The Socialist Bratwurst: East German Urbanism and Its Reemergence in the Present

2020 ◽  
pp. 009614422095314
Author(s):  
Samantha Fox
Keyword(s):  
Urban Renewal ◽  
Architectural Form ◽  
Renewal Program ◽  
Sociopolitical Context ◽  
History Of ◽  
East German ◽  
Housing Complex ◽  
Urban Renewal Program ◽  
Socialist Utopia ◽  
The City

This article examines defining features of East German urban planning—primarily the housing complex and the city/settlement binary—and their relationship to Eisenhüttenstadt, a city founded in 1950 as Stalinstadt, an East German socialist utopia. Today Eisenhüttenstadt is home to a novel form of urban renewal in which architects and planners look to the socialist past for inspiration as they imagine a new urban future. I examine the history of socialist urbanism as it was implemented in Eisenhüttenstadt, as well as how residents and urban planners came to understand socialist urbanism in the years immediately following German reunification. I then examine an urban renewal program, started in 2014, that explicitly draws on the socialist past. In doing so, I aim to consider the socialist city not as an architectural form but as a set of practices, spatial imaginations, and ethical commitments that can be reanimated even in a capitalist sociopolitical context.

scholarly journals Políticas de renovação urbana no centro histórico de Bogotá, Colômbia (1998-2007)

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos José Suárez
Keyword(s):  
Urban Renewal ◽  
Homeless People ◽  
Specific Area ◽  
International Investments ◽  
The Public ◽  
Renewal Program ◽  
Third Millennium ◽  
Urban Renewal Program ◽  
The City ◽  
Material Form

A renovação urbana está sendo utilizado como instrumento político privilegiado para a transformação do centro histórico de Bogotá. O marco legal da renovação urbana na cidade foram: o Decreto 880 de 1998, que institucionalizou o Programa de Renovação Urbana, o Decreto 619 de 2000, que definiu o Plano de Ordenamento Territorial para a cidade de Bogotá e o Decreto 492 de 2007 que definiu o Plano Zonal Centro. Neste artigo apresentarei junto com estes documentos as formas como os planos estão ligados com a sensação de insegurança e de degradação dentro da cidade, especialmente pela presença de moradores de rua em uma área específica do centro da cidade: La Calle del Cartucho. A destruição deste local e construção do Parque Terceiro Milênio, assim como os outros futuros planos para a cidade, procuram estimular as parcerias público/privadas e a atração do investimento internacional. Palavras-chave: renovação urbana; vazio urbano; El Cartucho; Parque Terceiro Milênio; Calle del Bronx; cidade saúde. Abstract: The urban renewal is in the present day the most privileged political instrument to transform the historical center of Bogotá. The legal frames of urban renewal in this city were: Decree 880 of 1998 that institutionalized the Urban Renewal Program; Decree619 of 2000 that defined the Territorial Arrangement Plan for Bogotá and, the Decree 492of 2007 that defined the Zonal Center Plan. In this article I’ll present the links among these documents and also the links between them, the security & the sensation of degradation in the downtown. This aversion to few degraded places in the city took its “material form” with the presence of homeless people in a specific area in the center: La Calle del Cartucho. The destruction of this place and the construction of Third Millennium Park seek to encourage the public/private enterprises and to attract international investments, along with another future plans for the city. Keywords: urban renewal; urban emptiness; El Cartucho; Third Millennium Park; Calle del Bronx; health city.

Street Scene: Berlin's Strasse des 17 Juni and the Performance of (Dis)unity

2003 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 299-317
Author(s):  
Nicolas Whybrow
Keyword(s):  
Urban Life ◽  
Senior Lecturer ◽  
Political Event ◽  
History Of ◽  
East German ◽  
Street Scene ◽  
German People ◽  
Event Based ◽  
The City

One of Berlin's most prominent streets, named after the East German workers' uprising of 1953 (in which Brecht was controversially implicated), serves as the performative location for Nicolas Whybrow's topographical interrogation of the politics of German nationhood. Particular attention is given to the new parliament building, the Reichstag, which has been out of action for the majority of its troubled history. The article considers attempts to perform democracy and unity since the fall of the Wall through various mediations, including Norman Foster's refunctioning of the Reichstag, Christo's facilitation of its rebirth, and a permanent installation by Hans Haacke which rewrites the building's prominent inscription of 1916, ‘For the German People’. Finally, Whybrow places the annual ‘Love Parade’ in the context of the long history of mass marches and demonstrations on this particular street, and analyzes its claims to be a unifying political event. Based loosely on the Benjaminian flâneur figure's practice of a first-hand experience of the street, incorporating both subjective immersion and detached observation of the revealing ‘detritus of modern urban life’, various tensions and superimpositions are rendered visible as the city undergoes transformation since reunification. Nicolas Whybrow, whose book Street Scenes: Brecht, Benjamin, and Berlin is forthcoming, is Senior Lecturer in Theatre at De Montfort University, Leicester.

Retrieving a Redemptive Past: Protecting Heritage and Heimat in East German Cities

2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Jason James
Keyword(s):  
Historic Preservation ◽  
Urban Renewal ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Legacy ◽  
Moral Boundaries ◽  
East German ◽  
German Cities ◽  
The City

In the years following unification, East German cityscapes have been subject to fierce contention because historic preservation and urban renewal have served as a local allegory of national redemption. Using conflicts over preservation and renewal in the city of Eisenach as a case study, I argue that historic cityscapes have served as the focus of many East Germans' efforts to grapple with the problem of Germanness because they address the past as a material cultural legacy to be retrieved and protected, rather than as a past to be worked through. In Eisenach's conflicts, heritage and Heimat serve as talismans of redemption not just because they symbolize an unspoiled German past, but also because they represent structures of difference that evoke a victimized Germanness—they are above all precious, vulnerable possessions threatened with disruption, pollution, or destruction by agents placed outside the moral boundaries of the hometown by its bourgeois custodians.

scholarly journals Urban Renewal, Rehabilitation, and Remodelling of Santiago, Chile

2013 ◽  
pp. 97-104
Author(s):  
Armando de Ramón ◽  
José Manuel Larráin
Keyword(s):  
Urban Renewal ◽  
Private Investment ◽  
Intensive Use ◽  
History Of ◽  
State Investment ◽  
Dominant Characteristic ◽  
Private Investors ◽  
The City ◽  
New Infrastructure

We study the history of the changes in Santiago, Chile, between 1780 and 1880 to verify the stages of urban renewal and the role of state and private investment in the processes. We find that before 1780 the dominant characteristic is conservation, i.e., repair or rebuilding of existing stock of buildings. Between 1780 and 1880 the stages were habilitation, rehabilitation, and remodelling of buildings and spaces for optimum use of urban land. Involved also were more intensive use and the creation of better and more expeditious communication to knit the various quarters of the city together and to provide communication with surrounding entities, such as the port and centres of supply. These stages and developments may follow each other but also may occur in superimposed rhythm. In the earlier years, state investment in new infrastructure is paramount; that investment, in turn, leads both to the development of new quarters and the entrance of private investors who profit from the unearned increment brought about by the state investment.

scholarly journals In the name of housing

2021 ◽  
Vol 80 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-29
Author(s):  
Sameep Padora
Keyword(s):  
Ordinary People ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Architectural Form ◽  
Built Form ◽  
Specific Manner ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Architecture ◽  
Collective Housing ◽  
The City ◽  
Architectural Unit

In his 1925 book Groszstadtbauten, Ludwig Hilberseimertalks about the relation of city form to that of the smallest single architectural unit; a room within a house. This commentary is validated by the fact that the residential fabric of any city comprises most of that city’s built form. For most people, this means the form of housing. This essay focuses on the history of architecture relating to housing in the city of Mumbai. The tie between Mumbai’s form and its inhabitation. Looking specifically at the architectural form of these projects, they become instructive both through the breadth of their variations, as well as the depth of their spatial and formal engagements. Building on the history of housing in Mumbai since the early-nineteenth century the essay presents a typology of housing inhabited by ordinary people and their immediate spatial ecologies which facilitate a specific manner of compressed living. These types are commentaries on technology, lifestyle, and culture are all situated within the particularities of their respective time. Nevertheless, these unique armatures still seem to gravitate around certain emergent commonalities that could provide an armature for the design of collective housing models in the future.

scholarly journals International Photography Networks and Walter Hahn’s Museum for Photography, Dresden

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-168
Author(s):  
Sarah Goodrum
Keyword(s):  
International Community ◽  
History Of Photography ◽  
Photographic Images ◽  
Museum Professionals ◽  
History Of ◽  
East German ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The City ◽  
Further Development ◽  
Photographic Culture

The Museum für Photographie, founded, developed and directed by Dr. Walter Hahn for only twelve years in the city of Dresden, has only recently emerged in scholarship on East German photographic culture. Although the museum definitely enjoyed a relationship with the East German cultural authorities within the Cultural League, or Kulturbund, it does not sit easily in the historiographical category of ‘official’ photography in the GDR. Hahn’s version of the history of photography was challenging to the socialist establishment, which hampered the further development of the museum and did not preserve the project after Hahn’s death. Hahn’s ambitions to expand his museum and gain membership in an international community of collectors and museum professionals drove him to contact a tremendous number of figures throughout the world and led to many fruitful exchanges on questions of the history of photography and the state of collections internationally. This article will address the degree to which Hahn’s networking through publications and correspondence and attempts at cultural diplomacy tied him more closely to the international community of photography collectors and photography museums – particularly in the West – than his Cultural League colleagues could ultimately sanction. It argues that Hahn and his museum represent a historical and historiographical anomaly that complicates the accepted narratives of East Germany history. Hahn’s interactions within the international museum community represent a significant instance of the international circuit of photographic images and literature during the Cold War.

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