E-Road Network and Urbanization: A Reinterpretation of the Trans-European Petroleumscape

Abstract

This article examines the role of architecture and urban planning in shaping connections between European land-based mobility, cities and landscapes. It investigates the development of spaces aiming to link automobility to the everyday experience of European citizens. The planning and funding of the E-road network is related to the promotion of trans-European mobility for commodities and individuals. This attempt to link the different European nations and to overcome their separate plans has reshaped the urban landscape and the territory. The article aims to show how urban planning and architecture play a key role in implementing new types of mobilities promoting environmental sustainability. Taking into account that the EU aims to overcome regimes of petroleum-based mobility and associated architectures, it intends to demonstrate how the land-based transportation of both individuals and commodities in the E-Road network functions as an actor of planetary urbanization. It investigates three kinds of nodes within the E-Road network – the nodes encountered on the E-Roads, those to be found at the gates to cities and the new structures aiming to imitate the urban dimension but proposing a novel articulation of pedestrian and automobile circulation – and relates them to overarching approaches in the design of mobility.

Keywords

• e-road network
• infrastructural europeanism
• planetary urbanization
• mobility
• automobile vision
• petroleumscape
• sustainability
• trans-european highway system