans and realisations on an international stage. Even East-Berlin made its planning for motor traffic a central aspect of the image distributed to a Western audience. An image recognised at least by Charles Delfante, even if late: “The only cities in the world without traffic problems are those in developed socialist countries”, he judged in 1989. ¹⁰⁰

The findings of this study show that the dynamic between the transnationally circulating planning model and the actual local realisations remains an intriguing field for further research in traffic history, especially when the complex interaction of urban and traffic planners is also taken into view, which had to be omitted here.

Likewise, the discrepancy between the propagated turn of the planning model in the 1970s and the continuity in the concepts behind, as well as the buildings realised under the different labels, demands further study – not only with regard to the formation of the urban space we live in now, but also to the traffic turn undertaken today, again called revolutionary.