urban design

Shenzhen is an internationally important border city between mainland China and Hong Kong. It is one of China’s trading gates to the world. What was once a fishing village is now a metropolis of more than 10 million people. Shenzhen grew at an extraordinary pace, making it one of the world’s fastest developing urban areas over the past 30 years.

Over this period the whole Pearl River Delta transformed from a productive hinterland into a metropolitan region of 40 million inhabitants. This growth, in both scale and speed, is unprecedented, making the future development of the city and region di icult to predict.

The creation of Shenzhen as a global city was based on economic growth and important political decisions. Such areas could be seen as economic experiments for the future development of China. Special Economic Zones (SEZ) function in a quasi-autonomous way, having special administrative rules. The pace of growth could not have been foreseen from the beginning, but in 30 years Shenzhen went from a fishing village to a 10 million people urban agglomeration, the 4th biggest city in China.

Cheap labor was the force that made the development of Shenzhen and Hong Kong possible. Deng Xiaoping drew the borderlines of the SEZ of Shenzhen, then divided them into big parcels of land for development.

The land remained in government possession but was rented to development companies. Speculative buildings emerged as a strategy based on continuous economic growth that matches the rapid urbanization process. Decisions are based on the belief that, sooner or later, everything that developers build will eventually be used or occupied, the developing area will quickly become functional and even new local identities will be created 

The transition from a socialist central-planned economy to a socialist market economy has produced neighborhoods and housing types characterized by distinct socio-occupational mixes. In the colonial era, quarters with their imposing Western-style mansions and relatively well-planned street layouts dominated the cityscape.

Located side by side were the traditional walled cities and largely unregulated settlements, characterized by immense densities and crowdedness, extremely poor hygiene, and chaotic, yet bustling street life.

Large housing estates or ‘xiaoqu’ where built primarily for the “nouveau riches” and the new middle class of professional and managerial workers. The great majority of such housing estates, especially the more recently completed ones, are gated and heavily guarded, and are provided with various kinds of amenities.

In general though, criticism of gated communities is based on the idea that they erode the public sphere as we share physical spaces less and less, such as parks or coffee houses, where political ideas can be discussed and expressed. Existence of such a public sphere is seen as a precondition for any democracy and this is said to be threatened by splintering urbanism.

In the new commodity housing estates, gates and boundaries not only ensure security but also help to differentiate the insiders from the outsiders and cultivate a sense of accomplishment, status and belonging among the new homeowners, in a sense of belonging to the new global capitalist society.

The huge urban-rural gap drives waves of large labor flows, consisting mainly of former peasants, a racted to the coastal cities where opportunities are concentrated. Hukou is the prevailing system of household registration in China. This system was designed to ground individuals to the locales where they were presumed to belong, thus making it di icult for individuals to migrate to other parts of the country at will.

Not having a Hukou from a particular place complicates the access to services and benefits in that locale (i.e. health, education, welfare). The hundreds of millions of migrant workers from China’s vast rural hinterlands today constitute a significant part of the urban labor force.

The vast majority of the migrants are denied the local Hukou and are excluded from urban citizenship treatment in their adopted city of domicile. Finding a place to live in the city is particularly di icult. For many, the densely packed, substandard housing built by local peasants in urban villages on the former suburban fringes of the city is their only choice.

Urban villages are former rural villages, termed ‘chengzhongcun’ or villages-in-the-city, or more simply urban villages. They are enclosed by urban developments and represent parts of the city so dense that the buildings touch each other, giving them their names ‘woshoulou’ (handshake building) or ‘qingzuilou’ (kissing building).

Though situated in the midst of the urban area, the villages become de facto independent kingdoms, outside of urban planning, infrastructure construction, and other forms of administrative regulations and public policy. Village landowners became rich landlords and built much larger buildings in the villages, making any urban renewal planning impossible due to the huge corresponding compensation that would have to be paid.

Shípái is the largest urban village in Guangzhou. It is situated in the middle of Tianhe District in Guangzhou, with dense multi-story dwelling houses building in and lands for collective use. The village is supported by 170 narrow alleys yet surrounded by tall buildings and busy commercial streets. There are many shopping and entertaining centers as well as several institutions of higher education such as Jinan University nearby. With an area of only one square kilometer, there are over 50,000 people who come from the rural areas staying at Shipai Village, making this one of the densest areas in the world 

INVENTING A CAPITAL 

SPECULATIVE URBANISM 

ADAPTATION OF THE PRACTICE 

Since ancient times, humans chose to settle near the sea or navigable rivers. In absence of motorways, railways and airports, water provided the means of faster, cheaper and safer transportation.

In a time when transport by water was vital for commerce and flow of goods and ideas, this new capital would isolate itself within its context until nowadays. This new capital was chosen not only far from navigable water routes, but also on highlands, making it today the second highest situated capital in Europe. The heat around the court developed in Spain a pure-blooded capitalism, so-called financial capitalism, based on the capture of income and proximity to power, which is typically seen in

Madrid and remains today the dominant form of capitalism in the country.

In the past twenty years, development under the umbrella of political favour seemed to be an urban planning mechanism that lead Spain to an economical boom based on real estate development. The current crisis of construction in the periphery of cities has become a matt er of global concern. This crisis results from the construction in and around cities under the speculative economic forces of the banking and real estate complex that feeds on the dream of home ownership.

In the late 1970s, after forty years of global isolation and stunted development due to the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, Spain was ready to take o , and the country entered a period of prosperity.

Integration in the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1986, and in 1992 the country successfully rebranded through the simultaneous hosting of three high-profile international events: the Barcelona Olympic Games, the Universal Expo in Seville, and European Capital of Culture in Madrid. These events helped to kick-o a delirious decade and a half of real estate speculation.

During these economic boom years (ending abruptly with the financial crisis of 2008), most of Spain su ered from predatory development, driven by a lack of vision (innovation opportunities), fast money making agents (real-estate market), and “partners in crime” lax urban regulations coupled with corrupt administrations. The “brick economy or construction bubble” produced transitory benefits for many, but it mainly fueled the merciless banking industry.

With the burst of this bubble and the arrival of one of the deepest crisis in Europe, Spain was awakened to the grim reality: derelict ghost towns, high rates of unemployment, and low expectations for economic recovery. Bubbles that spur overbuilding and subsequent busts are far from being a localized event; it is now happening similarly in countries like China, where there is a divergence between the population’s housing demands and building rate indicators.

Real estate speculation is fueled in part by signature architectural projects that become emblematic of development.

There is great political power in iconic architecture, nowhere is this more evident than in the “Bilbao E ect,” named for the Guggenheim outpost that served as a touchstone for “starchitecture” debates and a cheerleader for new development. Many municipalities viewed a building by a ‘name-brand’ architect as crucial to their city on the global and mass media map. 

In 2009, the government of the city of Madrid decided to demolish a public swimming pool in one of the liveliest districts of the city. The intention was to build a modern sports complex, under a competition held during the boom years. But later, with a disastrous economic situation in the country and no budget for its realization the result became a huge void of 5500 square meters. Shortly before the 15-M Movement 2011, which called for a more participatory democracy, the initiative of the neighbors of La Latina and groups of young architects proposed to reclaim the public space lost by political inaction. This open contemporary square, not only opens up to all kinds of activities and social relations, but is also an experiment that demonstrates to the administration and experts the viability of a publicmanagement of the square, reformulating the relationship between citizens and the city.

In the case of late 2000s Madrid, this meant selforganization of young architects in order to collaborate and try to reactivate a city suffering of a heavy crisis. In this context of a moribund city and a desintegrating urban landscape, young architects become activists in order to reactivate the urban potential. Rather than relying on top-down approaches and the real estate industry, political decision-making that is limited by local government mandates, bott om-up initiatives became survival reactions.

TOP-DOWN INFRASTRUCTURE

FRAGMENTED SUB-URBAN

PLACES FOR EXPERIMENTATION

Los Angeles sits on a hostile landscape – its terrain is comprised of swampland, flood plain, desert, mountain, and coast. There are simply not enough natural resources to support a city of its size and population. With an ecological footprint greater than the state of California, Los Angeles only exists because of the infrastructure that supports it. Infrastructure is the lifeline that has allowed this unlivable territory to be transformed into the 2nd largest metropolis in the United States. Los Angeles depends on the resources delivered to it through its infrastructure in order to survive.(1)

Once a traditional river that flowed through the landscape, Los Angeles had a detrimental impact on the developing city due to constant flooding. So for the city to continue to grow, the river needed to be controlled. The natural Los Angeles River was transformed into the urban drainage system pictured on the left.

The LA River controls the landscape through a super e icient infrastructure that allowed for the development of the rapidly expanding city up to the edge of this new riverfront, with no threat of flooding. With this newly engineered river, new real estate opportunities developed. This new river was now able to organize easements, right-of-ways, and the placement of utility infrastructure.(2)

Notice the development in the image to the left - highways, factories, and homes have been developed up to the edge of the river - this would have never been possible with the natural river’s threat of flooding. 

This tool looks at the urbanization of the suburban territory and the fragmented urban conditions that have resulted from the city’s rapid urbanization. Los Angeles is a fragmented city. An amalgamation of urbanized suburbia, the city has no true center. Instead, it is a multi-nodal city.

By 1960 the scale of LA was staggering and unprecedented. Los Angeles was not a simple hub and spoke industrial city with boulevards and rail lines radiating outward from a central downtown core. It was, in the words of one scholar of the period, a “fragmented metropolis”-a multi-headed beast with no one true center. Its system of urban organization was something that Easterners and Europeans could not fathom(1). Los Angeles is a city that developed with a sense of urgent density.

As a fragmented metropolis, LA is the way it is today due to its non-traditional development. The physical, social, infrastructural, cultural, political conditions surrounding its growth allowed for an extremely diverse landscape to flourish. Los Angeles’s physical form was shaped by a rapid urbanization that occurred simultaneously with the introduction of public transportation, the automobile, and as a response to the dense urbanization of other US cities.

Today, LA has become a dense urban field, no longer with the option to sprawl horizontally; the city has begun to fall back into itself. There are many LA. It is so saturated, so dense, that the city must be broken down into small nodes of activity and commerce. It is because of this that the region is a fractured and has a subjective sense of place. Moreover, now, as it infills, this smaller scale emphasizes the role of the individual and individuality. 

In the third tool, we present how the ideas of Los Angeles, as an experimental field, fluctuate between scales.

Modern architects believed that new conditions of lifestyles and technology should be given a fresh interpretation, rather than being forced into the forms of previous eras.

Among the iconic buildings of LA, one could mention “The Millard House” (Frank Lloyd Wright), “Schindler House” and “Lovell Beach House” (Schindler) and the “Kauff man House” (Neutra). The Case Study House Program was an experimental residential house development aiming to make eff icient modern homes for the housing boom caused by the end of World War II. Important houses such as “The Eames House” (Ray and Charles Eames), “The Stahl House” and “The Walter Bailey House” (Pierre Koenig), contributed to the development of Californian Modernism. The complexity of the interchanging ideas between city and house, might be best expressed in some of John Lautner’s buildings, such as “The Sheats Goldstein Residence”, “The Elrod House” and “The Chemosphere”. The Californian modernists laid ground for a new generation of experimental architects that furtherexplored this interchange of ideas in the postmodern city.

A progressive environment evolved aroundarchitects such as Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne and Eric Owen Moss, and the establishment of The

ADAPTING URBAN AVENUES 

EXCHANGE INTERFACE 

INTEGRATED INFRASTRUCTURE 

• The history of this carnival begins in the colonial era of Colombia as a fusion of a triple heritage (European, African and Native American). Christian festivities brought by Spanish conquerors were combined with indigenous ceremonials and the secular rites of African slaves. A mutual reliance continues to
• During the carnival the city is a live, almost surreal show of citizens, from very different high and low socioeconomic classes, coexisting and preserving traditions together.
• The carnival is not held in one specific place, it is a network of events in the whole city with a vibrant atmosphere of celebration rituals constituted by the congregation of diverse social, economic and physical elements that represent the identity of Barranquilla.

• The design of public spaces can help or disrupt the possibility of meeting, seeing and listening to people.
• Beyond a macro event that takes place once a year, the carnival represents for many people a year round cultural preparation.
• Culture is a vital part of urban life, however cultural facilities are often limited to aff luent areas.
• Fábrica de Cultura aims to become a physical framework to enhance the creative potential of Barranquilla, and its insertion in the underutilized Historic Center, as an urban catalyst. Futhermore it will provide a new space for teaching creative arts and traditions centered around Barranquilla‘s famous Carnival.
• Initiated by the municipality, the facility will extend access to cultural education, especially to residents of the impoverished Barrio Abajo.
• Creative economy, social equality, urban transformation and environmental concerns are the main ingredients of this piece of integrated cultural infrastructure.

• Industrialization and mass production allowed higher efficiencies, lower
• prices and larger quantities while securing a comfortable level of supply for most industrialized countries.
• In many European cities mass consumption in highly specialized supermarkets and department stores has been the consequence and become the norm, whilst the weekly market has turned into a newly branded farmer’s market.
• In Latin America however, markets remain the main distribution system of food and produce.
• The central market of Barranquilla provides for most citizens of lower income, who come from the furthest areas of the city.
• Nevertheless, this urban market still provides an important interface for exchange, social cohesion and economic growth.
• “The existing public market located along the Mercado Canal faces serious environmental problems and the accessibility to the market is poor because of the contaminated canal.
• Thus, the relocation of the public market and the rearrangement of the street vendors are the major incentives to the market facilities project.
• The basic idea of the project is to ensure easier accessibility and to integrate market activities in the central district.”

São Paulo will be forced to address the rampantly growing city that has been remodeled by infrastructural plans. The modern way of thinking in São Paulo is connected to the idea of systematic thinking and architectural urbanism, strongly tied to social-political arguments. The CEU will be used as a late case study of city architecture as strategic implants in a metropolitan network.

The complexes combine several programs such as a school, daycare, a library, TV and study room, theater, sport, and leisure areas. CEUs o er exclusive activities not found in other schools or sports centers in the outlying areas. They operate as centers of personal networks gravitating around each unit, and they give the communities a metropolitan dimension.(1)

CEU were precisely implanted into an existing urban fabric characterized by illegibility and exclusion, depicting a reality of social inequality in the peripheral areas of São Paulo. These interventions aimed at re-organizing a fragmented territory by encouraging human contact, providing it with the necessary tools. The “architecture of the program” – of the equipment – becomes the architecture of the place. “The place was then set as C-E-U 2 [Centros de Estruturação Urbana] Centers of Urban Structuring” (2), defining the CEU as structuring poles of the neighborhood and the periphery, establishing a metropolitan network.

When put into new geographic circumstances, and re-framed in new realities, each new surrounding is re-discovered by the gaze of its citizens, making it a reference point in the urban-scape, recognized as the meeting point inside a neighborhood unit. 

The result of research field work in 2008-09 in São Paulo as a counterpoint to modern controlled design, we will investigate on the micro-scale, how people are ‘riding’ these infrastructures, redefining their role by identifying potential and articulating present references for built spaces of coexistence, therefore questioning the modern project.

Micro-planning situates the action of the micro-scale regarding its social practices and collective appropriations, calling a ention to the importance of ‘bo om up’ initiatives in the configuration of the urban landscape.

It reveals fields of action, tools, and handling concepts that indicate ways to operate on a local scale and tactics to improve the quality of everyday life. It points to the enormous potential of these projects to describe the local scale and its urban tactics as another way to think about the city.

“But is there such a thing as a truly public space today? These fragile, isolated acts engage the notion of responsibility: if there is a hole in the sidewalk, why does a city employee fill it in, and not you and me?”(1)

The strategy concentrates on the re-articulation, the re-programming, and re-codifying of present references. It points to the potential of projects to articulate and cross reference, making use of what has already been produced, what’s already there, suitable for us in search of the ‘real city’.

As strategic micro-intervention networks, these case studies demonstrate social networks of metropolitan scale - circuits of resistance to the generic city that provide the city with micro- environments. They identify micro-architectures that can superimpose functional ones, providing them with complexities capable of inducing quality urban spaces. 

URBAN MOBILITY

(INFRA)CULTURAL DESIGN

MICROPLANNING

HORIZONTAL - VERTICAL GRID

REPURPOSING INFRASTRUCTURE

STREET RENAISSANCE

In the late 19th century, citizens of Manha an demanded be er living conditions as an alternative to the existing shanty towns. The chosen grid created building typologies, volumes, and open spaces, which, over the last century, generated the conditions for high density and the urban culture that define New York’s authenticity.

In 1865, the Council of Hygiene and Public Health of the Citizen’s Association of New York reported on the sanitary conditions of the city, highlighting the need to prioritize health. The grid has been a radical response to the bad sanitary conditions, an ambitious plan that aimed at becoming a model for other American cities.(1)

The production of the urban space in Manha an is a synthesis of the horizontal grid (1811’s Commissioners Plan) and the vertical component. New York’s 1916 Zoning plan defined the base frame for the building typologies developed in coming years - it regulated height and setback and designated land uses.(2)

The Seagram Building (1957, Mies van der Rohe / Phillip Johnson) is a reference for the typology of the skyscraper with a plaza, a natural outcome of applying the 1916 zoning plan; this kind of materializations lead to the revision from 1961, based on the successful ‘private plaza’ strategy.

Continuous verticalization has lead to a space of high population density. The creation of the Central Park has provided a recreational free space from which to contemplate the over-dense urbanscape. This breach in the urban structure highlights, by contrast, the city’s density and the grid, defining New York’s unique urban culture. 

In the early 20th-century steam railroads emerged in places that were not connected by waterways, and the new trains soon reached the North-Eastern port cities in the USA; they became a tool of rivalry among cities like New York City, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston. New York with its New York Central Railroad proved its superiority, ensuring the city’s continued dominance over the international trade from within the United States.

However, in the 1950s and 60s, trucking became a more financially viable way of transporting goods, and New York began to de-industrialize as jobs went to other parts of the region or country.

In the mid-1980s, a group of property owners with land under the line lobbied for the demolition of the entire New York Central Railroad structure.

However, residents in the area prevented this from happening by challenging the demolition threats in court. In the 1990s, as the line lay unused and in disrepair – although the riveted steel elevated structure was still strong – it became known for the tough, drought-tolerant wild grasses, shrubs, and rugged trees that grew on top of the structure.

In 1999, a group of community members formed a non-profit organization, called Friends of the High Line, and began applying for permits to redevelop the structure into a park. They also convinced the government to fund the project with backing from private investors.

The example of the High Line project illustrates how some of the infrastructures that have lost its functionality are being transformed into linear infrastructures of public spaces and leisure facilities. The High Line today is a 1.6 km long, elevated linear park, redesigned and planted as an aerial greenway. The High Line shows that, even if big-picture planning is still important, such specific small-scale interventions can produce a high impact on the larger scale and influence urban processes. 

The reclamation of the streetscape in a public campaign from 2005 shows the power of grassroots movements in demanding articulation between bo om-up and top-down initiatives. Given the Manha an grid, it points out the street as the place to perform urban retrofi ing, therefore creating spaces to shelter a collective life.

Jane Jacob’s 1960s observations in the streets of New York remain an essential reference of criticism to the modern planning principles while looking at life in the streets asking ordinary questions of urban living.(1) They draw a ention to the city as a laboratory, from which to learn and in which to act.

The Manha an grid and system of spaces a ached to it has been the testing ground for new initiatives that intend to make use of already-built structures, by performing minor changes on it and therefore provoking e ective changes. The PPS(2) campaign radically raised the profile of transportation and public space issues and generated demand to bring in a new progressive administration to DOT (NY Department of Transportation). Based on that, in the last five years, the City Transportation Department has aligned its transport policy with the need of improvement of the streetscape.(3)

Gehl Architects have been commissioned by DOT to develop a project. The aim has been to use the opportunity of transit design to rethink the streetscape with a budget already existing for the maintenance of the street grid. It represents a strategy to change a space previously used by cars only into a pedestrian-friendly boulevard. This transformation has brought extremely rapid results based on simple and creative temporary operations.(4) 

Stichworte: Reclamation of the street space, Life and Death in Great American Cities

(J.Jacobs, 1960er), Pedestrian City, Department of Transportations New Plan

OIL AND THE AUTOMOBILE CITY

THE HYBRID CITY

MULTIPLE HUBS

“Oil and the Automobile City” shows the urban expansion that marks the beginning of the social segregation and the transition from the compact colonial city to the outspread modern one; this phenomenon was directly influenced by the motor vehicle culture of North American cities.

Latin American cities have experienced rapid and drastic urban transformations in the last century. In this sense, the fragmented urban and social fabric of Caracas are the results of arbitrary forces and events like the oil-based economy, rural and foreign migration, and the modern architectural movement. These influences have transformed Caracas from the rigid Spanish grid to an organic, chaotic and spontaneous city.

The expansion to the east, encouraged by the American standard and the car culture, started to create new isolated houses, which were very di erent from those in the historic district characterized by proximity to basic services, and with access to the tram system as the main mode of public transportation(1).

Along with the prosperity through oil came serious tra ic problems as well as new expansion plans like Robert Moses proposal in 1948for main arteries in the city. The agenda was to promote the automobile by creating more room in the city, resulting in the vehicle shaping Caracas’ landscape and living conditions in a very decisive way.

The priority given to the urbanism of highways means that until recent years other forms of transportation have been neglected; because of this, the best way to experience the urban landscape of Caracas remains the automobile(2) 

The inventive power of the urban laboratory that exists inside the Barrio in Caracas is an aspect that should be of interest to planners and designers. The role of the professionals is to explore and discover the extreme richness of these zones as a valid model for housing development, along with the self- regulatory systems that generate living spaces for millions.

The phenomenon of informal urbanization has become the single most pervasive element in the production of the city of Caracas. In this sense, the Barrios can be interpreted as a complex, adaptive system, which is permanently recreating itself.

The mass of the Barrio structure follows the concept of the growing house. The growing house is typically made of a concrete frame, and filled with the cheapest local block or brick available. Antenna- like concrete supports rising out o the columns of the last floor are left as provision for a future that will bring materials for expansion. The Barrio houses maintain a microclimate that is far superior to comparable dense structures in the formal city. The pedestrian access and the dependence on the topographic situation, which are currently considered negative characteristics, could be easily reversed into assets. Existing forestation and vegetation can be used to support the microclimate, and additional forms of roof farming should be studied and promoted.

The Caracas case allows us to learn from the improvisation of a city formed by unpredictable agents and uncontested forces. Caracas o ers us an insight on how cities in the future will develop. While the traditional city surrenders to formal modes of operation, the informal sector is gaining terrain. In many ways, it seems that the informal city is presenting us today with the stronger culture, which is also increasingly adopted by the formal part of Caracas.

The Metro Cable in San Agustin, Caracas not only connects the barrio dwellers to the main transportation system but also, and most importantly, creates hubs for social services and spaces for community interaction.

Metro Cable introduces formal infrastructure for the integration of the informal city. The phenomenon of informal urbanization has become the single most extensive element in the production of the city of Caracas. Because the last 30 years of urban development have received limited participation from local politicians, planners, and urbanists, these areas have engaged in bo om-up processes that fostered the integration of the barrios into the formal city through localized social initiatives in accessibility.

The Metro Cable project was conceived as an initiative that presents an alternative proposal in opposition to the government’s one, which consisted of a road network through the barrio, displacing up to a third of inhabitants and disrupting their way of life.

Connected to the Metro Systems of Caracas, the public transit system provided in the “formal” city, the Metro Cable has five additional stations. Two are in the valley and connect directly to the existing public transport system; the other three stations are located along the mountain ridge on sites that meet the demands of community access, established pedestrian circulation routes, and suitability for construction with minimal demolition of existing housing. 

MEGASCALE PLANNING

CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION

TEMPORARY URBANISM

The di erent societal phenomenon is dictating Urban development with all its various mechanisms. In some cases, urban development is extensively dependent on political decisions. In Berlin, the Great- Berlin urban design competition was the trigger for a new era of urban development in the decades following 1910. Urbanists created provocative visions for an emerging World City - Great Berlin.

Like many other cities during the industrialization, Berlin was an overcrowded city with massive problems regarding infrastructure and hygiene. Being delayed in having a World City, after the historically renowned cities like London and Paris but also emerging North American Cities, Germany started creating its own “World city.” The ideas emerged in the second half of the 19th century, but Berlin had to wait until 1908-10 for the Great-Berlin o icial competition that was won by Hermann Jansen and his collaborators proposing a concept named “Within borders of possibilities.”

In 1920, the merge of Berlin and its surrounding was finally decided by the authorities. Shortly after, the rise of modernism and works of Hilbersheimer, Taut, Wagner and many others started shaping the new era of Berlin - until the Nazi regime took over the power. According to Hitler and its main urban planner, Albert Speer, Berlin should become the biggest World Capital, called Germania. As those ideas disappeared in the fire of the Allies’ bombs and the division of the city during the Cold War, Berlin lost its international significance. It became the showcase for architecture and urbanist ideas of the East and West “Blocks,” e.g. best seen in the example of the Stalinallee and Hansaviertel projects.

Berlin, as a city with a highly dynamic development and a broad spectrum of very diverse ideas, never managed to reach and keep the character that was intended by its planners. Much more the city became a laboratory and developed its ever-changing character that created a unique environment. Even today, two decades after the unification and after new significant changes in the socio-economic and political context as well as rigid urban visions about its development, Berlin, through its own mechanisms, still keeps its unrestrainable and wild character. 

After realizing the failures of the modernist city, in West as well as East Berlin during the end of the 1970s and 1980s, di erent initiatives had been started to recover the values of the traditional city. One example is the IBA (International Building Exhibition) that was held in West Berlin from 1984-87. After the German reunification, the city administration started with an extensive campaign of critical “reconstruction” that led to a vivid discourse which still heavily influences the urban development of Berlin today.

Following the fall of the Berlin wall and the immense social change, the dysfunctional and over-zoned modernist city of Berlin, especially its Eastern part, was perceived as outdated and was overwhelmed by problems of deteriorating infrastructure, housing shortage and urban scars on post-wall, post- industrial and other types of abandoned areas. Nevertheless, the lack of identity as the old-new German Capital, it was the main trigger to start re-introducing the urbanity of pre-war Berlin.

The main idea was to define the central role of the city and “invent the contemporary equivalent,” returning to a traditional urbanism of pre-war Berlin. Conservative building typologies and the promotion of the block structure, as well as a “dress-code” for building facades of stone and glass, are witnesses of the idea to cover up the “wild” Berlin and the legacy of its historical layers of a divided city and annihilated Nazi metropolis.

The urban design “general model” (=Leitbild) in the form of the Planwerk Innenstadt from 1999 as an example, endeavors a re-urbanisation and re-vitalisation of the inner-city area, aiming to restore the functionality of the Prussian-era and Weimar Republic-era Berlin. This Planwerk Innenstadt concept, which was supported by the urban planning authorities and the Chief Urban Planner of the City of Berlin, Hans Stimmann, promotes a design theory that returns to traditional urbanism qualities with development schemes that preserve or re-discover the old pa erns as in the example of Leipziger Platz. Besides, this same concept also proposes an introduction of new typologies as seen by the example of Hans Kohlho ’s Alexanderplatz proposal. In both cases, controversies of di erent idea streams and political ideologies still rule and heavily define the urban development of Berlin.