Building as an art form, as a symbol of modernity and social event. Cityscapes develop and await their revival. The radius grows larger: An entire region is reformed, with landscapes which return a human dimension and face. And new perspectives of the city as a place worth living in and a future metropolis.
International Building Exhibition
Urban Renewal as a Civil Project
Demographic Change
Germany finds itself at the end of European birth statistics just before Italy. Another shrinkage factor refers to the economic structural change which especially hit Eastern Germany in fast motion right after the political system change. Thousands of company closings and a sudden rise of unemployment led to the movement of mostly young and qualified people to economically stronger Western states and to foreign countries. Beside that, the average age of the urban society rises. In addition to that an urban sprawl of the hinterland began: many families moved to the countryside, more an more city centers were characterized by vacant buildings and obsolescence.
These shrinking processes require a communal correction: only a radical and consequent urban redevelopment is able to solve the problem of vacancy, decay and the financial emergency of local authorities.
New Perspectives of Cities in Change
To initiate this process the federal government decided to realize the IBA Urban Renewal Saxony-Anhalt 2010 being organized by the foundation Bauhaus Dessau and state development company SALEG. As the first building exhibition in Germany this IBA focuses on a whole German Bundesland (state). 17 cities in Saxony-Anhalt take part in the IBA with their specific topics. The aim of that exhibition is to work out a special expertise for the renewal on a federal and communal basis and to generate exemplary projects of urban development with respect to the demographic change and the economic transformations. In the final year 2010 exemplary solutions for this urban renewal will be presented in the IBA cities, which will be transferable to other cities and regions.
Instruments and Methods of the IBA Urban Renewal 2010
Support as regards content and consulting of the participating cities with respect to their development and the realization of their ideas build up the centre of that IBA work. Their main instruments and methods include e.g. civil participation, public actions as well as various permanent and temporary artistic and architectural interventions in urban spaces. Here new and inter-coordinated methods of funding and spatial management, urban and regional planning as well as its planning culture will be developed. The IBA-city network and the IBA CITY MONITOR (IBA STADT MONITOR) have been functioning as a very important platform for the exchange of experience and ideas. Out of all juridical regularities informal instruments and modes of operation are used because the situation of change requires undogmatic and adjusted strategies and operational concepts.
