Geschichte der Zukunft des Verkehrs: Verkehrskonzepte von der Fruhen Neuzeit bis zum 21. Jahrhundert

Mobility and modernity are closely associated concepts that have carried positive meanings and messages for a long time. In recent years this has changed. The public seems to have lost faith in new plans and visions of heightened mobility as environmental and social costs of transportation projects have increased. Can a retrospective review of past futuristic layouts and visions of transportation systems help to bring traffic and transportation planning into balance again? This is the question a group of historians of technology posed while reviewing important chapters in the history of traffic and transportation planning in western societies. The results of this international symposium, held at the Deutsches Museum in Munich in 1995, are now available in book form.

Geschichte der Zukunft des Verkehrs (Futuristic visions of mobility, traffic and transportation from the beginning of the modern era to the twenty-first century: A history) attempts to cover visionary thinking over four centuries. It dwells largely on the conceptualization of future transportation systems in this century, however. The volume contains sixteen articles, including an introduction by editors Hans-Liudger Dienel and Helmuth Trischler, both from prominent research institutions in Germany. Their thoughtful essay, as well as Wolfgang Behringer’s contribution about the very beginnings of modern traffic scheduling, set the tone for the volume, which is organized along several distinct themes.

The first section aims to reconstruct the changing mental maps of mobility in the modern era: traffic participation, needs, and desires as they evolved in our minds. This section is interdisciplinary in nature. Two contributions shed light on the newly discovered “joy of traveling,” from a psychological and a theological point of view respectively. The suddenly and tremendously increased traffic participation in the early railroad period—at least based on initial predictions from the late coach period—is the subject matter of a philosophical discourse on agency, technological creation, and occurrance. The most elaborate essay in this section examines mobility within an envisioned “city of villages,” another dream of eased traffic participation in the modern era. Here, authors Gert Wolfgang Heinze and Heinrich Kill offer a highly interesting close-up look at the busy and complex intersection of two academic fields, transportation technology and regional planning, which have been “driving” for solutions.

A second section focuses on failed transportation visions. It includes an analysis of the failed Zeppelin interlude and of misconceived models of aviation between 1920 and 1950. Two more sections contrast public transportation systems and individual traffic desires. The first includes analyses of the original idea of a high-speed railway network in Germany and a comparison of East and West German public transportation efforts and ideologies. In the latter, two contributions focus on the vision of a “people’s car” (Volkswagen) in Germany and a new highway system in the United States. The fifth and last section takes a critical look at current visions of traffic participation and transportation planning for the twenty-first century.

All the articles except three are in German, and the volume is largely concerned with European themes. The contributors do not merely deal with innovations and innovators in the transportation technology field but rather make an effort to elucidate the social and political changes and the values in which such futuristic visions are grounded. This makes the volume an ambitious and exciting enterprise. Can the analysis of past visions make us truly understand how a long lasting traffic and transportation infrastructure once came about? Can current visionaries learn from old mistakes? It is this perspective that gives the volume a unique touch and quality. By reviewing some of the chapters, the student in the history of technology might get more than a glimpse of what really went wrong and of what was intended in the very beginning.

Geschichte der Zukunft des Verkehrs is a remarkable, well-organized book that...