Grundlagen / Basics – serie

The world is facing rapid urbanisation and an escalating climate crisis. According to UN-Habitat, by 2050 around 70 per cent of the world’s population – some 6.7 billion people – will be living in cities, putting enormous pressure on infrastructure, resources, and the environment. The question is no longer whether cities and their regions must change, but how – and how to drive that change swiftly and effectively.These challenges require global collaboration, which is where SURE (Sustainable Development of Urban Regions), a funding priority of the German state, steps in. SURE fosters cooperation between Germany, Southeast Asia and China. However, its goal extends well beyond that. It aims to develop solutions that can be implemented locally and transferred to other urban regions anywhere in the world.Navigating Urban Development is the outcome of the SURE research project on moderation and synthesis. It presents ten case studies from projects in Cambodia, China, Laos, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. The book concludes with a call for a new culture of transformative research to support the development of urban projects and initiatives.

A quiet rural town until World War I, Zaporizhzhia exploded into a major industrial centre in the 1920s following con¬struction of the Dnipro Hydroelectric Station. This book looks at a later period in the history of what is now one of the largest cities in Ukraine, the 1950s to 1980s, when the focus in Soviet policy shifted from industrialisation to welfare and from production to consumption. In this respect Zaporizhzhia may be seen as ‘a local model of the birth of a modern society’ – Soviet consumer society. Historian Pavlo Kravchuk and historian and graphic designer Mykhailo Mordovskoi skilfully combine text and images to show how this shift played out in urban planning, architecture, and, more importantly, the lives of ordinary Soviet citizens. Prefabricated construction techniques enabled the rapid erection of districts of mass housing, giving ordinary people a small apartment of their own for the first time. With this came a need for consumer goods. At the same time, sitting in their new kitchens, people gained a modicum of privacy and a space in which to meet and discuss, away from the controlling eye of the state. The new Soviet apartment was ‘a place of leisure’, but also of dissidence – the beginning of the end of the regime.

This research offers a deep dive into the architectural and social landscapes of East European and Eurasian microrayons. Through the lens of heritage, transformation, and community dynamics, this book sheds light on often overlooked narratives in Soviet urban development from the 1960s forwards and their continuations following the breakup of the USSR.From legislative transformations in Uzbekistan to community-driven spatial transformations in Georgia, each chapter presents a nuanced perspective on the legacy of urbanism in the former USSR. This academic project is one of few, following the start of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, to take a look at both sides of the front line. The authors also examine developments in the Baltic States, Caucasus, and Central Asia.The book at hand presents thirteen 'district stories' from seven post-Soviet countries, written by experts from a variety of disciplines, including architecture, urban and regional planning, public policy and social sciences, and human geography. The authors present observations of spatial, social, and functional transformations as well as of the formal and informal frameworks, planning strategies, and concepts that lay behind the physical development. They discuss spatial patterns and their modifications with a view to future heritage-sensitive development of the neighborhoods. They point out unique details and the fact that genius loci makes a difference. The contributions formulate new narratives for large housing estates from the 1960s and identify the potential challenges in responsible planning and the need for action.

This book presents the life story of an extraordinary woman in the world of corporate architecture during the Mad Men era of the 1950s to 1980s. Born in a small village in Germany, Brigitte Peterhans managed to come to America to study with Mies van der Rohe at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, and then to work with Bruce Graham at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Her work during this time reflected the mid-century modernism of Mies and SOM. Later in her career, both towards the end of her time at SOM and then on her own after retiring from SOM, she developed her own individual style. Significantly, Peterhans avoided any attempt to be either challenged or praised strictly as a woman architect, insisting that she was merely an architect. Yet she overcame the challenges of being a woman architect, and her spirit and determination left a lasting impression on her young colleagues. Brigitte Peterhans’ story therefore has the merit to inspire many more up-and-coming architects, both women and men.