Innovative citizen participation as the key to Baukultur

Many queries our office has received from mayors in the past years have dealt with the question of how their own centres could be strengthened and what could be done about vacant buildings. This shows that the phenomenon of increasing numbers of vacant buildings in village and town centres cannot be ignored.

How to cope with this problem throws up a number of complex questions: What strategies can municipalities and towns make use of to strengthen their centres as living spaces that create a sustainable identity and avoid buildings becoming vacant despite the structural changes taking place? Above all, however, are the questions: What new planning methods must be developed in order to promote a constructive treatment of the potentials? How can citizens be involved constructively in the solution processes? And how can Baukultur even emerge under such circumstances?
In response to this, a new planning method has been developed, with which it will be possible to give answers to all these questions together with the citizens and users. A temporary office is being built directly on site. In real time and together with those affected, a handful of tailor-made concepts will be developed, and these will then manifest as real buildings. In the past years, several projects have emerged in Germany and Austria, which demonstrate in exemplary manner a new strategic direction of impact for dealing with the development of centres in municipalities and towns and these will be turned into results that are attractive from a Baukultur perspective.

This project was put up for discussion as part of the 2015 Baukultur Workshops in Kassel.