Post-Industrial City

Understanding and Designing the Post-Industrial City: metropolis, urban renewal and public space

Zweijähriges Austauschprojekt mit der TU Lissabon, gefördert durch den DAAD

Some of East-German and Portuguese cities have been experiencing rapid changes in the run of processes that can be marked as "post-industrialism".  Although Portugal has been deeply formed as an peripherical country, urban planning of the Lisbon city and other cities has been realized in the 20th century in the run of industrial needs (like the harbour economy).

Nevertheless we observe the lost of importance of the heavy industry and industry based in intensive exploitation of labour-force and the growth of the services. East-German cities are undergoing profound changes after the Fall of the Wall and are still in a transitory changes where only few cities like Leipzig have built up a substantial service sector economy. They experience other major trends in society like demographic changes and multi-culturalism, Lisbon and the East-German cities are experiencing a multi-layered transition in rapid time.

Against the background of these observations, this project has as objective to create an intensified knowledge of contemporary urban development in Portugal and East Germany. It creates a common research framework where interdisciplinary approaches are intended to give a detailed insight into both general trends and particular projects. It focuses than on the new role of public space in cities facing the transformation to a post-industrial and service sector led urban economy. In a third step, the project highlights the different strategies in political programmes, architectural approaches, urban planning and social and artistic interventions with regard to the renewal of urban areas.