Biennalemay alsoconvention

On the last weekend of the 1st Biennale of the Urban Landscape, numerous experts brought important impulses into the discussion about the future of the Metropole Ruhr. The Biennale had invited to a convention at the end. As conventional as the format may sound, the content was equally stirring.

At the start of the convention, Sebastian Schlecht announced that serious topics would be discussed with fun at the Biennale. This even succeeded at the convention at the end of the two-week event. In many different rounds, numerous topics came to the table: from climate change and its threat to the urban landscape, from the variety of existing ideas for the Metropole Ruhr and the obstacles in implementing them, from committed people in the city being shot down with “that won’t work” to the call for a workshop that is open to experimentation and allows mistakes.

Student visions
The convention kicked off with the presentation of student work. In a total of eight groups, students from RWTH Aachen, TU Dortmund and TH Ost-Westfalen-Lippe had worked together for a week at the Biennale. In mixed-discipline teams, prospective spatial planners, urban planners and landscape architects sought solutions for “Urban Uncertainties”.

With this open task, they set out to find approaches for maintaining the quality of life in the Metropole Ruhr. While some groups focused on a conceptual scale and took the particularities of the polycentric region into a new future, others remained more concrete. They made proposals for the immediate surroundings of the biennial venue. They designed pocket parks for Gelsenkirchen-Ückendorf or upgraded the public space to make it a healthy and educational living environment for children. After all, “Children of today […] are adults of tomorrow.” Another group looked for the digital path and designed an app that improves communication between citizens and city administrations. Another team drew not only an ideal image of the city, but also a gloomy scenario; an exhortation to everyone to take the current challenges really seriously.

The future needs joint action
The seriousness of the upcoming crises and the current pressure to act were also pointed out by experts in a panel discussion. Markus Lehrmann, Managing Director of the North Rhine-Westphalia Chamber of Architects, made a stirring statement: “Climate change is nothing new, that is the worst realization. We’ve known about it for 40 to 50 years and we’re not changing anything.”

And the important role that landscape architecture plays in dealing with the current challenges was made clear by Thomas Dietrich as chairman of the BDLA NRW, who praised the Biennale. He said it directed attention to greenery, “which is relevant in all areas. It comes up in all fields of action: in climate adaptation, in creating social justice, in dealing with demography.” But in the Maintenance Case Green workshop, he also made clear that green can only be a solution to problems in urban areas if it is also maintained. And that is a problem, as Melanie Ihlenfeld from Grün und Gruga Essen described: “We are only fulfilling our duty to maintain the traffic; nothing more. That’s what the green spaces look like. Green has degenerated into a compulsory task”. The co-discussants agreed that the financing of care must be redesigned, which requires a constitutional redesign. Markus Lehrmann also turned his gaze to politics. In his opinion, “no one […] is bereft of ideas and programmatic approaches are there, but they have to get through to politicians and legislators.” Finally, Susanne Priebs from TU Dortmund University appealed again: “We need new discourses on the city, like Architects for Future and lala.ruhr are initiating” – in other words, praise for the first Biennale of the Urban Landscape.

We must dare more
Anja Bierwirth from the Wuppertal Institute also made it clear in her keynote speech where action is needed. Her focus was initially on the construction and building sector. Savings could be made everywhere, but not in this area. People still use many square meters per capita for living. But the single-family house is not always a dream, in some cases it becomes a burden. Non-residential buildings also hold potential, Bierwirth explains. We have to clarify how many of them we really use and simplify their conversion. Anja Bierwirth also did not omit to look at public street space and how it is shaped by traffic. She took a critical look at subsidies and appealed to abolish those that are detrimental to sustainable urban development.

At the end of her input, the representative of the Wuppertal Institute demanded that “working methods and processes be accelerated. Everything has to become faster, simpler, more efficient.” In this context, Stephanie Haury from BBSR even dared to demand: “Give money to the municipalities and dissolve the madness of funding structures.” Simplifications are also needed to take the contributions of civic initiatives seriously and value them: “They come to the administration and then it falters. Two- to five-year processes are the death of initiatives.” At the end of the discussion, many agreed: We need more room for experimentation and the courage to make mistakes.

Looking ahead
Christa Reicher from RWTH Aachen University started the last day of the convention with a look at the special features of the region. It is actually the most sustainable model of development, but the Ruhr region consumes twice as much CO2 as the rest of NRW, she explained. She, too, sees an urgent need for action and calls for, “We have to continue such formats [as this biennial] even with shrinking resources. It is a stage for incentive and success, to combine participation processes with top-down strategies.” But she also asks, “How do we need to network to create a creative laboratory?” Other co-discussants wished the same. For example, Mocki Diller from the Ruhr Conference said, “We need openness to other developments […]. We have to allow the spontaneous, also allow bottom-up.” Andreas Giga, head of the future initiative Klima-Werk at the Emschergenossenschaft, also considers something similar to be important: “We must not remain in the subjunctive and always say ‘we would have to and should’ and then go our separate ways and nothing happens.” The representative of the Ruhrbanen Liga also reported similar frustrations: “It is difficult to be taken seriously in dialogue with the city. It takes a lot of effort to communicate to politicians and administrators that we want to be involved in active urban design.”

When asked what would be put in the suitcase for the journey into the future, Peter Köddermann of Baukultur NRW said that he would not fill it, “because we don’t know how to open it. We don’t have an analysis problem, but an implementation problem. There are framework conditions that we have to face, but our structures don’t fit in.” Nina Frense from the Ruhr Regional Association counters this with a positive outlook. With the recently adopted Charter for Green Infrastructure, the Ruhr Parliament has made a commitment “to make everything that is on the table binding.

Transformation in the Ruhr and elsewhere
The last session of the convention started with reports from Sanda Lenzholzer from Wageningen University and Carlo Becker from Berlin. Both looked at other regions and their approaches to urban transformation. In the discussion that followed, Viktor Haase, State Secretary in the Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Transport in North Rhine-Westphalia, also looked beyond his own nose. He referred to the catastrophes on the Ahr and Erft rivers, “they must make humble” and called for climate protection to be put first. “The crises are growing exponentially, so we need exponentially growing solutions.”

Finally, Daniela Rizzi, with her outside perspective, made it clear that there is no lack of committed people: “If there are people on the ground who feel like doing an event like this, the government should kiss their feet.” In addition, the researcher from Brazil, who came to the Ruhr region while she was still a student, reminded everyone what great, innovative images the region has already put into the world and supports all the committed people in the Metropole Ruhr: “You have everything in your hands to put it into the world.”

With this encouraging call, the 1st Biennale of the urban landscape came to an end. Sebastian Schlecht concluded by pointing out that it is conceived as a process. “We want to develop the biennial further. This was the starting signal, which should find a continuation in two years.”