Architecture

The controversial Stuttgart 21 project has long been about more than simply the plans to convert Paul Bonatz’s railway terminus. It has been clear ever since Heiner Geissler’s public mediation, if not before, that Stuttgart 21 may help stimulate a new culture of planning.

Stuttgart 21 stirs the emotions, not only in Baden-Württemberg, but all over Germany. This controversial project has long been about more than simply the plans to convert Paul Bonatz’s listed railway terminus and create an underground through station designed by Christoph Ingenhoven, a Düsseldorf-based firm of architects; there is more at stake here than merely the felling of trees and the new buildings to be erected on the former track areas. It has been clear ever since Heiner Geissler’s public mediation, if not before, that Stuttgart 21 may help stimulate a new culture of planning. In the future, public interests will need to be given more active consideration at an earlier stage of planning processes. Stuttgart 21, after all, is no isolated case but is in fact symptomatic of the civic engagement demonstrated all over Germany whenever it is a question of the country’s future.

The different faces of civic engagement

This civic engagement has many different faces: the Historischer Neumarkt association, for example, has been fighting for years for the reconstruction of the original historic area around the Frauenkirche church in Dresden, while an initiative by the name of “Mediaspree versenken” – sink Mediaspree – has forced a referendum in Berlin in a bid to change the planned development of the Spree river bank in the city’s Kreuzberg-Friedrichshain district. Wherever local citizens are affected by large-scale plans, they are increasingly forming resistance groups. On the southern outskirts of Berlin, for instance, a heated debate is currently taking place on the future routes to be taken by planes arriving at and departing from the new Berlin-Brandenburg airport, which could expose many residents of Berlin and Brandenburg to unexpected levels of noise pollution.

What these initiatives have in common, despite their very different approaches and issues, is the feeling local citizens have that their interests are often not taken seriously by politics and big business. Thus they take a stand and seek to make their voices heard, thereby taking responsibility for their own environment. There has long been a tradition in Germany of staging civic protests of this kind. Back in the 1970s, citizens’ initiatives such as the BIRL, an initiative that was founded in 1975 with the aim of “saving Lübeck”, mobilized residents with a view to preventing misguided urban development; even today, they continue to fight for the preservation of historic town centres.

Greater transparency in planning

But why are there suddenly so many protests just now? One of the central problems in an increasingly complex world is the fact that planning processes, however democratic they may be, are almost completely impenetrable to those on the outside. This quickly gives the people affected by the plans a feeling of powerlessness. Thus greater transparency in planning and the early involvement of civil society – for example in the form of referendums – will be just as important in future as better communication of projects. A culture of construction, after all, requires a culture of communication.

Democracy, alive and kicking

Although there is almost nothing better for a society than to have its members fight for their own country, some initiatives do not always fall on understanding ears in politics. This is something that a group of Sylt residents are currently experiencing at first hand; they have founded an organization called “Zukunftswerkstatt Sylt” (i.e. Future Workshop Sylt) which aims to bring about a public discussion of a new model for Sylt, an island in the North Sea. The situation is dramatic in this popular holiday destination: high property prices have for years meant that there has not been sufficient housing for families with children. As a result, local residents are leaving the island at the same time as fantastic returns are being reaped on the second home market. Despite growth in tourism, the island’s resident population is shrinking. The Sylt example shows that civic engagement does not have to be on the XXL scale like Stuttgart 21, but can nonetheless influence the development of smaller towns and communities. When citizens accept responsibility rather than simply delegating it to politicians, this proves that democracy is alive and kicking. Even if not every citizens’ initiative achieves its goals, they nonetheless help promote a general culture of democratic discussion.