Urban Backs / Städtische Rückseiten

A long term research project that has formed the PhD of Janna Hohn, and in turn informed much of our following work, our research into ‘städtische Rückseiten’ concentrates on the place in the inner city of those workspaces and uses (productive or otherwise) often considered too difficult to integrate into modern development.

ABSTRACT

Cities are in a constant transformation process. One of the strongest and almost universal trends to be seen in the growing European metropolises is a displacement of traditional working and production space out of the inner city. However, the future success of the European metropolis is, and will continue to be, strongly linked to the easy availability of small scale production, distribution and repair industries. The phenomena of ‘industrial gentrification’ affects not only global cities like New York and London, but also the likes of Munich and Hamburg and, more recently, Berlin. If the displacement processes carry on with at their current rate, the economic, ecological and social consequences for both the city as a whole and its individual inhabitants will be severe. With the building out of the last available brown field land, the focus of development is now shifting to a redevelopment and densification of the existing city structure. This densification tends to affect areas of lower building density, quality and (relative to other innercity areas) financial value, however the importance of the functionality of these areas to the wider city’s metabolism is not to be underestimated. These areas belong to a spatial type that is in many cities now almost extinct where noisy and dirty work, affordable locally integrated services and the development of creative businesses can all take place within easy reach of the city´s core. The available space for the last of the kind is currently decreasing rapidly due to the pressure of higher-value ‘cleaner’ uses and speculative investment.

These working places are to be found in almost all of our cities and yet they have largely escaped detailed investigation and analysis. Their exact locations within the city structure are no accident, they have flourished in the compromised areas; in-between spaces and transition zones along railway tracks, harbour areas, large market areas, and infrastructure corridors. Workshops, warehouses, small production plants and other uses have emerged here, uses which are vital to supply and disposal, urban logistics, and the overall functioning of the urban cycle. To make it easier to positively address these left over spaces a new term is introduced: the ‘Urban Back’. On the basis of three selected case studies in London, Hamburg and Berlin the Urban Backs are thoroughly investigated. The focus lies on the spatial and functional transformation processes of those Urban Backs that are directly related to large scale masterplan projects on former industrial sites.

The case studies demonstrate that the decision makers and planning authorities of the cities currently lack suitable instruments and the achievable visions to steer the displacement process of affordable work spaces in the city centre effectively. This dissertation seeks to demonstrate alternative strategies whereby the specific user and its needs have priority. Through a user-based project development it is possible to take affordable workspaces out of the real estate speculation, thus ensuring a specific mixture of uses and long-term affordable rents. This appears to be the only possibility to ensure that the functional work and production spaces, together with the social mixing and convenient sustainability that comes with them, can continue to form a part of the future of our cities.