Infrastructure and Urban Development: The Case of the Amsterdam Orbital Motorway

The first European motorways were realized in countries such as Germany and Italy in the 1920s. In the 1930s these motorways were extended into interregional networks connecting cities at considerable distances. During this period the first orbital motorways were also planned around cities such as Berlin, Munich and London. It took a long time to complete these orbital motorways, and some of them were never completed. As Hall (1990) indicates the major reason for the planning of the European orbital motorways was not just the desire to remove traffic congestion. At that time roads were not yet very congested in Europe. Other motivations for building orbital motorways were the desire to reveal and reinforce the organic spatial structure of cities, and to make monumental artifacts which could serve nationalistic purposes.