Herausgegeben von IBA Stadtumbau 2010 im JOVIS Verlag GmbH, Berlin 2005, ISBN: 3-83614-95-0; 24,80 Euro.

“Everyone is talking about shrinking. Many talk of emerging opportunities. In its first book, the International Building Exhibition (IBA) Urban Redevelopment Saxony-Anhalt 2010 discusses the shape of tomorrow’s city, the international dimension of shrinking and urban redevelopment, and the challenges facing planning.”

‘The Other Cities’ is an interesting and thought provoking publication, not least to someone like myself who has a long standing interest in the theory and practice of urban regeneration, but is only just beginning to examine and realise the significance of ‘the shrinking city’, in particular within an eastern German context. The IBA publication critically asks: “How can the system of the city remain viable in an age of low population figures, limited financial resources, and a surplus of infrastructure?” (p.153) Perhaps the greatest challenge thrown up by this book is the view that the experiments in Saxony-Anhalt are developing visions for a more fundamental change of course in urban development in parts of Europe, and how we should think about the city and our approaches to planning urban change. This suggestion that the shrinking city creates new parameters largely contradicts other current pro-growth views on European urbanisation expressed in EU spatial development policies, and policies advocating city-regions as motors of regional economic development in countries such as the U.K. and The Netherlands.

The IBA Urban Redevelopment Saxony-Anhalt 2010 project was commissioned by the State of Saxony-Anhalt and is being carried out by the IBA Office. Participants of the IBA Office are the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and the State Development Company SALEG. The Foundation in turn is described as a non-profit foundation under public law, funded by the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt, the Federal Government, Commissioner for Cultural Affairs and the Media, and the city of Dessau. In reporting on the IBA Urban Redevelopment IBA Stadtumbau 2010, the six main articles and various commentaries contained in this 271 page publication seek to examine the nature and cause of the shrinking city; to propose and develop an alternative urban development model; to illustrate through reports on practice the application of this ‘alternative’ approach to the fifteen cities involved in the project in Saxony-Anhalt. However, the wider significance of these experiments is recognised by the IBA, with their concern for the shrinking city being articulated at three levels: concrete experiments with the participating cities to develop new practice; an overall look at the city within a regional network which encourages learning between the individual cities; and international exchange of information and insights.

The publication has been produced to a high standard, and successfully holds the attention of both the practitioner and urban analyst reader through extremely relevant articles and illustrations. The translation to English alongside the German text is very welcome, making the contents accessible to a wide audience, but also usefully disseminating the experiment to a wide and critical examination. In particular I enjoyed many of the photographs of ‘urbanism’ in eastern Germany, pictures that serve as a record of past environments and experiences, but also as symbols and representations of a dreary physical legacy. By contrast, the bright and colourful montages of future and proposed plans and ideas provide fascinating and hopeful images and insights of what the new places and spaces being created through the programme might look like. In this way the publication can inspire both student and experienced practitioner of urban planning, but does it also address the fundamental questions and contested issues that surround the shrinking city phenomena?

In the Message of Greeting, Wolfgang Böhmer, Minister President of the State of Saxony-Anhalt lays claim that “no city mayor today can afford to believe in unrealistic scenarios of growth” (p.13). This claim ‘devolves’ the responsibility for dealing with the shrinking phenomena to individual cities, but also raises questions about the nature of what might be seen as ‘realistic’. For example, elsewhere in the book it is hinted that wider structural changes also underlay this general process. In particular Omar Akbar critically explores notions of a ‘European City’, urbanism and globalised consumer cultures, suggesting the emergence of a new urbanism based on liberalisation and pluralisation, and the need to negotiate between different interests and milieus. Walter Prigge attempts to contextualise the ‘shrinking city’ within wider international processes of de-industrialisation, and wider themes of a peripheral East Germany cushioned by transfer payments from the west. Indeed, although an immediate physical representation now exists in each of the cities, these analyses hint that the problem has occurred over a time period of at least a decade, and may have its origins in earlier periods of urbanisation, albeit a ‘non-city’ urbanisation linked to enforced industrialisation of many areas. Thus, Jochen Korfmacher claims that past “alarm signals indicating a fundamental economic, social and cultural crisis were rarely taken seriously” (p.73), since they assumed continued growth and the sustainability of the growth model, and took no or little account of the reverse in West German growth rates and the cost of unification.

In this context the response by IBA is strikingly ambitious since the problem is certainly severe. Although the experiments are being undertaken in cities of very different sizes - the largest being Halle (240,000 population in 2003), and Magdeburg (228,000); compared to the smallest of Wanzleben (with population of 5,000 in 2003) and Gräfenhainichen (with 8,000); the total population in these fourteen cities has fallen by some 233,000 people between 1990 and 2003. It is the scale and rapidity of loss in individual cities that is particularly striking – a loss of 32% over this period in Bitterfeld/Wolfen, 24% in Aschersleben, and 23% in Staßfurt, being the highest relative declines. There may be here a slight trap of ‘over simplification’, since such population change can be the result of many events and processes, and the extent to which the outcome (shrinking) is base on a single causality is not fully explored in this publication, tending to support an inevitability within the analysis-prescription argument. Thus, there is no discussion about the extent to which the experiments and ‘new’ urban development model can only be successful if allayed to wider reform agendas in welfare, labour market, property and economic systems in Germany.

This simplification of analysis then becomes linked to a heavily ‘physical determinist’ viewpoint of urban development and planning responses. Thus in considering the broad alternative approaches by which the ‘shrinking city’ might influence future urban development, IBA put forward the following scenarios for concentrating existing and future physical development:

• The compact city - a concentration on one centre;
• The city as archipelago - concentration on urban islands;
• The strip or ring city - concentration on a form of traffic;
• The network city - concentration on networks of infrastructure;
• The newly established city - concentration on a radical new beginning.

In fairness, the ten principles for action put forward by the IBA team do hint at more complex processes and challenges in devising responses, and suggests the need for the involvement of all stakeholders; a dynamic management approach rather than the seeking of a fixed end outcome; experimentation and innovation; multiple funding; marketing and image promotion; and contextualisation within wider region and global processes. The evidence from the fifteen cases suggests that these have not always been taken on board in a comprehensive or balanced way. The cities that participated in project conceived their ‘themes’ for urban redevelopment themselves; but when viewed together they offer a diverse picture of urban redevelopment in Saxony-Anhalt.

There is a predominance of physical development and associated imagery within the practices illustrated, such as ‘urban islands’, ‘perforation’, ‘city landscapes’, but the possible diversity of the causes and outcomes of the shrinking process are also hinted at in those proposals that seek more ‘social’ outcomes, such as cultural and religious dialogue, and counter migration measures, such as schooling. A third theme, seeking perhaps an alternative ‘slow growth’ or ‘eco’ future emerges in ideas about such themes as new energy sources, health and biodiversity. In the apparent absence of a ‘top-down’ strategy, the subsequent encouragement of bottom-up approaches leaves key questions about the scale of effects, the achievement of any critical mass of new economic and cultural activities, and the necessary inter-dependency between each of the urban areas unanswered. Apart from one theme, suggesting co-operation within regional structures, there is also little argument about any necessary transformation of governance that might be needed to bring such visionary themes to fruition. These points highlight key concerns also drawn to our attention by the introduction to the volume by Karl-Heinz Daehre, Minister for Building and Traffic - the nature of the property market; the need for and extent of Federal subsidy; and the form and extent of citizen’s participation. The last of these is paid attention to in the many illustrations of the case study cities, but a detailed analysis about the meanings of the new urban identities, the necessary empowerment and possible change in aspiration and rewards, and hence values of justice and equality within the resident populations of these ‘shrunk’ cities is not discussed. Similarly the finance and economics of the new structures are largely ignored, and this prevents a fuller appraisal of the suitability and likely outcomes of the experiments to be made by the reader.

Despite these criticisms, there is still a sense of aspiration and innovation in this book, not least in Heike Brückner’s claim that “at times of change, there will always be opportunity for creative intervention, whether this consists of protecting and evaluating newly-won quality, repairing a place that has thinned out, conserving an interesting state of affairs or implementing provocative measures that trigger action. It may also mean the toleration, promotion and stimulation of sub-cultural, anarchic and anachronistic elements”. (p.225-6) I await the evaluation of the IBA experiments with a view to refreshing a belief in bottom-up and self-determined approaches to urban regeneration, so absent in many other practices elsewhere.