Hi, r/askhistorians! I recently read Albert Speer's "Inside the Third Reich" which lead me to read his wikipedia article on which I found this little tidbit:
"Another legacy was the Arbeitsstab Wiederaufbau zerstörter Städte (Working group on Reconstruction of destroyed cities), authorized by Speer in 1943 to rebuild bombed German cities to make them more livable in the age of the automobile. Headed by Wolters, the working group took a possible military defeat into their calculations. The Arbeitsstab's recommendations served as the basis of the postwar redevelopment plans in many cities, and Arbeitsstab members became prominent in the rebuilding."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Speer#Architectural_legacy
This idea was really interesting to me but I dont have enough interest to slog through a translation of the German book it cites.
I am particularly interested in the idea that plans that were devised in Germany were utilized in cities they had taken part in destroying. Did the French, English, and Italian governments utilize the members of the German committee? What other (potentially more recent) urban planning efforts have drawn from the efforts of the Arbeitsstab?
Thank you in advance!
Architecture and the technical details of post-WWII Wiederaufbau aren't really my strength, but of course I've heard of Speer's Arbeitsstab before. Literature particularly on the Arbeitsstab seems to be entirely in German. The German Wikipedia article on the group has a list of members. All of them were active in the reconstruction of their respective communities after the war and they were certainly influenced by the planning of the Arbeitsstab.
The almost total destruction of German cities was viewed as a chance to construct urban communities more fit to the modern world of individual motorization -- a concept known in Germany as autogerechte Stadt (lit. "city suitable for cars"). Urban planners took the chance to get rid of the narrow alleyways, dead ends etc. typical of centuries-old cities, making way for larger arterial roads and parking lots. Meanwhile, the construction of new residential areas was to be plain, functional, and suburban in position, following concepts envisioning a stricter separation of use and function of urban areas. Examples of this in Germany were the concept of lockere Bebauung ("low density area") and auf der grünen Wiese ("on green meadows") which you can easily spot in many suburban residential areas in West-German cities: multi-storey residential buildings separated by medium-sized lawns. Unfortunately much of German post-war architecture is nowadays seen as "cold" ugly concrete blocks.
However, as far as I can tell not one of the members was active as an architect or urban planner outside of Germany after the war.