Fremtidens by- og landskabsudvikling omkring motorvejen

This text is based on a contribution to "The City, the Road and the Landscape" a research project by the Danish Road Directorate, Aalborg University and Danish Forest & Landscape. The purpose of the project was to develop a spatial strategy for the future planning of the Danish motorway network. The illustrations are done by the authors as part of the project. The Danish highway net has been extended during  the last 15 years. Missing stretches has been completed and new routes added. The most important additions have been the Great Belt Bridge connecting Zealand and Funen and the Oresund Bridge connecting Denmark and Sweden. This development has connected the various parts of Denmark tighter together and has resulted in increasing traffic. The higher mobility has created more complex commuting patterns. More people travel longer than before and the highway has become an integrated part of the urbanization of Denmark.  The increasing traffic has also made it attractive for businesses to locate themselves along the highway in order to use the accessibility and exposure provided by the infrastructure. This has especially been the case between Aarhus and  Fredericia in Jutland and in the Copenhagen area. The landscape is undergoing changes as well due to changing methods of cultivation, forestation, and environmental initiatives. This changes the carefully planned relation between the highway and the surrounding landscape.  Traditionally the highways have been planned to run through the open countryside connecting well defined cities. This planning has to some extend inspired by the theories of car based urbanism from the sixties such as "Man-Made America, Chaos or control" by Christopher Tunnard & Boris Pushkarev, 1963, "The View from the Road" by Donald Appleyard, Kevin Lynch & John Myer, 1964 or the Danish "Motorveje i Landskabet" ("Highways in the landscape) by Michael Varming, 1970. It might be necessary to develop new theories today in order to deal with the changing relations between the highway and its surroundings. There is a need for negotiating the viewpoints of national planning authorities trying to maintain the open landscape around the highway and of the local planning authorities seeking to exploit the accessibility of the highway in order to promote commercial  areas. The notion of field conditions of the American architect Stan Allen might be an inspiration to such an approach. Allen describes field conditions as ‘loosely bound aggregates characterised by porosity and local interconnectivity'. Likewise Rem Koolhaas has employed the notion of the picturesque to describe the chaotic urban growth in the Chinese Pearl River Delta. The picturesque is taken over from romantic aesthetic theories where it is used to describe the quality of diverse elements brought forcefully together. Allen and Koolhaas are seeking planning strategies that are able to deal with unpredictable future events. Similar strategies might be useful in order to deal with the difficult field conditions surrounding the highways. At the same time it might be possible to develop new typologies for the commercial enclaves along the highway. It might be done by developing alternative physical and visual relations between the highway and the surrounding commercial areas. It might involve the development of commercial building typologies capable of exposing the businesses in new ways. New types of trades such as service trades will make it possible to organize the commercial areas more compactly. The motto behind this pragmatic approach to the highway might then be "We build to keep clear".