Felix Bentlin, Jürgen Höfler,
Angela Million (Editors)
Schriftenreihe Städtebau und Kommunikation von Planung
4 – Borderline City
Shifting Borders in the Wake
of the COVID-19 Pandemic
in European Cities and Regions
Verankert an der TU Berlin als Gastgeberinstitution der Sommerschule
ist in weni gen Tagen ein Palimpsest europäischer Krisenerfahrungen und
Neuanfänge in der Stadtentwicklung von den Studierenden erarbeitet
worden. Unter dem bekannten Motto „global denken und lokal handeln“
weisen Studierende aus ganz Europa auf soziale und physische Grenz-
verschiebungen als planerische und gestalterische Herausforderung
hin. Konsens unter den Teilnehmenden ist, dass Krisen zugleich Belas-
tungs- und Lehrproben für das Städtische darstellen. Fünf besondere
Dynamiken beschreiben wir in dieser Publikation, die als Befund und
Auftrag vom fachlichen Nachwuchs an die Stadtentwicklungspolitik in
Europa formuliert werden:
Nachbarschaften bilden entschei-
dende Orte um BewohnerInnen zu
re-aktivieren und stabile Gemein-
schaften in Krisenzeiten zu formen
Die Neubewertung des öffentlichen
und privaten Raums bricht gewohnte
Muster des Zusammenlebens auf und
erfordert neue Wohn- und Arbeitsorte
Der öffentliche Raum muss anhand
neuer Bedarfe und Kennwerte trans-
formiert werden
Zur Überwindung sozialer und
räumlicher Ungleichheiten werden
inklusive Zugänge und gemein-
schaftliche Prozesse entwickelt
Infrastrukturen werden als öffentliche
Güter aufgrund von neuen Funktionen
und Dienstleistungserwartungen
vernetzt und räumlich adaptiert
Neighborhoods Serve as Key
Venues for Re-Activating
Residents and Building
Stable Communities in
Challenging Times
The neighborhood is the nucleus of a crisis-proof city. Future urban
planning in Europe needs to focus more on the equality of housing
conditions at the neighborhood level. The current rise in awareness
needs to lead to paradigmatic adjustments of urban renewal programs
in the long run. The crisis represents a stress test for communities
and highlights the necessities in urban structures for redistributions
of spaces by means of neighborhood design approaches. Socially
disadvantaged groups especially need to receive more attention in
long-term strategies when it comes to risk management.
The Reevaluation of
Public and Private Space
Breaks with Conventional
Patterns of Cohabitation and
Demands Innovative Residential
and Work Environments
Current restrictions on commuting, working, and meeting have un-
covered the opportunities offered by a digital city. Urban planners
across Europe need to rethink our way of traveling and moving through
the city while thinking ahead to take into account online communi-
cation. In the future, the virtual public sphere is conceivable every-
where, but it will require appropriate spaces and infrastructure. The
private sphere will become a place for work, education, and interaction.
Individual life-work balances will vary enormously and demand new
concepts for our housing and work environments.
Public Space Must
be Transformed in Line
with Emerging Needs and
Key Parameters
The measures taken to combat the crisis have shown that it is possible
to adjust the size of traffi c areas in our cities and shift borders in favor
of pedestrians and cyclists! Using human-scale fi gures, we call for
lively, diverse, accessible, and resilient public spaces that allow for a
high quality of dense urban life in European cities. We need to appro-
priate local streets, squares, and other communal places. Let’s rethink
our cities and transform them from car-friendly cities into human-
friendly, quieter, greener, and fairer cities that contribute to combatting
climate change!
Ensuring Inclusive Access
and Developing Collaborative
Community Processes Will
Help to Overcome Spatial and
Social Disparities
Social and physical borders reveal themselves during times of crisis:
Challenges in mobility, economy, environment, and infrastructure de-
mand a shift in values and the exploration of alternative solutions
through design. The pandemic exposes what has always existed in
Europe, the inequalities that many people attempt to deny but that are
ultimately inescapable. All these inequalities are exacerbated in such a
way that they refl ect the fragility of the economic, political, and ethical
system in which we live. However, coordinating efforts to respond to
future challenges will be all but impossible if inequality persists.
Infrastructures Are Being
Networked and Adapted
Spatially as Public Goods on
Account of New Functions and
Service Expectations
The crisis has been a catalyst for new roles, functions, and interfaces
in infrastructure networks, which are negotiated between users and
services on an ongoing basis. Be it public transport, Internet platforms,
or health care, these commodities must be rendered accessible and
inter operable for everyone. This in turn will create a new spatial experi-
ence and better services for inhabitants across national and social
borders. Moreover, the concepts of global cities and connectivity need
to be reconsidered and linked with the discussion concerning the
limitation of fundamental rights and spatial justice in mobility.
Even before the spread of COVID-19 across the globe during the crisis
of 2020, cities and regions acted as venues and drivers for a dual-
istic development dy namic by both creating and dissolving borders.
The results obtained from various university seminars and a European
summer school form the basis for a crisis manuscript, while serving to
review the planning and design activities in different European cities
and regions. For the fi rst time ever, a network of students from the
urban planning and design departments at 19 European universities
have defi ned common requirements for crisis-resistant and people-
friendly urban planning in Europe: On the one hand, crisis-related
experiences act as catalysts for fundamental social, economic, and
ecological changes, and, on the other hand, they accelerate changes
that are already underway with regard to urban development policies.
The crisis and border situations explored in this joint investigation
extend beyond the mere operating principles of European cities and
regions. In fact, as an endurance test and didactic example, they pro-
vide a guide for crisis-proof urban renewal in Europe. They lead the way
in building a bridge between the European architecture and planning
disciplines to create vibrant border landscapes.
Beilage zu ISBN 978-3-7983-3200-3
Universitätsverlag der TU Berlin, 2021
Loading more pages...