This year, the Baukultur Salon travels to different places as an ambassador of the European Capital of Culture RUHR.2010. It aims to discuss the baukultur programme “Re-designing the metropolis” with the stakeholders of the major cities Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Leipzig.
Urban renewal without building investment?
Creative.Quarters Ruhr and Berlin Tempelhof Airport under discussion:
The programme of the European Capital of Culture RUHR.2010 consists of three guiding themes: mythology, metropolis and Europe. One emphasis of the programme “Re-designing the metropolis” is the question how the quality of life in the Ruhr metropolis can be boosted by urban renewal, how the location can stay an attractive place to live and work, and how it can be further developed. Twenty years ago, the IBA International Building Exhibition Emscher Park started this transformation. In order to continue this process, persons engaged in the cultural sector and artists were requested to act as lateral thinkers thus forming a driving force for the change into a new type of metropolis. Together with municipalities, organizations for business development and protagonists of the creative economies the “Creative.Quarters” were developed.
The European Capital of Culture RUHR.2010 places emphasis on experiments and unorthodox ideas in all cultural categories in order to add new facets to the recently proclaimed “new Ruhr metropolis”. In this sense, “Creative.Quarters Ruhr” is a modern instrument for urban development. The search for already existing creative urban potential is at the beginning of each planning process. It is this potential that serves as a basis for the development of brownfields and vacancies. The Berlin discussion about “Tempelhof” is a comparable initiative in search of new possibilities of activating urban spaces. A first masterplan can rather be compared to stage directions, and focuses on the activation of the inhabitants and users of the adjacent quarters Tempelhof, Neukölln and Kreuzberg.
