HUMBOLDT CITIES LECTURE

Wednesday, 16 April 2025, 3:00 - 4:30 PM (CEST)

Language: English

Online in Zoom

In this Lecture, Grisha Bertram talks about planning protests in major German cities. As a result of a critical review of post-war demolitions, civic engagement and protest, “cautiousness” has been the general principal in German urban renewal in the last forty to fifty years. Meant as means to safeguard both physical and social structures, preserving historic sites and traditional urban materialities has been an important element of urban policy and planning. In a way, the rise of nature conservation can be seen as complementary development.

This has now become contested from two very different perspectives.

On the one hand, in the last two decades and often after an era of decline, Germany's mayor urban centres have faced dynamic urban growth through processes of reurbanisation and metropolisation. This has led to spatial intensification on both inner-city locations that have been considered "underused" and the cities' outskirts with plans for new suburban settlements underway. This has led to pressure on existing quarters, infrastructure, urban green spaces and greenfield sites alike.

On the other hand and partly as result of the first, urbanites and their civil society organisations try to expand the concept of cautiousness, arguing for the preservation of not only listed buildings, but “temporary” uses, “alternative” spaces, allotment gardens, green spaces, low rents, bus stops, trees, the homogeneous social structure of a suburb, views or even the “dirtiness” of the city that (they hope) will prevent it from further neoliberal exploitation.

Based on both quantitative empirical findings of about 3,500 planning protests in eight of the largest German cities as well of several qualitative case studies of civic protest in urban planning, it is possible to show how protests articulate ideas for renewal and preservation as well as critique on radical change, decline and stagnation.