Sent to you by gav via Google Reader:
South-West of Berlin, an hour by train, reveals a small town called Beelitz, renown for its cultivation of white asparagus. In the middle of woods around Beelitz-Heilstätten, a district in the town, stands a huge hospital complex of around sixty buildings, the majority abandoned for ten years.
First a sanatorium, the complex was a military hospital (see panel top right of page one attached), before being took over by the Soviets in 1945. After their departure in 1995 – by which time the Soviet Union had dissipated – attempts were made to privatise the complex. Instead, the majority of the place was simply left to rot in 2000, with only certain buildings still operational as a neurological rehabilitation centre.
The ghost-like feel of the area led to the film The Pianist being shot here. Walking around the area, what's striking is the sheer size of the complex. The various smaller buildings resemble a bomb site, with the roofs looking as if they will cave in any moment, while a decaying Trabant car stands outside, the guts of its engine ripped out and the windows smashed in.
Walking around one of the larger main buildings, the eerie sound of doors slamming, blown by the breeze, can be heard in the distance. Winding corridors reveal rooms full of defunct equipment and peeling walls. Slogans in Russian are joined by graffiti in German. At the side of some stairs leading up, someone's daubed "Romantic pictures?" sardonically. The smell of decay and of things falling apart as nature reasserts its hold fills the building.
Beelitz-Heilstätten serves as a reminder that since reunification in 1990 the population of East Germany has decreased, leaving a large amount of empty housing – a situation that has led to the phenomenon of "shrinking cities". In the town of Dessau-Roßlau (Dessau-Rosslau), population approx. 90,000, located in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, many school, business and residential buildings remain empty, decimated by demographic change. Saxony-Anhalt as a whole has lost around seventeen per cent of its population since 1989.
Yet the phenomenon has not gone unnoticed. The State Government began an eight-year experiment from 2002 onwards, finally completed by 31st December 2010, entitled the International Building Exhibition (IBA) Urban Redevelopment Saxony-Anhalt 2010 – "not an exhibition in the traditional sense", as IBA's still active website puts it. Rather, "the IBA exhibits are or will become built reality. " In other words, the regeneration of the whole state was the 'exhibition', which aimed to turn "all of Saxony-Anhalt into a laboratory for the city of tomorrow". In practice, this has involved a number of radical ideas for nineteen cities in the state, including that of 'city islands' in Dessau-Rosslau, separated from each other by cultivated landscape, and of 'scenic zones' where previously vacant industrial areas had been transformed into meadows within the town, replacing demolished empty buildings. Meanwhile, bike lanes have been set up to easily traverse these areas. Furthermore, citizens have been given the chance to sponsor specific plots of land, and be entrusted with their maintenance.
The IBA scheme has shown what can happen when inspired and forward planning is applied to neglected areas, in which local people benefit equally from the schemes. It's something that Britain could do well to emulate in some equally run-down areas of the United Kingdom. The development of the London Docklands and the Thames Barrier Park are mini-examples of where the Government has achieved this. Yet a combination of bureaucracy and imminent Government public cuts may ensure that such initiatives may never happen again for the foreseeable future within the UK.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Article on EGermany housing (page 1).jpg | 95.73 KB |
| Article on EGermany housing (page 2).jpg | 89.59 KB |
Things you can do from here:
- Subscribe to Mute magazine - culture and politics after the net using Google Reader
- Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
No comments:
Post a Comment