In an article entitled "The Miracle of Hanover" in 1959, the magazine "Der Spiegel" raved about the "highway-like, intersection-free streets over which long-distance and through traffic hums without speed limits".

The topic of the text was the strategy of the influential city planning officer Rudolf Hillebrecht, who used the severe war damage in the Lower Saxony state capital to build a "car-friendly city" there that should become an example for other cities.

Reinhard Bingener

Political correspondent for Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Bremen based in Hanover.

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Now Hanover wants to carry the torch forward again in German urban development, but in the opposite direction: According to Mayor Belit Onay, Hanover should become the “blueprint” for an ecological mobility turnaround.

The Greens politician, who was elected in 2019, emphasizes that he is not just concerned with pushing combustion engines out of the city and distributing the free space to pedestrians and cyclists.

The goal is broader.

The inner city of Hanover should have a higher quality of life and more climate resilience.

The plan published on Tuesday promises a number of changes: in the long term, there should no longer be traffic lights or multi-lane roads within the inner city ring road.

Cars should be able to drive further into the city center.

There, however, they should only be guided via dead-end streets into the parking garages, which have not yet been fully utilized.

"We want to prevent driving through and cruising around," announces city planning officer Thomas Vielhaber.

In the long term, Hillebrecht's large inner city ring road, which, according to Vielhaber, separates the city from the surrounding residential areas like an aisle, is also to be touched.

More trees, more benches, more bodies of water

There is also a need for action around the main train station, as this area probably accounts for a large part of the city's moderate image.

In the 1970s, city planners created a shopping promenade there that leads below street level from the main train station to the city center.

However, this moat is suffering from increasing vacancies.

Instead of such "minus one levels", Stadtbaurat Vielhaber wants to strengthen the "zero level" again.

Everywhere in the city there should be more trees, more benches, more water areas.

For heat periods, fogging is also being considered.

The representative squares in front of the opera and the market church could particularly benefit.

In the long term, the green mayor also sees opportunities for the city's retailers, who have previously reacted with reservations.

The shift in shopping to the Internet is more likely to threaten medium-sized centers than large cities.

But in Hanover, too, two out of three of the large department stores of the Karstadt Group will soon be closed.

"Vacancy is like an infectious disease," warns Onay, and Stadtbaurat Vielhaber adds that there is a dangerous "retail monostructure" in Hanover, because the city of 500,000 with its huge catchment area has so far had very high sales.

This could now fall on the city's toes, fears the wealthy and advises going back to the functional diversity of the European city instead.