In sum­mer 2015, an unused hangar in the for­mer Tem­pel­hof Air­port was con­vert­ed into emer­gency accom­mo­da­tion for refugees. Tem­po­rary walls were installed in the vast emp­ty hangars, which saw over 32,000 peo­ple come and go over the course of a few years—a good third of them chil­dren. The lock­ers that stand here date from that time. The res­i­dents, who lived here for up to twen­ty-sev­en months, used them to keep valu­able things, sou­venirs, and mem­o­ries out of the not very pri­vate, over­crowd­ed, and noisy facil­i­ties. For the Liv­ing the City exhi­bi­tion, these lock­ers’ com­part­ments have been filled with the sto­ries of peo­ple and their paths to Berlin and beyond.

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For the Liv­ing the City exhi­bi­tion, sound artist and film­mak­er Moritz Fehr com­posed a con­stant­ly chang­ing acoustic atmos­phere con­sist­ing of sounds and sound envi­ron­ments record­ed in select­ed places in Berlin’s urban space. Real­ized espe­cial­ly for the occa­sion, this mul­ti-chan­nel sound instal­la­tion can be heard via a sur­round sys­tem in the main hall of the Tem­pel­hof air­port and empha­sizes the diverse acoustic pres­ence of urban space, which in every­day life is often per­ceived as mere back­ground noise.

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Olalekan Jey­i­fous calls his part­ly dystopi­an-look­ing col­lages, which deal with urban trans­for­ma­tion process­es, visu­al con­ver­sa­tions. By exag­ger­at­ing exist­ing sit­u­a­tions, he aims to increase the vis­i­bil­i­ty of those peo­ple and set­tle­ments who often go unheard in plan­ning and fall vic­tim to urban devel­op­ment. He sheds light on the inter­twin­ing of hege­mon­ic struc­tures, shows how archi­tec­ture per­pet­u­ates the pow­er struc­tures of colo­nial­ist ide­olo­gies and then itself becomes ammu­ni­tion in the arse­nal of colo­nial pow­er. These dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives and nar­ra­tive strands are also reflect­ed in this col­lage of the Euro­pean city. After the sys­tem­at­ic exploita­tion of its colonies, it stands here as a col­o­nized enti­ty itself that not only tells of these sys­tems but also of green­er futures and stories.

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The work of pho­tog­ra­ph­er and film­mak­er Jan Dirk van der Burg shows trails: nar­row and unpaved paths cre­at­ed by being walked or rid­den over again and again. They fol­low the organ­ic move­ments of peo­ple who move through the world on foot or by bicy­cle. In this way, they call into ques­tion the sharply and clear­ly delin­eat­ed spaces cre­at­ed on the draw­ing board by infra­struc­ture and city plan­ners. Here, trails rep­re­sent resis­tance, small ges­tures of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence. They protest against this will to order and design, which blan­kets every­thing and yet makes no sense in dai­ly life. They appear wher­ev­er the plan­ners of the still car friend­ly world did not reck­on with peo­ple who have a mind of their own.

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About six­teen years ago, two skaters found a plot of fal­low land in Hanover-Linden’s indus­tri­al area. They start to clean up and build a small skate park. In 2009, they form an asso­ci­a­tion, nego­ti­ate an inter­im use con­tract with the own­er togeth­er with the city council’s sup­port, and reach a lease agree­ment for one euro per year, which is still valid today. In 2013, anoth­er asso­ci­a­tion is cre­at­ed: Platzpro­jekt aims to cre­ate a space for ini­tia­tives, a place for self-help, for mutu­al sup­port offer­ing knowl­edge, tools, and crafts­man­ship. Research funds and state sub­si­dies enable the estab­lish­ment of long-term par­tic­i­pa­tion struc­tures for young peo­ple who want to dis­cuss their cities in self-orga­nized spaces and active­ly shape them.

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The small town of Kiruna in Swe­den, with a pop­u­la­tion of almost 18,000, is to be moved. The rea­son for this is a mag­netite ore mine. The city could col­lapse if the earth is hol­lowed out. Plans have been devel­oped to part­ly demol­ish and part­ly rebuild the hous­es at a loca­tion about three kilo­me­ters away. This unusu­al move should be com­plet­ed by 2033. Many, includ­ing the city admin­is­tra­tion, see a town devel­oped on the draw­ing board as a poten­tial new begin­ning. How­ev­er, not every­one seems hap­py about the plans, which are close­ly linked to the company’s eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment. What would hap­pen, for exam­ple, if the glob­al mar­ket price for mag­netite ore fell and the relo­ca­tion of Kiruna, which has already begun, could not be ful­ly implemented?

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Laris­sa Fassler builds and draws space. Yet noth­ing here is cleaned up or ordered accord­ing to scale. In the large-for­mat draw­ings of cities, she shows us what we expe­ri­ence when we walk over traf­fic islands, through under­pass­es, and pas­sages, or into the entrances of build­ings. The artist over­lays the built space with appro­pri­a­tions. She observes and walks through the space over and over again, col­lect­ing and map­ping what she finds. This is also the case with her work Kot­ti (revis­it­ed). The many frag­ments lay­ered on top of each oth­er tell sto­ries of a com­plex space that proud­ly says: »I am city. I am nei­ther easy to under­stand nor easy to plan. I will defend myself if you seek to ques­tion my exis­tence.« The big col­or­ful pic­ture calls for plan­ning to take care of and work with lived space instead of against it. Because where is this city going to go if it has to leave here?

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Sur­veil­lance cam­eras have become an inte­gral part of cityscapes in many parts of Europe. But cam­eras are not neu­tral com­pan­ions: every­thing goes into these devices and is trans­mit­ted. Some­one, some­where else, watch­es, eval­u­ates, process­es, analy­ses, and doc­u­ments it all. What else? We don’t know exact­ly, because much of it is kept under lock and key. Kyle McDon­ald wants to under­stand how new tech­nolo­gies affect or influ­ence us. He uploads video record­ings of pub­lic spaces onto the inter­net, reveal­ing what is nor­mal­ly only seen by oth­ers. Any­one can com­ment on what they see online: encoun­ters, argu­ments, rain, sun. Peo­ple become objects of enter­tain­ment, some­times amuse­ment. McDon­ald thus makes vis­i­ble how this ubiq­ui­tous media arma­ment is rapid­ly rel­e­gat­ing eth­i­cal questions—why who is allowed to see what and how—to the background.

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Every last Fri­day of the month, cyclists meet in both large and small cities to take to the streets in con­voy and as sheer mass. The prin­ci­ple of this gath­er­ing uses a rule of the road traf­fic reg­u­la­tions accord­ing to which a group of at least twelve cyclists is con­sid­ered a vehi­cle and can, there­fore, pass through a traf­fic light that turns red. Those who cycle in front decide where to go. The cyclists want to draw atten­tion to the fact that even today, the car-friend­ly city from the last cen­tu­ry is still a real­i­ty in many places. Thus, Crit­i­cal Mass is a peace­ful and sol­idary protest against the hege­mo­ny of motor­ized traf­fic in urban plan­ning worldwide.

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Whim is a con­cept designed to com­plete­ly rethink mobil­i­ty for the grow­ing Helsin­ki met­ro­pol­i­tan region. It is a result of broad-based coop­er­a­tion between stake­hold­ers from the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors, as well as uni­ver­si­ties. The idea: an all-round ser­vice for the com­plex mobil­i­ty needs of every­one who uses the city. The plan: the devel­op­ment of a uni­ver­sal app for smart­phones, designed to make the use of many dif­fer­ent, main­ly shared, or more sus­tain­able trans­port offers eas­i­er, more intu­itive, and cheap­er. The imme­di­ate goal: to make choos­ing and using pub­lic trans­port as attrac­tive as pos­si­ble. In the long term, the tar­get is to abol­ish the pri­vate car.

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