Architecture and Urban Planning vis-àv-vis Infrastructural Europeanism: The E-Road Network and the Trans-European Petroleumscape

Abstract

The paper examines the role of architects and urban planners in shaping connections between European land-based mobility, cities and landscapes. It will investigate the development of spaces aiming to link automobility to the everyday experience of European citizens in different countries, adjusting their interventions to local sensibilities. For over half a century, politicians have promoted transportation and transnational mobility for commodities and individuals by planning and funding the E-road network. This attempt to link the different European nations and overcome their separate plans has reshaped the urban landscape and the territory at large. The Declaration on the Construction of Main International Traffic Arteries in 1950 sketched a system that would connect Europe from Scandinavia to Sicily. The construction of a highway system for Europe was already anticipated in 1968. The paper demonstrates how urban planning and architecture play a key role in implementing new types of mobilities promoting environmental sustainability. At the centre of the paper lie the imaginaries produced by architects and urban planners, and their vision for highways in different national contexts and for their connexions to planned new towns. Taking into account that the EU and its nations aim to overcome regimes of petroleum-based mobility and associated architectures, the paper explains how the land-based transportation of both individuals and commodities in the E-Road network functions as an actor of planetary urbanization, investigating three kinds of nodes within the E-Road network: the nodes encountered on the E-Roads, those to be found at the gates to cities, and the new structures aiming to imitate the urban dimension but proposing a novel articulation of pedestrian and automobile circulation. It aims to relate the expression of the three nodes-typologies in various national contexts - characterised by different European urban planning methods - to overarching approaches in the design of mobility. The paper is developed around two layers: a layer concerning the comparison of the conception of highways within different national contexts, including the comparison of designs for the German Autobahn, the Italian autostrada, the French autoroutes à péage etc., and a layer discussing the designs and spatial imaginaries of the E-Road network. Analysing these layers will allow a better understanding of the tensions between national visions and trans-European urbanization, combining the local with the trans-European dimension, and contributing to a new understanding of the history of Europeanization.