This week: Feminist mobility à la Lisa Badum, urban planning on Clubhouse, #NeverAgain #WeRemember and more planning news.

What happens in the world of planning? What are your colleagues talking about at the coffee machine in the morning? In our weekly press review, we summarize the most important news from landscape architecture and urban planning for you. This week: Feminist mobility à la Lisa Badum, urban planning on Clubhouse and #NeverAgain #WeRemember.

Bernie Sanders and the open space. Virally, the most important person at Joe Biden’s inauguration last week was Bernie Sanders. The picture of the Democrat in knitted gloves during the ceremony went and still goes around the world in countless variations. G+L editor Vera Baeriswyl summarizes the best Bernie Sanders memes – sometimes with more, sometimes with less reference to planning, but definitely with a lot of tongue-in-cheek.

Urban planning on Clubhouse. The audio chat app “Clubhouse” has been conquering the German social media world for almost two weeks. Although you can only log in to the social network with a personal invitation, the new hype app is not just reserved for pseudo-hippy media makers or politicians like Bodo Ramelow chatting away. The planning community is now also busy discussing on Clubhouse. Find out more here.

Leo DiCaprio and the Fiat 500e. He is probably one of the most prominent environmental activists of our time – Leonardo di Caprio. In the Europe-wide campaign “Welcome back, future”, the US actor is now promoting the new, all-electric Fiat 500e and actively campaigning for climate change. In our opinion, the campaign should rather be called “Hollywood for Future” and once again confirms: reach is good, relevance is better. But find out for yourself from our colleagues at W&V.

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Feminist mobility à la Lisa Badum. In an interview with Tagesspiegel Background, Lisa Badum, member of the Green Party in the Bundestag, speaks out in favor of a feminist and climate-friendly mobility policy. She criticizes the political focus on male mobility behaviour and the company car privilege, from which men in particular would benefit. Is she making it too easy for herself?

Munich urban planning exhibition in digital

World Economic Forum in the ticker. At the digital World Economic Forum (WEF) 2021 – this time not in Davos – Angela Merkel, Ursula von der Leyen and Greta Thunberg focused on climate protection. Climate activist Thunberg drew attention to herself with the words “You’ve had three decades of blah, blah, blah”, Vladimir Putin spoke yesterday and Angela Merkel admitted a lack of speed in the fight against coronavirus on Tuesday. Our colleagues at Münchner Merkur have set up a live ticker, so you can keep up to date with what’s happening here.

Exhibition “Simply Green. Greening The City” at the DAM. Rarely have green spaces been in such demand as since the coronavirus pandemic. The exhibition “Simply Green. Greening The City” at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt is dedicated to the advantages and challenges of urban green spaces – in particular the greening of buildings and roofs in existing and new buildings. Find out more from our colleagues at NXT A.

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Munich urban planning exhibition in digital. The annual exhibition of the Munich Department of Urban Planning and Building Regulations “The Sustainable City – Urban Development, Open Space, Climate Protection” and its evening events have also been moved to the digital space in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The first digital event “City of the Future – Future of the City” takes place today at 6 pm. With City Planning Councillor Elisabeth Merk and Andrea Gebhard.

German Association of Cities supports lockdown extension

Planning is valuable #HOAI. The reformed HOAI has been in force since January 1. The Federal Chamber of Architects answers the most important questions on dabonline.de.

#NeverAgain #WeRemember. To mark Holocaust Remembrance Day yesterday, our society remembered the Nazi genocide of 5.6 to 6.3 million European Jews and the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, primarily through digital channels. Despite Twitter hashtags such as #NeverAgain #WeRemember, anti-Semitic attacks continue to take place time and again – both in public and private spaces, in large and small towns. Our colleagues at tagesschau.de ask how and whether Jews can live “normally” in Germany today.

German Association of Cities supports lockdown extension. In an interview with dpa, Burkhard Jung, President of the German Association of Cities and Mayor of Leipzig, speaks out in favor of the resolutions passed by the federal and state governments this Tuesday as well as in favor of home office and nationwide vaccinations. Here is the report on staedtetag.de.

Hello land sealing

Difu study on land policy. In cooperation with 14 cities, the German Institute of Urban Affairs has conducted a study on municipal land policy. According to the study, cities and municipalities can regain lost capacity to act and options for shaping urban development by means of concrete strategies for action in land policy.

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Urban development à la Joe Biden. Yesterday saw the inauguration of the new US President Joe Biden. Our colleagues at CNU have summarized the new administration’s plans for US urban development – including a 100 billion dollar fund for affordable housing.

Hello land sealing. As the Thüringer Allgemeine reported last week, Erfurt’s head of urban planning Paul Börsch is focusing more on owner-occupied homes in future. According to the report, the proportion of single-family homes is to increase from the current 20 percent to 50 percent. The reason for this would be the lack of housing options for young families and their migration from the Thuringian state capital.

New era for Schönberg gasometer

Toyota City à la BIG. Car manufacturer Toyota wants to build a smart city model metropolis with the bold name “Woven City” on 200 hectares at the foot of Mount Fuji in Japan. None other than Bjarke Ingels has been commissioned to plan and develop the smart “Toyota City”. Construction is due to start at the beginning of this year. Read all about the project here at wohnnet.at.

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Fancy Paris, Copenhagen or Rotterdam despite the pandemic? Guiding Architects is offering free online tours of the three cities this January and February.

New era for Schönberg Gasometer. The famous dome in Berlin-Schöneberg is being dismantled. By 2023, a conference center and an office building are to be built inside the listed steel cylinder, which is around 80 meters high. Cost factor: 200 million euros. Find out more from our colleagues at monopol.de.

International innovation competition against the coronavirus crisis

Counting penguins for species conservation. Using an online tool from the University of Oxford, penguinwatch.org allows users to search for waddling penguins in photos and mark them accordingly. The images come from around 140 cameras set up by a research team in the Antarctic. Find out more from our colleagues at Deutschlandfunk Nova.

International innovation competition against the coronavirus crisis. With the “Global Mayors Challenge 2021”, the Bloomberg Cities Network is looking for 50 innovative urban solutions that respond to the coronavirus pandemic. Cities with a population of over 100,000 can apply until March 21, 2021. 15 grand prize winners will be awarded one million US dollars each. The competition is supported by Johns Hopkins University.

Interdisciplinary research project on “urban walkability”

BAK Presidium in favor of “European Bauhaus”. In a commentary at the turn of the year, the BAK Executive Committee speaks out clearly in favor of the European Bauhaus. This stands as a “synonym for the necessity of all specialist disciplines to accelerate the necessary transformation and redesign of the built environment in terms of material, form, function, structure and culture”.

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Interdisciplinary research project on “urban walkability”. Over the next three years, the Institute for Urban Research, Planning and Communication (ISP) at Erfurt University of Applied Sciences will be working with HAW Hamburg to investigate how exercise-friendly cities and neighborhoods are. The project entitled “Health impact assessment in urban development” is being funded by the BMBF with more than 400,000 euros.

Climate protection by folding plan

ARTE Journal on Kunsthaus Zürich. After twelve years of work, David Chipperfield Architects have completed the extension to the Kunsthaus Zürich. ARTE Journal takes a first look.

Jacques Herzog on the death of Luigi Snozzi. At the end of December, Swiss architect Luigi Snozzi died at the age of 88 as a result of a coronavirus infection. On SRF, Jacques Herzog remembers him as an extraordinary, auratic personality. In his obituary on SZ.de, Gerhard Matzig describes the Ticino native as a “master of a historically aware building culture”.

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Climate protection by folding plan. At the end of November, the “Klima Konkret” initiative sent a folding plan to a total of 2,095 Austrian municipalities, outlining 46 climate protection ideas in the areas of green space, sustainable mobility, water management and climate-friendly planning and building on an intelligently illustrated DIN A1 poster. Wojciech Czaja presents the project on Der Standard.

Vatican made from 67,000 Lego bricks

Building turnaround NOW! Architects for Future has launched the “Bauwende JETZT!” petition. The initiative calls for a fundamental rethink in the construction industry in order to achieve the Paris climate targets. Find out more from our colleagues at NXT A.

Vatican made from 67,000 Lego bricks. US architect and Lego builder Rocco Buttliere has used Lego bricks to build a 1.30 x 1.70 meter model of the Vatican City on a scale of 1:650. You can watch a video of the model here.

Click here for the news in December.

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We spoke to Reiner Nagel, Chairman of the Board of the Federal Foundation of Baukultur, on the phone and asked him what opportunities he sees in the coronavirus pandemic and what concerns he has at the moment.

Last week, the online magazine t-online reported that more and more Airbnb landlords in Germany are putting their apartments up for interim rent on real estate portals such as Immobilienscout24 or ImmoWelt. For Reiner Nagel, this could be a positive effect of the coronavirus pandemic. We spoke to the Chairman of the Federal Foundation of Baukultur on the phone and asked him what further opportunities he sees and what concerns he has these days.

Reiner Nagel, how is the Federal Foundation of Baukultur working these days?

There is emergency staffing at our foundation headquarters in Potsdam and in the premises of our funding association at the DAZ in Berlin, which is feasible due to cycling distances and room sizes. However, most of our colleagues are working from home. We are all in constant contact. We use digital platforms to replace the “office grapevine”, video calls, emails and text messages, and we are also making more phone calls again. Nevertheless, there is of course a lack of direct contact and a lot of non-verbal communication.

What I find most difficult is that our external communication is suffering or becoming more formalized. All events, meetings and network meetings have been canceled. Some months in advance. Everyone can understand the reason and the necessity, but it’s still not good for motivation and we now need more discipline to continue with commitment. We are currently working on various formats to compensate for the loss and enable cross-sector exchange and contact between the various players in building culture, even in this changed situation.

What are your current concerns?

On a personal level, of course, family, parents and friends. And then, given the current standstill in many dynamics, I wonder whether things will simply continue as they are when the engine is started up again, or whether something will change. In our neighborhood, a house from 1929 is currently being demolished. The roof is already gone and now the work is at a standstill. Every day that the ruin stands there in the sun, the original qualities become more recognizable and even laymen can see that the demolition is a mistake. It would be nice if the pause in the current state of emergency leads to more mindfulness and reason and a more reflective approach to building culture in the future.

“A strong awareness of our bipolar, built environment is developing.”

Some people are currently asking themselves whether they will still have a job after the crisis …

Yes, and the danger exists. There are already drastic consequences for the global economy and therefore for many jobs in our country. What’s more, the mainstay of the consumer goods industry will continue to suffer because many people are realizing that they can do without it – with the exception of toilet paper, of course. This is where the fact that we didn’t start thinking in terms of reduction and value retention sooner is taking its toll. What is worrying, however, is that the cultural sector and creative people are being hit the hardest.

The billions in funding will first go into the economy and the end of the value chain will feel the crisis the most. On the other hand, the construction industry has always been subject to fluctuations. It helps that architects and engineers are problem solvers by nature and are generally able to deal creatively with new requirements. If we succeed in making ourselves more independent of global developments and logistics chains, craftsmanship, regional construction and building culture can offer long-term employment prospects.

“In the future, more class will prevail.”

The Federal Foundation of Baukultur is committed to the interests of high-quality and reflective planning and building. If you look at it all, you can expect a lot of tidying up after the crisis …

I think it’s less about tidying up and more about taking stock and reorganizing. We will see a shift in priorities. I believe that the demand for housing and the flight to land gold will not continue as strongly. If, for example, Airbnb vacation rentals come onto the normal housing market because the business model has been discontinued, that will be a positive effect. We will also see that more class will prevail in the future and mass-produced goods will have problems. We have always said that. The biggest challenge will be to activate pending investments in infrastructure and the refurbishment of existing buildings and to combine them even more closely with architectural quality. But maybe I’m wrong and – as is the case after crises – people are once again more interested in brown bread projects.

“There is a strong awareness of our bipolar, built environment.”

Every crisis is also an opportunity. What other opportunities do you see for the future of building culture?

The current involuntary deceleration of many processes can free up capacities to try out new methods and question entrenched routines. This is certainly an opportunity for the construction industry to expand its digital infrastructure. There is often no time for this in day-to-day business. However, there are also direct points of contact for building culture during the crisis. In addition to the realization of how much we are social beings, there is a strong awareness of our bipolar, built living environment: in order to work from home, we first need a home, i.e. an apartment, suitable furnishings, a place of retreat in the world. This is where we are all becoming even more experts in living and working culture.

And one of the most severe effects of the crisis for most people is the temporary loss of usability of public spaces. As a visible measure, these restrictions on freedom of assembly are also the most severely sanctioned. I therefore see it as a great opportunity to increase the importance of public spaces, their availability, quality and usability – and also the importance of community spaces that we are now missing, such as theaters, museums or pubs. And that building culture will be seen even more as a level of action, both with the help of intensively applied digital media and analog craftsmanship.