Toward a Trans-European Petroleumscape: Architectural and Urban Histories of Designing Automobility

Abstract

The paper examines how architects and urban planners shape connections between European land-based mobility, cities and landscapes. It investigates the development of spaces aiming to link auto mobility 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 paper also explores the role of urban planning and architecture 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 demonstrates 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 relates the expression of the three nodes-typologies in various national contexts to overarching approaches concerning urban transformation within a trans-European network.