WHAT TO DO WITH SHRINKING CITIES IN EASTERN GERMANY?
CALL FOR PROPOSALS!!!
IDEA COMPETITION
Superflex is looking for Chinese proposals for the development of
strategies for action for the shrinking cities in eastern Germany.
BACKGROUND
Shrinking cities is a phenomenon, which is happening all over the world
these years; in the USA, Britain, or Belgium, Finland, Italy, Russia,
Kazakhstan, and in China. Shrinking cities contradict the image,
familiar since the Industrial Revolution, of the "boomtown", a big city
characterized by constant economic and demographic growth. Cities shrink
when industrial production and investment move elsewhere in the world.
The dramatic changes in eastern Germany since 1989 have led to more than
a million empty apartments and to the abandoning of countless industrial
parks and social and cultural facilities. This is a general pattern of
our civilization.
The phenomenon of shrinking cities urges us to rethink traditional ideas
of the European city, as well as future development of urban worlds.
City planning may solve some of the problems, but we need new approaches
to tackle the fundamental economic, social and cultural problems,
challenges and prospects of shrinking cities Germany's Federal Cultural
Foundation has initiated a three-year project, called Shrinking Cities.
The project seeks to expand Germany's city- planning debate beyond
questions of demolishing surplus apartments and improving residential
quarters.
The project addresses new questions and perspectives and places
developments in eastern Germany in an international context, involving
various artistic, design, and research disciplines in the search for
strategies for action. In sum, the project of Shrinking Cities is a
research and exhibition project, which emphasises first, an
international study of processes of shrinking and second, the
development of strategies for action for eastern Germany
(
http://www.shrinkingcities.com/).