In several fields, but most notably so in economic development, social progress, consumerism, travel-mobility, housing and environmental 'modernisation', there is ample justification for speaking in terms of 'miracle' achievements both in the urban and rural spheres. The sudden and very marked directional changes in the course of West Germany's postwar development have in turn produced severe tests to the nation's evolving system of town and country planning. During the 1950s the problems of the country's urban and rural societies were severe but simply defined, with the principal urgencies being the need for city reconstruction, the integration of refugees, the reorganisation of agriculture and the creation of new systems of transport to comply with new trends in regional geography. The 1960s and 1970s saw important questions emerging on the social front, for a new generation began to challenge the very premise of the West German version of the Social Market Economy and its claim to have created a 'levelled-out, middle-class' society.