Reconstruction/Disaster Planning: Germany

Abstract

The Nazis adopted and further developed the existing German planning system of the 1920s according to their ideological and political aims. During the war, planning for reconstruction became one of their topics. After 1945, West German cities therefore were able to start rebuilding programmes quite quickly, based on a mixture of these plans and common (allied) planning knowledge. ‘Automobile’ and ‘neighborhood’ became the leading criteria for suburbia, but ‘sun, green and space in a functional city’ (Athens Charter) were also seen as remedies for the detested nineteenth-century city with its medieval core. For cities of rubble, modernization finally usually was welcome. East German cities were treated differently. Here priority was given to building up a new economic system and the private market was abolished. Town planning schemes had to follow a traditional style dictated by Moscow. Only after Stalin's death could the German Democratic Republic turn to a modern functionalistic urban layout while faced by a dramatic housing need. Consequently, the prefabricated multistorey blocks of apartments were developed and built in the urban fringes, while the inner city areas were decaying—which finally became one reason for the people's rights movement.