Innen.Stadt.Leben. #3 Participation, creativity, and improvisation as engines of urban future

Retail in Transition – the book published by JOVIS; Innen.Stadt.Leben. – the book discussion series at ANCB/Aedes; and you, our public, are finally back together in person. Hopefully. We invite you to the kick-off of the third installment of our event series on October 6, 2021, and the follow-up on January 27, 2022.

Urban interventions such as flash mobs, guerilla gardens, pop-up clubs, etc., celebrate spontaneity, creativity, and improvisation. They stand alongside or in opposition to plannability dogmas, which often enough prove to be far removed from the citizenry. However, citizens are ready and willing to participate. How would such a process look? What are the options for visualizing urban spaces, for example, through culture? Or for identifying and coming to grips with these spaces through collective and participatory bottom-up processes?

The crisis of retail spaces, evident from empty ground floors and deserted upper stories, is calling into question the outdated model of monofunctional streetscapes, pedestrian zones, and depopulated city centers. The effects of the digital transformation of retail and of the work and experience society on the city center were intensified by the pandemic. The search for methods for (re)vitalizing the city centers or preventing their devastation is complex. The mobility transition and the urgent imperative to practice consistently sustainable building are at least as relevant as, for example, digitization. It isn’t just a question of architecture and urban planning. It’s a duty to society as a whole. Significant approaches to the problem include, for example, the transformation and mixed use of buildings in the city center as well as the creation of more public (meeting) places. Living, working, infrastructure, retail, culture, and leisure must be recombined in a future-ready – meaning sustainable – symbiosis.

“Innen.Stadt.Leben” is a joint event series organized by ANCB and caspar., the architectural firm founded in 2004 by Caspar Schmitz-Morkramer. His book “Retail in Transition” (2021, Jovis Verlag) serves as a starting point for four discussions involving representatives from different sectors, each with a different perspective on a problem that can be resolved only by visualizing and harmonizing as many approaches as possible.