The small town of Altenburg in Thuringia is shrinking. Since the 1980s, the population has declined by over 40%. Numerous individuals and initiatives have therefore been active for several years. They want to counteract the downbeat atmosphere. The cooperation of various initiatives, support associations, and cultural institutions—Stadtmensch—is supported by a program under the National Urban Development Policy and working on purposefully expanding existing models for the co-produced city. In concrete terms, the aim is for civil society to assume responsibility for public indoor and outdoor spaces. Calls for ideas bring forth projects, the implementation and promotion of which are decided upon by locals through various procedures. An important criterion: the projects should serve the common good.
Former mayor Domenico »Mimmo« Lucano of the southern Italian municipality of Riace was co-founder of the association Città Futura—City of the Future. In collaboration with aid organizations, he took in refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea, Palestine, and Lebanon. With this came state subsidies that were then also invested in the village’s infrastructure, which—many today believe—would likely have died out without the new residents. And so, together with the locals, abandoned houses were repaired. The newcomers were also introduced to local traditions of glass making, ceramics, and embroidery. But from the beginning, there was resistance to what was seen as an idiosyncratic approach, which finally led to the project’s collapse a few years ago. Lucano was accused of malpractice, abuse of his position, and had to leave Riace. In the meantime, however, he’s back forging new plans.
We peer into a pit dug deep into the ground. In the middle: a last isolated house on a massive clump of earth. Nail houses, that’s what these structures—left in apparent wastelands—are called. For Ahmet Öğüt, these houses are »expressions of individual everyday resistance against strategies of state or corporate constraint.« They are remnants of hasty urbanization processes and, at the same time, speak of displacement. Öğüt’s model representations of the nail houses record this state of things as a warning. And so, resistance to the relentless global real estate industry and speculative land development is made visible in the long term and thus negotiable for others.
In the north of Brussels, surrounded by streets and yet almost hard to find, a small paradise has emerged. In 2013, a diverse team put an idea into practice: they combined the special and unique features of a park with urban agriculture and micro-farming. Involved were local initiatives and groups that had been using the fringes of the fallow land for some time for the collective cultivation of fruit and vegetables, small animal husbandry, and pigeonries. The resulting location—Parckfarm—still brings the neighborhood together today. Different actors organize various activities, workshops, gardening, and debates. However, a land use plan for the area is now in place. Neighborhood associations and initiatives see access to and use of the park as threatened.
Parckfarm T&T asbl, association and coordination; residents of the neighborhoods, initiatives and collaboration; Alive Architecture and Taktyk, cocuration; IBGE — Institut Bruxellois pour la Gestion de l’Environnement, commission and co Winancing
Year
Since 2014, opening at the Parckdesign Biennale
