The large, up to sev­en-sto­ry res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial build­ing in Zurich’s Wiedikon dis­trict is any­thing but ordi­nary. The build­ing is like a small town: com­plete with day­care cen­ter, doctor’s office, bank, art-house cin­e­ma, bars, restau­rant, flower shop, and tram depot. Fur­ther­more, Kalk­bre­ite is a cer­ti­fied »2000 Watt site in oper­a­tion«: Through active sus­tain­abil­i­ty mea­sures, those liv­ing and work­ing there reduce their eco­log­i­cal foot­print. Peo­ple cook and eat togeth­er, work­rooms are shared, an object library makes it pos­si­ble to bor­row equip­ment, and no one has their own car. The result­ing sav­ings are cur­rent­ly around 50% com­pared to aver­age house­hold usage in Zurich. The vision­ary approach of the Kalk­bre­ite will, in the long term, be applied to the entire city in order to con­tribute marked­ly to cli­mate justice.

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The work EUROPA was cre­at­ed in the after­math of Britain’s ref­er­en­dum for with­draw­al from the Euro­pean Union. Europe, accord­ing to the archi­tec­ture and plan­ning office more­Platz, lacks vis­i­bil­i­ty, pub­lic pres­ence, and pos­i­tive feed­back. The huge lumi­nous tubes, which have been on dis­play in Berlin and many oth­er loca­tions across Ger­many and abroad since their first instal­la­tion in Novem­ber 2016, were con­cep­tu­al­ized to address this artic­u­lat­ed lack. But this notion of Europe that these let­ters and this light fix­ture are meant to rep­re­sent is also viewed crit­i­cal­ly by many for Europe’s exter­nal bor­ders are being increas­ing­ly sealed off and defend­ed. The promise of an open and sol­idary Europe remains for many an unat­tain­able goal. Radi­ant EUROPA does not shine equal­ly for everyone.

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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.

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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.

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