New Urbanism makes inroads in Germany

As American-style sprawl begins to take root, two German academics argue that the New Urbanism is the missing link in the strategies to preserve and renew cities. In Berlin, an infill project showcases the principles in action. The German landscape still has plenty of what new ur- banists in the US find most desirable: compact cities and towns and clear distinctions between urban and rural areas. But along major highways and on the outskirts of cities such as Munich, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Dortmund, Leipzig and Berlin, auto-oriented and fragmented development is increasingly common. Harald Kegler and Harald Bodenschatz are watching the trends closely and are working to make the New Urbanism (NU) part of the debate about how to preserve the central cities, expand the suburbs, and reuse industrial land. “Mainly the difference between Germany and the US is a question of quantity and time,” says Kegler, who heads the Laboratory for Regional Planning in Wittenberg. Sprawl took hold only 20 years ago — 10 years later in the former East Germany — and on the political agenda, sprawl figured well below such pressing social problems as unemployment and population shrinkage in the east. That may well change, Kegler says. “In a few years we will have problems — after the enlargement of the European Union, Europe will be confronted with the problem of new immigration combined with new urban growth.” In that context, Kegler and Bodenschatz, a professor at the Technical University of Berlin, promote NU as more than a set of design principles. Because NU bridges professional and disciplinary boundaries and encourages comprehensive, regional solutions to urban problems, they argue it could unify an urban reform movement characterized by factional disagreement. In Germany, reaction to “the Modern City” with its acres of isolated highrise apartments and towering office buildings cohered into a movement in the early 1970s, but unlike NU, a movement instigated by professionals, Bodenschatz notes that the European movement grew out of social conflict as well as professional concern about the loss of urban fabric. In the 1980s and 1990s the discussion about cities has focused more on reusing abandoned industrial areas and dealing with the threat from suburban shopping centers. “So, in Germany, much more than in the US, you can find a big collection of practical experiences with renewing historical cities and brownfields,” Kegler says. But the split between those who want to build new cities on the periphery of traditional cities and those who want “careful renewal” of central cities persists. “We think that these strategies have to be linked to improve the quality of the regional city,” Bodenschatz and Kegler say. While groups such as Intbau (The International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture & Urbanism) and The Prince’s Foundation promote traditional architecture, they remain isolated and offer no comprehensive solution for urban problems, Bodenschatz and Kegler contend. NU could fill the void. Disney design club For NU to gain more influence, some entrenched prejudices will have to be dispelled. Bodenschatz has lectured extensively about NU at German universities and his writings in leading architectural journals have presented design professionals with a nuanced depiction of the movement and key US projects. “Most professionals know only Seaside and Celebration, and they do not know the reality of sprawl and daily life in the US,” Bodenschatz says. “A lot of them believe the Congress for the New Urbanism is a Disney design club,” Kegler adds. German architects are critical of the neotraditional style, they tend to see NU as a purely suburban design movement, and they argue that most projects are narrowly designed for the upper middle class buyer. Students and young professionals, however, have shown greater interest in this “new thing,” Kegler says. Compared to public agencies in the US, Germany’s federal and local governments have more and stricter growth management tools at their disposal. However, their importance may be waning as cities increasingly compete for investors. Kegler stresses that with a 20 percent unemployment rate in the east (10 percent in the west), city administrators think that they can’t afford to restrict the wishes of a developer. However, new environmental regulations issued by the European Union Commission and the federal government may help. “We hope that these new laws are able to help in the fight against the coming sprawl,” Kegler says. Redevelopment in hard times Kegler, who was the first to translate the Charter of the New Urbanism, has collaborated with faculty and students at the University of Miami School of Architecture since 1992, forging plans for revitalizing older industrial areas in the former East Germany. One charrette resulted in a master plan for the Chemical Park Bitterfeld and generated ideas for the conversion of a mono-cultural industrial site into a mixed-use area between existing towns. Local stakeholders have since founded a public/private partnership to carry out the plan, and some redevelopment projects, transportation infrastructure, and civic facilities are already in place. In March 2002, Kegler and Bodenschatz, along with architect Duane Phillips and planner Wolfgang Serbser, led a charrette in Eggesin, a small town in northern Germany. The workshop dealt with transforming a typical 1970s housing project — five-story towers of prefabricated concrete slabs mired in social problems — into a livable neighborhood with smaller homes and new public spaces. Kegler’s Laboratory for Regional Planning has also been involved in two projects in the province of Saxony. Piesteritz, with 400 units of new housing in an old town, has been completed, while a brownfield project in Zschornewitz remains in the planning stages. This project will transform a power plant into a mixed civic and residential area. These Eastern German projects are noteworthy in the sense that they are going ahead in a climate of industrial collapse, population loss, and high unemployment. But like many US projects, they are essentially about repairing a degraded public realm. In addition to these consciously new urban projects, Bodenschatz and Kegler note that Germany has plenty of new development and revitalization projects that are in tune with the principles of the Charter. “In Germany the charter is not ‘new’ — a lot of aspects are realized in our urban practice,” Bodenschatz says. American designers have also been getting in on the act. The Karow Nord project by Moore Ruble Yudell, adds 5,000 new multifamily residential units, retail, and civic buildings to the town of Karow north of Berlin. The project is a good example of NU at a scale and density that would be difficult to realize in the US. The plan mixes the traditions of the Garden City with the traditional German model for large-scale housing developments. Berlin block reborn Another project with American roots is the Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. (DPZ) plan for a mixed-use project on the Tacheles block in the heart of Berlin. The block is named after a famous department store, most of which was destroyed in World War II. The site remained undeveloped during the communist era, as squatting artists occupied the abandoned buildings. Today, the artists remain, and the Tacheles exhibition spaces and studios draw many visitors to the block. The imminent redevelopment project will not push these artists out — the developer has guaranteed them another 10 years of virtually rent-free occupancy. Developer Arno August Jagdfeld has had two design competitions for the site since 1998, and 17 proposals have been submitted and rejected. The 18th and final plan is the result of a week-long charrette led by DPZ. Project manager Jeff Speck notes that the plan differs from previous proposals in fundamental ways. It treats the block as an open network and not as “an insular boundary enclosing a largely private center,” he says. The site has been divided into five sub-blocks (see plan at right) that allow for pedestrian and automobile circulation. The apartment buildings on the eastern edge of the site are built around traditional Berlin “Hofe,” or courtyards, and connected by archways. A formal linear square runs along the east-west axis of the site. The charrette plan is also unusual in that DPZ and Jagdfeld have handpicked seven architects to contribute the building designs in order to generate a variety compatible with the surrounding blocks. American architects Robert Stern, Calvin Tsao, and Tom Beeby will design an apartment building, a hotel, and a mixed-use “flatiron” building, respectively. The courtyard apartment buildings are by European architects Javier Cenicacelaya, Gabriele Tagliaventi, Piotr Choynowski, and Demetri Porphyrios. This infill project “will represent a unique approach to architecture and urbanism in Berlin, precisely due to its apparent lack of uniqueness,” Speck says. “Rather than inventing a new, untested architecture, we have provided streets and buildings of a size and shape that have proved successful over centuries.” While the traditional architecture has come under criticism from German design professionals, Speck notes that many companies are looking for premium office space in traditional surroundings. Berlin currently has a glut of modernist office buildings. The urban plan has sailed through the approval process, leasing has begun, and Speck expects construction to begin within a year. Criticism of the classical design vocabulary aside, “we have found zero resistance to NU in Germany,” Speck says. “The underlying concepts are completely accepted.”