The European City: Suggestions for further strategic positioning of the C.E.U.

Har­ald Kegler

Mean­while the C.E.U. has acquired a lit­tle his­tory: five years ago the ini­tia­tive emerged, get­ting transat­lantic sup­port and need­ing enor­mous efforts dur­ing the first years. In this way, it didn’t take very long to com­pose and to adopt a char­ter, which, in addi­tion, was extended in spe­cial fields in the indi­vid­ual national groups or chap­ters, as for instance in Ger­many. Dur­ing sev­eral con­fer­ences in Stock­holm or Lis­bon, the con­tent of the pro­file was suc­cess­fully improved. A foun­da­tion for future projects was set up, and fur­ther­more, medial means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion inclu­sive own inter­net web sites were arranged, where the ini­tia­tive of the British part­ners should be empha­sized, and con­tri­bu­tions were pub­lished. Apart from this, par­tic­i­pants in Nor­way man­aged to estab­lish an EC edu­ca­tional project, which has mean­while achieved a sec­ond stage. Here the C.E.U. serves as a “medium” of initiative.

All the facts men­tioned above are all the more remark­able, as they are caused by the activ­i­ties of a small non-profit-initiative, hav­ing no organ­i­sa­tion appa­ra­tus and no finances of its own. The “offices” in Oslo and Lon­don do their work very com­mend­ably; oth­er­wise we wouldn’t have achieved so much. Unques­tion­ably, the high­lights of the activ­i­ties done up to now were the con­fer­ences. After the prepara­tory con­ven­tion held in Brussels/Brügge and the foun­da­tion con­gress held in Stock­holm, we suc­ceeded in hold­ing the 1st Inter­na­tional Con­gress in Berlin with well-known par­tic­i­pants. A sec­ond con­gress was held in Leeds, and the third con­gress, which will be held in Oslo in 2008, will improve the out­line of the C.E.U…

The C.E.U. has not yet become a move­ment or a mass organ­i­sa­tion, but nev­er­the­less it is begin­ning to show, that there is a need for such a net­work insti­tu­tion deal­ing with the topic of the “Euro­pean City”. At the same time, over­seas (espe­cially in the U.S.A., but also in Aus­tralia, Israel and Latin Amer­ica) the New Urban­ism is actu­ally devel­op­ing into a move­ment char­ac­ter­ized by remark­able con­tent and exten­sion. Many peo­ple do still smile at it and are sus­pi­cious of it, but it has man­aged to be dis­cussed and to present answers to urgent prac­ti­cal ques­tions with regard to urban and regional devel­op­ment. The C.E.U. would not be con­ceiv­able with­out this move­ment, which is organ­is­ing itself for­mally for 15 years. The C.E.U. sees itself absolutely as a part of this move­ment, although being enti­tled to have an own pro­file. There are good rea­sons for this.

We have over­come the ini­tial stage of the C.E.U. It is a suc­cess which was pos­si­ble only as a result of the per­sis­tent efforts of many peo­ple, not at least the efforts of the first chair­man and the sec­re­tary of the ini­tia­tive. But now a stage of a new qual­ity seems to begin, even to become nec­es­sary. Despite of the Char­ter, the con­fer­ences and pub­li­ca­tions, the impor­tance and per­spec­tive of the C.E.U. and its indi­vid­ual chap­ters is still rel­a­tively indis­tinct out­wardly, although all the par­tic­i­pants and a cer­tain num­ber of sym­pa­this­ers appre­ci­ate the for­ma­tion of such an ini­tia­tive which feels itself bound to the tra­di­tions of urban devel­op­ment and archi­tec­ture, and which seeks for tak­ing them up into the plan­ning for the future (at least, that’s the way out­siders often see it). So now, after the begin­nings have been man­aged, it is impor­tant to deter­mine the exact posi­tion, to inten­sify the effec­tive­ness and to clear the pro­file of the C.E.U… But one thing shall not get lost: we must remain open for as much as pos­si­ble views and opin­ions, pro­fes­sions and back­grounds within a pro­gram­matic frame­work, as just this bears an essen­tial chance for shap­ing the pro­file of the C.E.U. as an open net­work (in con­trast to pro­fes­sional or inter­est organ­i­sa­tions). Nev­er­the­less, this will not be enough to get noticed and to gain more influence.

Apart from the con­tent and con­crete projects that we can offer, we “own” an espe­cially impor­tant thing: the “Euro­pean City”. As the name of the net­work shows already — it is an ini­tia­tive FOR Euro­pean urbanism.

The Euro­pean City stands for a model that was built lived in and planned for a rel­a­tively suc­cess­ful way of urban­i­sa­tion in the course of the cen­turies. The Euro­pean City has proved to be a flex­i­ble and at the same time long-lasting social-spatial sys­tem, that has come through great changes and is embed­ded in the con­scious­ness of the peo­ple not only in Europe. It is not only an eco­nom­i­cal and social, and def­i­nitely not only an aca­d­e­mic prop­erty, but also an emo­tional one that is the embod­i­ment of such things like home and Euro­pean iden­tity. Fur­ther­more, the Euro­pean City rep­re­sents a model, which was suc­cess­ful in com­par­i­son with other mod­els, as for exam­ple the so-called Amer­i­can City, espe­cially with regard to cop­ing with crises, phases of devel­op­ment and reces­sion, social sta­bil­ity, eco­nom­i­cal pros­per­ity or eco­log­i­cal main­te­nance. Well, THE Euro­pean City actu­ally does not exist. It rather con­cerns a spec­trum of built, lived and planned city-regions with a rel­a­tive vari­ety of shap­ing, which, nev­er­the­less, share sev­eral char­ac­ter­is­tics, like com­pact­ness, lim­it­ed­ness, social vari­ety, dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of pub­lic spaces with mixed use, cul­tural require­ments, inte­gra­tion of his­tor­i­cal sec­tions or archi­tec­tural vari­ety — a ref­er­ence to all this is embed­ded in the Char­ter of the C.E.U.

Mean­while this model is being copied and newly invented world-wide, and it is regarded as espe­cially attrac­tive for eco­nom­i­cal, cul­tural and tourist projects. The Euro­pean City as a type is par­tic­u­larly char­ac­ter­ized by dif­fer­ent epochs, as the medieval town (and — the medieval vil­lage, which should not be for­got­ten), the unique baroque town (a phe­nom­ena in the world), the city expan­sion in the years of rapid indus­trial devel­op­ment, the Gar­den City — a model, that has kept its attrac­tive­ness until today, the socially and struc­turally ambi­tious hous­ing and pub­lic build­ings of dif­fer­ent archi­tec­ture between the wars in the 20th cen­tury, the new cities that were built after the war refer­ring to tra­di­tions of the Euro­pean City (from Le Havre to Eisen­hüt­ten­stadt), the recon­structed towns (as for instance the old parts of Ypern and War­saw, nowa­days world cul­tural her­itage), but recently also the city of crit­i­cal recon­struc­tion and eco­log­i­cal renovation.

A spe­cial mark of the Euro­pean City is the decen­tralised city region. This is gen­er­ally an impor­tant key for future prospects of urban sys­tems. With regard to con­struc­tion, but also to plan­ning / con­cep­tion Europe has made deci­sive con­tri­bu­tions in this field. Espe­cially in the United States just these con­tri­bu­tions are adopted, thus try­ing to ban the urban and social scourge, the sprawl, and to head for a social-economical future. Even among scep­tics, the Euro­pean City is regarded as bench­mark of the inter­na­tional dis­putes on urbanisation.

Nat­u­rally, dur­ing the last 50 years the Euro­pean City could not escape the car dom­i­nated trans­for­ma­tion of inner-city dis­tricts, sprawl­ing expan­sion, expanse demo­li­tion, overde­vel­op­ment of land­scapes and change of city and vil­lage cen­tres into facades for tourists or ster­ile uni­form ensem­bles. The require­ments of the cli­matic change affect Europe, too. The Euro­pean City is not a result of an auto­matic process. Some­one thought that the Euro­pean City will lose the impor­tance in the future. The oppo­site is the real­ity. The Euro­pean City has proved to be a type of last­ing devel­op­ment and can be rep­re­sented world-wide as a suc­cess­ful devel­op­ment model for an urban future under chang­ing con­di­tions. The Euro­pean City will also be a suc­cess­ful model in the post-industrial age and in the period after the cheapen energy.

And there things have come full cir­cle: the C.E.U. can and must func­tion as a net­worker as well as an advo­cate, as a spe­cial­ist, val­u­a­tor, adviser and medi­a­tor, but also as a plan­ner of con­crete model projects in the sense of the Euro­pean City.

Here it is nec­es­sary to bring out the his­tor­i­cally durable struc­tures of the Euro­pean City (of var­i­ous epochs) and to make it avail­able as a chal­lenge for actual plan­ning. At the same time it is impor­tant to inte­grate inter­na­tional expe­ri­ences sup­port­ing the plan­ning and fur­ther devel­op­ment of the Euro­pean City, as for instance the method of Char­rette, the LEED-standards or the Transect-concept devel­oped in the U.S.A… Fur­ther­more, the plan­ning and build­ing prac­tices in Europe — par­tic­u­larly those devel­oped since 1975 -, the aim of which was to recover the Euro­pean City, should be inte­grated into the actual dis­cus­sion on the plan­ning of the Euro­pean City. Some of them are:

• The sys­tem Shared Spaces by Mon­der­mann (Netherlands);
• The City-regional energy autarky (Aus­tria, Ger­many, Italy…);
• The urban pro­tec­tion of his­tor­i­cal monuments/buildings and the
• Care­ful ren­o­va­tion of cities / crit­i­cal recon­struc­tion (Poland, Ger­many, Italy…);
• The Urban Renais­sance, that means strate­gies for reviv­ing of city centres,
• Old indus­try areas and city quar­ters (Eng­land, Ire­land, Poland, Ger­many, Spain…);
• The redesign­ing of the pub­lic space (Scan­di­navia, France, Ger­many, Spain, Italy…);
• The strate­gies of interim use and of the deal­ing with shrink­age (Ger­many, France…);
• …

The 3rd Inter­na­tional Con­gress of the C.E.U. in Oslo is an impor­tant oppor­tu­nity to strengthen the pro­file of the C.E.U. and, in addi­tion, to con­vey the mes­sage, that the Euro­pean City is a model that can effec­tively be regarded as a means of pre­ven­tion and after-care in con­nec­tion with the cli­mate change. That does not mean that this goes auto­mat­i­cally. We must rather find out care­fully, which ele­ments of the built and planned Euro­pean City can be con­sid­ered to be future-orientated under the point of view of the cli­matic change. In this con­nec­tion the con­gress has an impor­tant task: to work out spe­cific solu­tions with regard to the chal­lenges of the cli­matic change with ref­er­ence to Euro­pean urban devel­op­ment — from the his­tor­i­cal as well as from the actual point of view.

Nat­u­rally, these aspects have to be com­pleted by non-European expe­ri­ences and knowl­edge. This is demon­strated by the arti­cles for the Oslo Con­gress announced from all over the world.

The C.E.U. would become the pro­moter or the Euro­pean City — as a plat­form for dis­cus­sions and for inter­na­tional exchange of expe­ri­ences, offer­ing qual­i­fi­ca­tion and con­crete model projects. The future of the city, of city quar­ters and rural areas asks more and more for fea­si­ble solu­tions beyond the under­stand­ing of moder­nity, which ignores the iden­tity of the Euro­pean City. Inso­far, the C.E.U. can put its objec­tives and aims in more con­crete terms, and it can more often take the offen­sive. Fur­ther­more, this should be used as an oppor­tu­nity to talk to the Amer­i­can, Aus­tralian, Israeli and other part­ners, in order to sharpen the pro­file of the C.E.U. in the ensem­ble of the New Urban­ism Move­ment and to strengthen the move­ment as a whole.

Under this point of view the effec­tive­ness of the inter­nal organ­i­sa­tional and coop­er­a­tion struc­tures of the C.E.U. should be improved. This should be dis­cussed in con­nec­tion with the prepa­ra­tion of the Oslo Con­gress. At the same time it is nec­es­sary to force up selec­tively the expan­sion of the Euro­pean part­ner­ships. A very impor­tant part­ner is Roma­nia, but also Poland, the Baltic coun­tries, Rus­sia and of course South Europe. The ques­tion of a (rep­re­sen­ta­tive) head­quar­ters of the C.E.U. must be set­tled as well as ques­tions of the forms of coop­er­a­tion, inter­nal demo­c­ra­tic pro­ce­dures and pub­lic rela­tions work. The basis has been cre­ated, on which we can build up our fur­ther work.

With regard to the prospects of the C.E.U., the con­gresses should be the anchors of coop­er­a­tion, exten­sion and con­tent of the work. The places and sub­jects of the next con­gresses should be fixed in Oslo, whereby the mid­dle of East­ern Europe and the South should be con­sid­ered pri­mar­ily. A two year inter­val could be help­ful, so that there is enough time for mak­ing prepa­ra­tions. Between the con­gresses events of the national Chap­ters could be orga­nized. The C.E.U. should be vis­i­bly rep­re­sented at the annual CNU con­gresses in the U.S.A. as well as at the events in Israel or Aus­tralia and make there own con­tri­bu­tions. Joint projects and events, as already prac­ticed in ini­tial stages in Brus­sels or Stock­holm would sup­port the transat­lantic exchange. Nev­er­the­less, in this con­nec­tion the C.E.U. has to make up a lot with regard to sys­tem­atic intro­duc­tion of own contributions.

An impor­tant means for improv­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tion are model projects, which can clear up the opin­ions and con­cep­tions of the C.E.U… Under this point of view the national Chap­ters should con­sider, which projects can be regarded as rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the Euro­pean City and its future.

Result:
The Con­gress in Oslo is the right time for the C.E.U. to bring before the pub­lic a clear dec­la­ra­tion of belief in the Euro­pean City at a new stage as a suit­able model for the future.

Dessau, 2008-02-21