In the post-war years, significant transformations of urban layouts were carried out in many former European cities as a result of the necessary modernisation of the irregular network of narrow streets. The reconstruction of the building structures of historic cities – irrespective of the reconstruction of ruined districts – was linked to new perspectives for their functioning after the end of the war cataclysm. The development of motorisation that took place in the cities of the western part of Europe in the second half of the last century necessitated the adaptation of the existing road plan to technical and infrastructural standards. In the developing centres, urban development was subordinated to the expan-sion of traffic arteries that dominated the landscape of the former spatial arrangements. Historic urban centres in Brunswick, Hamburg, Kassel, Rotterdam and Szczecin, among others, were cut through with multi-lane arterial roads. They improved the functioning of the cities, while at the same time reducing the former potential of the historic centres as intimate service and commercial complexes adjacent to administrative, museum or reli-gious facilities. At the end of the twentieth century, there was a shift in the appreciation of modernist transformations of former cities. Initiated by citizens, with the support of artistic circles, plans to demolish modern buildings that were disharmonising with the historic land-scape led to the restoration of historic urban layouts and the reconstruction of valuable old town houses (Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Hildesheim, Szczecin). The process of restoring the old architecture was also linked to the transformation of the post-war traffic system.