Growing and Shrinking

The International Building Exhibition on Urban Redevelopment in Saxony-Anhalt 2010 is developing new future strategies for cities with declining populations.

The demographic trend is changing Germany’s cities. In addition to growth areas, there are areas with significant population decline. One of these is the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt: 200,000 dwellings there are permanently vacant. Since German reunification in 1990, the population has fallen from 2.9 million to just under 2.4 million, and according to a forecast of the Federal Statistical Office, will fall to only 1.3 million in fifty years. Politicians and planners therefore face the challenge of organizing the shrinking. Since 2002, The International Building Exhibition (Die Internationale Bauausstellung/IBA) on Urban Redevelopment in Saxony Anhalt 2010 has been developing strategies against vacancy and decay. Nineteen cities have participated in the IBA and are now presenting their solutions in the concluding year of the project under the motto “Less is future”.

Wise balance

By focusing on their specific potential, a wise balance of demolition, densification, networking, proactive planning and land management that incorporates the expertise of local residents and artistic interventions, the shrinking cities in Saxony-Anhalt have sought to remain viable and sustainable.

The city of Dessau-Roßlau, for example, has banked on radical urban redevelopment. The concept: urban islands, dense urban cores, lying in an extensive landscape that is gradually arising from the demolition of vacant dwellings. The existing brownfields, which are to converge in perspective on this large green expanse, are staked out into 400 square meter “claims”, which the city has left free of charge for the use of residents, initiatives and associations. Currently, nineteen claims are being managed: a pharmacist has laid out a garden of medicinal plants, the Dessau Energy Table is experimenting with renewable raw materials, clubs have moved their barbecues and other social gatherings to their claims. This has created not only a new type of open space; “the image of the city has also begun to oscillate, between built up and non-building areas”, says landscape architect Heike Brückner, who accompanies the project on behalf of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation.

Profiling and networking

By consistently focusing on the restored historic city center, by contrast, the city of Aschersleben has sought to give shrinkage a meaningful design. Demolitions have been carried out at the outskirts of the city, while facilities such as schools and government agencies have moved into the center. The noisy inner ring, the intersection between inner and outer, has been transformed into the “Drive Thru Gallery”. Varying exhibitions of large-scale art works that can be seen from cars contribute to the enhancement of the main thoroughfare.

Kindergartens, schools, hospitals, public transportation, administrative offices and theater: in regions with dramatic population loss, expensive urban infrastructures can no longer be afforded everywhere. The IBA cities have programmatically met this problem with profiling and networking. Stendal, for example, located in one of the most sparsely populated regions of Saxony-Anhalt, offers a variety of educational opportunities in well-renovated school buildings and so complements the neighboring business location of Arneburg.

Homeopathy as a developing force

That by the development of their potential the IBA cities understand more than the usual city marketing strategies may be seen in the example of Köthen, where in the nineteenth century the founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann, lived and conducted research. Taking him as an inspiration, the urban redevelopment has adopted the leitmotif of “Homeopathy as a Developing Force” and is banking on the healthcare industry as an economic factor. With success: the restored hospital building in Köthen now houses the European Library for Homeopathy (which has been resettled from Hamburg) and has developed into a well-booked conference and training center. Next year, the University of Magdeburg will begin to offer there a master’s degree in homeopathy. In their fight against vacancy and decay, the city planners are also experimenting with tools from the doctor’s bag of homeopathy. In concrete terms, 17 houses were to be torn down in the Ludwigstraße. Following homeopathic theory, the planners first listened carefully to the complaints of the residents and then applied the therapy of symptom aggravation: one evening they turned out the lights in the Ludwigstraße and invited the vexed and angry residents to a meeting. By the end of the vociferous debate, there was commitment, a feeling responsibility and a readiness for action: several of the formerly vacant buildings are now renovated and rented out.

Small and still beautiful

“A very important experience for the planners was to realize how valuable it is to approach problems with a deliberately unbiased attitude, to observe things carefully, and to allow themselves to be surprised by the impulses coming from the residents”, says Sonja Beeck, the IBA project director in charge of the Köthen.

After politicians and planners have for decades engaged in building new roads, opening up more residential districts and expanding commercial areas, the paradigm of growth is now cracked. The IBA cities have developed exemplary approaches to the problem of becoming smaller and more beautiful. The new ways of planning and design must now be further tested. The IBA has come to an end; urban redevelopment in regions of declining populations has only really begun.