30 Years of the Euro­pean City — Review and Prospects

Berlin Dec­la­ra­tion:  Build­ing Bridges

After the prepara­tory con­ven­tion held in Bruges (April 2003), the foun­da­tion meet­ing held in Stock­holm (Novem­ber 2003), and its con­fer­ence and Dec­la­ra­tion on Edu­ca­tion in Viseu (May 2004) the Coun­cil for Euro­pean Urban­ism (CEU) has held its first inter­na­tional con­gress in Sep­tem­ber 2005 in Berlin organ­ised by CEU’s Ger­man Chap­ter. At the end of the Con­gress the fol­low­ing “Berlin Dec­la­ra­tion” was published:

De-industrialization, sprawl, increas­ing traf­fic, social polar­i­sa­tion, age­ing, the energy cri­sis and shrink­ing pop­u­la­tions con­front the Euro­pean city with enor­mous chal­lenges to their urban devel­op­ment. Politi­cians, investors, experts and cit­i­zens’ ini­tia­tives in many Euro­pean coun­tries have tried a vari­ety of strate­gies to respond to the social, envi­ron­men­tal and eco­nomic changes in the glob­alised world with more or less suc­cess in their efforts. These dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences need to be assessed and space given for a range of views, the exchange of best prac­tice exam­ples, and finally the dis­cus­sion of the fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: What kind of city do we want to have? This is not sim­ply an aca­d­e­mic ques­tion but one that deter­mines the every­day life of cities and communities.

Berlin’s urban pol­icy pro­vided Con­gress par­tic­i­pants with an exam­ple for other Euro­pean cities. The “crit­i­cal recon­struc­tion” of the reunited city’s tra­di­tional urban struc­ture has pro­vided a viable alter­na­tive to post WWll mod­ernist plan­ning in both East and West Berlin.

More broadly, we know that Euro­pean urban­ism should coun­ter­act urban sprawl, the deval­u­a­tion of urban areas and the social, eco­nomic and cul­tural ero­sion of cities, towns, vil­lages and the coun­try­side. Fur­ther­more it should help to improve the qual­ity of urban space, sup­port local iden­tity, reduce social gaps and save resources. It is also impor­tant to pro­mote efforts to han­dle our nat­ural resources respon­si­bly. For exam­ple, the Euro­pean city region must try to lessen its depen­dence on oil. Urban­ism is a key to the form of our future life, our econ­omy, our cul­ture, and our soci­ety. So the future of Euro­pean urban­ism is impor­tant not only for experts and spe­cial­ists; but for every­body liv­ing in urban space and should involve all the stake­hold­ers in Euro­pean urbanism.

The Con­gress demon­strated that the fun­da­men­tal changes to our cities, towns, vil­lages and coun­try­side require us to build bridges in many areas. We need bridges:

• between Euro­pean cities, towns, vil­lages and the countryside,
• between all the stake­hold­ers in urban development,
• within plan­ning, urban design and archi­tec­tural professions,
• between urban­ist insti­tu­tions and net­works, and
• between Europe and the rest of the world.

1. Bridges between Euro­pean cities, towns, vil­lages and the coun­try­side
The strength of Europe lies in its cul­tural vari­ety, in the rich­ness of its cities, towns, vil­lages and coun­try­side and its cul­tural land­scapes. Cities and regions are in com­pe­ti­tion with each other, but at the same time they need mutual coop­er­a­tion, in order to be able to com­pete world-wide. The exchange of expe­ri­ences about the devel­op­ment and recon­struc­tion of Euro­pean cities is of out­stand­ing impor­tance but this exchange has not yet devel­oped enough. The CEU can act as a medium to make it pos­si­ble to inten­sify the exchange of expe­ri­ences and ideas in the field of urban­ism within Europe in ways summed up in its Charter.

2. Bridges between all the par­tic­i­pants in urban devel­op­ment
Dis­cus­sions on urban devel­op­ment issues often take place in a very iso­lated way between dif­fer­ent sec­tors and groups. Dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers have their own lan­guage and their own cen­tral ideas. The exchange of ideas between dif­fer­ent groups is still under­de­vel­oped. The CEU can be a medium for ideas exchange between dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers, in the dia­logue between pol­icy mak­ers, admin­is­tra­tors, econ­o­mists, social sci­en­tists and other urban experts, between prac­ti­cal plan­ners, urban design­ers, archi­tects, land­scape archi­tects, sci­en­tists in var­i­ous fields, investors, real estate man­agers and com­mu­nity groups.

3. Bridges between archi­tec­tural, design and plan­ning pro­fes­sions
Experts in urban design, plan­ning and archi­tec­ture are divided into many dif­fer­ent blocs. When it comes to urban­ism such blocs are not very help­ful. Above all, CEU says, through its char­ter, that archi­tec­ture and plan­ning must be deci­sively sub­or­di­nated to urban­ism. All the urban pro­fes­sions need to work together for the improve­ment of city regions, periph­eries, exist­ing sub­urbs and his­toric city cores. The CEU sup­ports urban­ism that con­sid­ers city regions as a whole but works at a fine grain and a human scale.

4. Bridges between urban­ist insti­tu­tions and net­works
The Coun­cil for Euro­pean Urban­ism (CEU) believes that only with oth­ers can we work on urban­ist issues in a con­struc­tive way. That is why the Coun­cil for Euro­pean Urban­ism strives for coop­er­a­tion with net­works and insti­tu­tions which care for urban­ism explic­itly or implic­itly. We want to coop­er­ate with asso­ci­a­tions in the fields of archi­tec­ture, urban design, land­scape plan­ning, city and regional plan­ning and urban devel­op­ment, with gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions, with sci­en­tific insti­tu­tions and net­works, with asso­ci­a­tions and insti­tu­tions deal­ing with real estate, as well as with com­mu­nity ini­tia­tives and non-governmental organ­i­sa­tions. Such coop­er­a­tion should put joint objec­tives to the fore, and allow dif­fer­ent views to be dis­cussed con­struc­tively within the con­text of the approach advo­cated in our Charter.

5. Bridges between Europe and the rest of the world
The CEU stands as a part­ner with organ­i­sa­tions and move­ments that pro­mote urban­ism in the rest of the world. We intend to con­tinue to work in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Con­gress for the New Urban­ism (CNU) in the USA espe­cially to pro­mote joint efforts in the after­math of hur­ri­cane Kat­rina in New Orleans and its region. We also sup­port the devel­op­ment of urban­ism move­ments in other parts of the world, as for exam­ple in Aus­tralia and New Zealand, and the Move­ment for the Israeli Urban­ism (MIU).

Pro­posal in the after­math of Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina
The city region of New Orleans has been largely destroyed by a nat­ural dis­as­ter — this is a large-scale human tragedy. We declare our sol­i­dar­ity with New Orleans and its peo­ple. It will be a great chal­lenge for every­body to recon­struct this city. We pro­pose to erect a transat­lantic bridge of spe­cial­ists from the United States and Europe, to search for ways to restore the city of New Orleans within the urban­ist frame­work of our Char­ter. Fur­ther­more we sug­gest the orga­ni­za­tion of an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Urban Con­gress with CNU and pos­si­bly other orga­ni­za­tions in future, in order to con­cen­trate efforts and to dis­cuss strate­gies for renewal. Indi­vid­ual mem­bers of CEU also offer sup­port in regional and social plan­ning, water man­age­ment and hous­ing construction.

Inau­gural Urban­ism Award
Dur­ing the Con­gress, the CEU made its first Award –The CEU Award for Achieve­ment in Urban­ism — 2005 to Dr Hans Stim­mann, Direc­tor of the Berlin Sen­ate Admin­is­tra­tion for Urban Planning.