page_title: Hobrecht-Plan
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Hobrecht-Plan / History
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Gedenktafel für James Hobrecht in Panketal-Hobrechtsfelde in Brandenburg, Deutschland English: Memorial plaque for James Hobrecht in Panketal-Hobrechtsfelde in Brandenburg, Germany
context_page_description: The Hobrecht-Plan is the binding land-use plan for Berlin in the 19th century. It is named after its main editor, James Hobrecht, who served for the royal Prussian urban planning police.
  The finalized plan "Bebauungsplan der Umgebungen Berlins" was resolved in 1862, intended for a time frame of about 50 years. The plan not only covered the area around the cities of Berlin and Charlottenburg but also described the spatial regional planning of a large perimeter. Thus, it also prepared the city and its neighbouring municipalities for the Greater Berlin Act of 1920, which greatly extended Berlin's size and population.
  The plan resulted in large areas of dense urban city blocks known as 'blockrand structures', with mixed-use buildings reaching to the street and offering a common-used courtyard, later often overbuilt with additional court structures to house more people. The Hobrecht-Plan inspired new urban plans after 1990 by construction senator Hans Stimmann and his colleagues, so that the formerly-divided Berlin would grow together and become denser and livelier.
context_section_description: The industrial revolution led to a swift rural exodus at the beginning of the 19th century. Berlin as the Prussian capital was the target of many emigrants resulting in a rapid growth. After the Napoleonic Wars the city grew by 10,000 new inhabitants every year accelerating in the middle of the century so that the metro area would reach the millions at the end of the century (see Berlin population statistics).
  There had been already some urban planning on the city before Hobrecht. This includes proposals from Karl Friedrich Schinkel and planning maps from Johann Carl Ludwig Schmid dating to 1825 and 1830. Peter Joseph Lenné proposed a wider regional planning in 1840 named "Projektierte Schmuck- und Grenzzüge von Berlin mit nächster Umgebung" (projected decorative and boundary lines of Berlin and its immediate vicinity). All the persons were well-renowned architects and city planners.
  Hobrecht was instead a geodesist (professional land surveyor) who had just extended his formation with a civil engineer examination on transportation planning ("Wasser-, Wege- und Eisenbahnbaumeisterprüfung") in 1858. Soon after entering the royal Prussian urban planning police he was commanded in 1859 to head the commission on creation of a land-use plan for Berlin and its environs. He traveled to Hamburg, Paris and London in 1860 to learn about the contemporary development status in urban planning especially their sewer systems.
  In the 1860s the Berlin Customs Wall was removed and there were plans to amalgamation of the many suburbs of Berlin on 1 January 1861. Based on the just finished land surveys and existing land-use proposals James Hobrecht constructed a map showing a possible land-use for a city at a projected size of 1.5 to 2 million inhabitants. It incorporated the land between the Customs Wall and a railway line being constructed to encircle the city; the area came to be known architecturally as the Wilhelmine Ring.
  That Hobrecht-Plan did show two large ring roads encircling both of Berlin and Charlottenburg with dozens of arterial roads entering the city. The area between these were divided into rectangular spaces. Unlike the urban planning of Paris, Hobrecht did respect the existing roads, villages and railways including them into the planning process. The map was resolved on 18 July 1862 and it would influence the urban structure of Berlin for the centuries to come.
caption: Memorial plaque for James Hobrecht in Hobrechtsfelde
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