Cities are perhaps the best invention mankind has ever made. All over the world, people are drawn to cities to live. In 2002, for the first time in human history, the majority of the world’s population lived in cities. Since then, this figure has continued to rise. Around 60 percent of people worldwide now live in cities. But why is that? What makes life in the city so attractive? Why are cities so successful?
Urbanity is a complex, multi-layered topic – just as cities are multi-layered and complex entities. It starts with the fact that cities are not urban per se. On the contrary, they can also be dull, boring or even dead. But what makes a city or a city district urban? What is the source of the special energy that makes a place vibrant? The key to understanding urbanity lies in diversity.
Being different without fear
Adorno once said: “In the city, you can be different without fear.” In the countryside, on the other hand, life paths are largely predetermined. The son of a farmer takes over his father’s business at some point. The same goes for the carpenter’s offspring. In a city, on the other hand, everyone can decide who or what they want to be without being constantly pilloried. All that is needed are spaces that are open to people and in which they can move freely and live out their ideas and preferences.
The city and the unfamiliar
If this is successful, we all have to constantly deal with new stimuli in the city. On the one hand, this is exhausting, but dealing with the unfamiliar, with the diversity presented to us, is also a great opportunity: we can discover new things, learn and develop. We can be creative. It is not without reason that cities are the most important social engine for economic and cultural innovation. Without the diversity of offerings in the city, cities would not have this enormous creative power.
Urbanity as an imposition
For this reason, urbanity is always an imposition. There’s the noise of drunks outside a pub in the evening when you yourself want to go to sleep. Or the traffic jams during rush hour. There is the forced proximity of complete strangers in overcrowded buses or streetcars. Then there are the dark corners of a city. Urbanity also means that there is a red light district in the city next to the church. An orderly or even clean urbanity, as some politicians or urban planners might have in mind, does not exist.
Living and enduring contradictions
If people want to live or survive in the city, they must learn to endure the contradictions of urbanity: Order and chaos. Freedom and loneliness. Control and spontaneity. Closeness and isolation. High culture and subculture. A city has the constant task of reconciling the contradictory interests resulting from diversity. Cyclists must feel just as comfortable in the city as pedestrians. Those seeking relaxation need to find spaces just as much as people who are in the mood for a wild party. Anyone with an appetite for a currywurst will be just as satisfied in a truly urban location as someone who prefers fine dining with a tuna steak. Young people need to feel just as comfortable as older people.
Life needs diversity
And at precisely this point, we are suddenly no longer just talking about urbanity, but specifically about Werksviertel-Mitte. This is because the planners of the district have implemented exactly what is described above: in order to create a truly urban, vibrant place, they have consistently given space to diversity. Working, living, leisure, tourism, gastronomy, culture, art, music, innovation, tradition … in Werksviertel-Mitte, urban contradictions are consciously lived.
Open planning process
This goes hand in hand with the realization that not everything can be controlled and does not have to be controlled. The deep understanding of urbanity has meant that the designers of the district have had the courage to engage in a planning process whose outcome is not fixed from the outset. They have resisted the temptation to always contain the urban forces of the neighborhood, which are primarily generated by the residents. Instead, they have sometimes allowed these forces to prevail until new realities have emerged that suddenly fit into the neighborhood as a matter of course. This incredible transformation process of Werksviertel-Mitte from an industrial site to a creative quarter could not have been managed any other way.
Freedom and open spaces
Dumplings were still produced on the site until 1994. The buildings and infrastructure of the site were designed for this. However, just how strong and effective urbanity can be became apparent during the period of interim use, when the old industrial buildings were quickly converted into clubs, studios, offices, concert halls and climbing gyms. Both the Kunstpark Ost and the Kultfabrik revolutionized Munich’s nightlife and the city’s subcultural art and event scene. If you had wanted to plan such an art and party area, you would have failed.
Always new
This colorful, entertaining and, of course, sometimes exhausting world could only develop out of an urban spirit. From the freedom to simply let people get on with it. The experience that the planners of the quarter gained during this time inspired and encouraged them to make urbanity the creative force of Werksviertel-Mitte. This decision was the basis for turning the urban quarter in the east of Munich into a place that constantly surprises its visitors. Because a special energy can always arise around Knödelplatz, which is fed by possibilities, by the unforeseen, by diversity.
