4. Planning for Mobility: Designing City Centers and New Towns in the USSR and the GDR in the 1960s

European Planning History in the 20th Century

“…In Western countries, the consequences of Modernist Movement planning principals were disparate, ranging from the virtual disappearance of trams (United Kingdom, Spain, Denmark) and a sharp decline in their presence in cities (France, Italy, Sweden) to some exceptions to this general current (Federal Republic of Germany, Austria, Netherlands), (Robbins 1985: 66). In the European countries of real socialism, the principals of the automobile city were highly developed since the mid of the 1950s (Beyer 2011;Logan 2015;Bernhardt 2017). This was followed by gradual abandonment of tramways, and their selective replacement by trolleybuses and buses in the 1960s.…”

Post‐socialist (auto)mobilities: Modernity, freedom and citizenship

“…To start with, while socialism is usually linked with modernism and modernity whereas post‐socialism is associated with post‐modernism or “liquid modernity” (Bauman, ), such division is problematic. The socialist modernity shared similarities to modernities elsewhere both across spatial and temporal borders (Beyer, ; Bodnár, ; Burrell & Hörschelmann, ). This point becomes visible in terms of automobility infrastructures.…”

“…According to Dalakoglou (), the roads had less value as providers of actual mobility than signifiers of national ambitions of socialist Albania. The socialist countries planned spacious mobility infrastructures with unhindered movement in mind in order to avoid the chaos that the high motorisation caused in capitalist cities even if the car ownership levels remained significantly lower within the Eastern Bloc (Beyer, ). Beyer (, p. 80) notes how “the high profile of ample spaces for the fast movement of cars [in 1960s urban plans in East Germany] spoke of an understanding of automobilization and road structures as attributes of a desirable modernity.” Yet those vast roads and car infrastructures (such as the multilevel motorways or “spaghetti junctions” planned in Tallinn) envisioned on urban plans remained precisely elements of desirable modernity, being often unrealised in the conditions of low car ownership.…”

“…The socialist countries planned spacious mobility infrastructures with unhindered movement in mind in order to avoid the chaos that the high motorisation caused in capitalist cities even if the car ownership levels remained significantly lower within the Eastern Bloc (Beyer, ). Beyer (, p. 80) notes how “the high profile of ample spaces for the fast movement of cars [in 1960s urban plans in East Germany] spoke of an understanding of automobilization and road structures as attributes of a desirable modernity.” Yet those vast roads and car infrastructures (such as the multilevel motorways or “spaghetti junctions” planned in Tallinn) envisioned on urban plans remained precisely elements of desirable modernity, being often unrealised in the conditions of low car ownership. Hence, the rapid motorisation since 1991 when swathes of used and new cars from Western Europe and elsewhere were allowed by governments to roll onto the streets of the post‐socialist world and cars became increasingly cheaper to acquire with an increase of income, brought those urban ringroads and intercity motorways again further up in the political agenda with EU finances often part of those projects in the name of modernising public infrastructures.…”

“…Hence, at least in terms of modernity, the socialist and capitalist societies should not be seen divided by either spatial—east/west—and temporal—socialist/post‐socialist—borders. Even if the nuances of what constitutes modernity differ across places, the Soviet society was pursuing and valuing technological and scientific progress in the same manner as capitalist societies (see also Beyer, ). Modernity with its technological progress aims to free individuals from the constraints posed by space and time and generally the physical conditions of Earth and nature.…”