Key concepts for a discussion about city planning by Juergen Eckhardt

Richard Meheux with Maya, Juergen Eckhardt talking

with Reina J. Palazon Photo: Hartmut Schulz

Note: the intention of this paper is to introduce some key concepts for a discussion about the possibilities of city planning to resolve the problems of the city

Questions of architecture are questions of culture.

Given this premise, city planning is to be developed with the means of culture. This includes amongst other things the social questions of how a city is constructed and which has a result an impact upon the architecture of a city.

As far as city planning in Germany is concerned, some clarification of the language in use is needed.

City planning is a part of the public, communal administration and was created as the case in England and France during the time when the state could no longer cope with the means of a social policy the social questions of the times, that is in the last third of the 19^th century. The evolving cities should take upon their shoulders the solution of the social question. This brought about the creation of a special discipline called city planning. It became a part of the social-technical department of the administration with the claim to be scientific.

Today city planning presents itself as being organized in a hierarchically manner within the German federal states (Laender) along with their respective sub-departments, governmental presidiums, city and country administrations. As an instrument of policy it is dependent upon the administrative decisions made by elected representatives of the respective parliaments in charge. They are the carriers of decision and are thus responsible for city planning. Until late into the last third of the 19^th century it was the case that planning and politics were still interwoven in terms of responsibility, however, after that there came about the politically disinterested, only in his subject matter competent, but loyal to the state ‘specialist’. This specialist carries on still today within city planning, but he no longer plans anymore within the administration, but rather administers planning. The decisions of the parliament relate no longer to the contents of planning. The only things decided upon are the plan procedure and the completed plan. Between these two poles actual planning takes place and also the actual decisions are made in-between these two poles. The ability to adapt itself to an abstractly defined market, that has become a part and parcel of city planning to the extend as it appeared necessary to subordinate planning to the interests of those public or private bodies making the investments. City planning is done today as a service to the one who gives the contract. It has made city planning into a secondary science in those areas paving the way for investments, that is, more into a special department within the social sciences and market economics. And there also only within the special area of empirical studies.

City planning means nowadays planning for the short term, planning for the quick realization. Since the fast realization and the kind of planning supporting this are not suited adequately to sustain public interest and the strengthening of the cultural good CITY, it follows that city planning must take on a new, more substantial defined form.

Since city planning has nothing to do with the production of commodities, but rather with the abstract organization of problems taken from other socially relevant areas, it has to be subordinated to the decisions of culture and the conceptual decisions for city construction. Only in this way there can be avoided the danger of loosing itself in ‘studies of originalities and implementation possibilities’. And only in this way the city planning can play a decisive role when it comes to determine the relationship between private and public interest.

When trying to redefine the role and function of city planning, it is especially crucial to remember that the developments of the commuter towns (Trabantenstaedte) in the sixties and seventies of this century was not an expression of affluence, but of poverty. Thus the first architects of planning at a massive scale when it came to extensions of the city, in particular L.C., they did not want it and hence did not plan for it. Were the first city planners of the nineteenth century unable as social helpers to do something against the increasing impoverization of the masses of workers by means of their city extension projects, the city planners have been over demanded since the middle of the 20^th century on top of it by questions of form.

City extension until the 19^th century was based upon a design plan whose content enjoyed a broad acceptance, socially speaking, even though under hierarchical conditions. Nowadays such acceptance can only be achieved by horizontal participation in the planning decisions and even in shaping the plans directly.

As it was not useful to try to discover new architectural forms after the experiences of the 19^th century, all the more so there should not become nowadays the discovery of new city forms a subject matter for a serious discussion about cities and how they are to be shaped. The curious notion of a few city planners that an ‘intelligent city’ could be planned, that is not worthy of any discussion. In Europe it is a matter of interest to revive existing cities, to make their cultures become that of a city culture, to confront them with the ‘leisure culture’ and to regard at the same time the relationship between city and rural countryside as being self-understood. There has to be given in this densely populated Europe the same weight to the cultural landscapes of the old cores of cities, the suburbs and the rural countryside around them. Especially the old centers should not be misused merely for purposes of leisure and relaxation. Living and working and the entire life must move back to the old centers, the city Bologna perhaps the best example.

For the renewal of the European Cities they themselves and their histories, not the untouched nature nor technology provide the models for future developments:

the preserved buildings within their planned inner city construction linkages
the parks, gardens, water surfaces
the city’s connection of art as painting, sculpture, literary performances, theatre

The European Cities have themselves such a great physical appearance, that in contrast to cities of other continents, all of which are exposed to over dominance of advertisements and the mass media as current signs of poverty, that they do have an impact.

When it comes to preserve the European City and to resolve their problems, it is important to recall the contradictions and opposing forces which have led to their developments and by which they managed to renew themselves in the past centuries.

Juergen Eckhardt, Architect

Translation from German: Hatto Fischer

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Key concepts for a discussion about city planning by Juergen Eckhardt