“Civil participation is the new norm”

Experiences in Stuttgart and Hamburg have shown that contemporary building and urban planning no longer work without the appropriate participation. So what kinds of comprehensive civil participation are possible? How soon should participation formats become effective, and how can the results be implemented adequately? This highly topical issue was addressed at the IBA LOUNGE in the evening of Tuesday, 25 September 2012, by IBA managing director Uli Hellweg, Prof. Dr. Tilman Harlander of the University of Stuttgart, Dr. Rena Wandel-Höfer, Head of the Building Department of the Regional Capital Saarbrücken, and Annette Friedrich, Director of the Urban Planning Department Heidelberg.

The year before its presentation year 2013, the IBA Hamburg travelled around Baden Württemberg with its dialogue series "IBA LOUNGE. Talking about the new City." Around 150 guests gathered in Stuttgart, the city with the much-disputed station S21, to hear IBA managing director Uli Hellweg and Prof. Dr. Tilman Harlander talk on the subject of "Communication and involvement", and follow the subsequent podium discussion.

Stuttgart/Hamburg, 28 September 2012 – "Involvement doesn't mean that the IBA is suddenly becoming a water heater for individual interests. In fact, involvement actually means offering a wide range of participation formats in order to start talking to every group in an urban society," IBA managing director Uli Hellweg said last night at the IBA LOUNGE in Stuttgart. He used the topic cluster Cosmopolis, metro zones and city in climate change to illustrate the many opportunities to contribute and the resulting experiences.

In his talk, Prof. Dr. Tilman Harlander of the University of Stuttgart addressed on the one hand the political consequences of the experiences of the city of Stuttgart and the land Baden Württemberg with the building project for Stuttgart's main station S21. For some months, the administration's willingness to approach the urban society earlier and more openly had been evident, which was clear, for instance, from the plans for Stuttgart's Rosenstein quarter. On the other hand, though, there was another aspect of urban society participation in urban planning and contemporary building that was, perhaps, initially surprising, and that was the growing number of joint building ventures and building group projects. These projects, which had dramatically increased in number over the past 15 years, "had a significant influence on contemporary architecture and urban planning," said Tilman Harlander.

The evening focused on questions as to how and to what extent participation formats had to be adopted in order to facilitate substantial involvement in the urban society. The discussion group members were agreed that generalised solutions are not possible. Instead, and particularly in view of the vastly different requirements of the various groups in the plural urban society, there should be individualised participation formats. "Adequate offers are existential," said Hellweg. The spectrum ranges from house visits and workshops to online offers.

Harlander explained the need to review the training for architects and urban planners in order to encourage all the participants in urban planning processes to enter into discourse with each other. "One of the main aims in the age of participation must be to make architects and urban planners able to talk to the population, the urban society."
In the concluding discussion with the audience, Hellweg responded to the question concerning the role of the new media and the Internet in these participation processes with the words "All roads lead to the Internet". Not least because more and more groups are going to make more and more noise in the Internet. However, the question does arise as to how anonymous campaigns, so-called "shit storms" and the right to discourse in and with a civil society will interact with each other.

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