Archive: IBA Berlin 2020

City of diversity

In many areas, the outer city is characterised by a patchwork-like pattern of largely separated functional areas and urban structures. It is hard to find common elements in the concatenation of large housing estates, single-family dwellings, specialist retail centres, overdimensioned traffic spaces, industrial and commercial areas as well as fallow spaces. How can such insular landscapes be integrated into an urban concept? How can one develop from this a hybrid and solid city that lives up to the varied and ever diverging usage demands and the many different user groups of the city?

The IBA Berlin 2020 is looking for models for promoting diversity in the outer city, increasing the number of synapses within and between the districts and, at the same time, developing "rules of the game" for neighbourhoods of potential conflicts. New forms of urban expression must be found for the increasing interlocking of living and work, living and education, work and recreation, while opening up urban spaces for social diversity. This involves careful structural enhancement, functional enrichment, linkage and integration in terms of urban development and function, redesign of streetscapes and free spaces, new forms of mobility and, finally, the opening up of flexibility for residents' processes of appropriation. For this discussion to take place, one must analyse intensively the specific qualities and potentials of the individual urban spaces.


Graphics: Thomas Rustemeyer