Germany Knows a Thing or Two About Saving Shrinking Cities
One of the IBA's more radical ideas is that of "city islands" in Dessau-Rosslau. The planners have "kind of disassembled the city into pixels and put it back together again using a cut-and-paste method," as Brückner explains. According to the concept, Dessau-Rosslau would abandon the model of a more compact central city, leaving only islands of houses. "Buildings will be cut out and in the empty spaces we will insert countryside," Brückner explains.In other cities, old public pools are being repurposed for performance space, and huge art pieces are going up in demolition sites. Saxony-Anhalt is beautiful territory and it's nice to see they've been tackling these challenges with such aplomb. It'll be a good example to reference for the Rust Belt and parts of suburban America.
via good.is
As always, it is almost amusing to see how an exciting project like this, that nobody in Germany has ever heard a word of, suddenly shows up on a completely different channel than expected.
If you're interested, "Der Spiegel" has a longer, more detailed article on the project: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,688152-2,00.html
BTW:Â GOOD.is has really become a resident in my daily "News-Fix", although I sometimes feel a bit overwhelmed by the amount of posts I "have" to read.
