Karin Bürkert
Playfully towards the best version of the quarter?
Karin Bürkert (Anthropology/ Tübingen University)
The presentation focuses on playful elements in participative urban planning emphasizing the attitudes and interactions of the involved actors.
In the course of the famous reconstruction project „Stuttgart 21“the quarter around the northern station (Rosensteinviertel) will be redesigned. By methods of public participation, (“nutzergetragene Stadt”) citizens are encouraged to produce collaborative visions of the new quarter.The agency of urban planning aims to design a “heterogeneous and socially mixed district, which offers a high quality of life”. Playful methods assimulation games and so called “dialogue isles”areappliedto gain knowledge about the best version of the quarter in a collaborative way.Artists and cultural workers play a significant role in the dialogue, because a long existing cultural center is located in the heart of the new district.
I participated insome of the collaborative sessions and analyzed attitudes, strategies, andways of interaction of the involved actors against the background of discourses as the culturalization of urban societies, debates, and politics regarding gentrification and historical formations of the city.