ABSTRACT
The aim of this work is to contribute to the history of European urban planning on a specific issue: the inter-relationship of urban public transport planning and urban planning in the European countries in the 1960s and 1970s.
During the 1960s, integrated planning in the Socialist European countries was a politically important issue within the concept of the city as an “integrated organism” and seemed possible to achieve. In this planning approach, rapid tramway was the most socially perceived tool of a theoretical-practical evolution of the consideration of transport in the city. However, a strong deployment of the automobile mode and road infrastructure, meant a prolonged interruption of tramway development.
From 1970s onwards, the rapid tram system was considered economically more appropriate for medium-sized cities. Both in Western and in Socialist European countries, after a period of tram stagnation, the choice was made to implement a tramway investment policy based on the rapid tramway.
Thus, rapid tramway started to be considered the main means in the planning of the transport system and of urban growth, having different national dynamics in the theoretical advances and in the deployment of practical solutions.
