The Modern German City Single Row Planning Model

Abstract

This article examines the changes in the German city’s physical structure during the first three decades of the 20th century, which finally led to a unique planning model in modern German urbanism: the single row. A systematic way of relating building and open space, a new way of ordering the city in the first German postwar period that influenced urban planning with international projection. Research is accomplished from the study of period sources, which allows an original approach that presents less extended ideas in the more general historiography of German urbanism, introducing the relevant moments for these changes and their reasons, and limiting this transformation according to chronology. The contact with the natural space, a deeply rooted desire in Germanic culture, guides the process. Also, this last stage of the urban form can be understood as a result of this idea. Over the economic factors considered decisive for the configuration of the single row system, the Zeilenbau, the intellectual or creative aspects stand out as the leading promoters of an urban form that, integrated into the green, generates the new landscape perception of the open city, the genesis of the contemporary city.