The 'car-friendly city' – celebrated and extolled

The term 'car-friendly city' goes back to a book of the same name by the architect Bernhard Reichow, published in 1959: 'Ein Weg aus dem Verkehrs-Chaos. Die autogerechte Stadt' ('A way out of the traffic chaos. The car-friendly city'). When the economic miracle began, the number of cars and HGVs registered began to climb steeply. The volume of traffic in towns and cities grew accordingly, but the traffic infrastructure was not yet ready to cope with it all. Like many other German towns and cities, but even more so, the state capital of Saarland began to look as if it might suffocate in all the traffic.

With its central function – as the economic, political and cultural hub of Saarland – and the correspondingly high number of job opportunities, Saarbrücken attracted some 60,000 commuters daily. Whilst the commuter quota in the Federal Republic as a whole was 24 per cent, it was 46 per cent in Saarland because of its more rural settlement policy. Even at the end of the 1950s, traffic in the state capital was as dense as one might expect it to be in a very large city. Its location in the valley, the river running through the middle of it and the paucity of bridges and by-passes caused mile-long queues.

Now, the be-all and end-all in terms of modern urban development was gearing it to traffic that could flow, without giving any consideration to developed structures. 'Prestige instead of provinciality' was the motto: the city motorway and the Wilhelm Heinrich bridge were celebrated and extolled as milestones of progress: the 'motorway in the country' and Saarland's best 'calling card'.