Internship Ulrike Centmayer, Stuttgart, February 2012

End of february 2012 Ulrike Centmayer from City Development (Urbun Planning and Monuments) went on an internship to Stuttgart.  The 'similar city network' Stuttgart is a city with about 600 000 inhabitants in the south west of Germany. Famous for its special topography ('Kessel'=kettle), the car industry like Mercedes and Porsche and recently for the political discussion around the new train station Stuttgart 21.

                                                       The internship left the following impression on her:

The main interest of the visit was how the quality of green and public space is maintained in the process of urban densification. I visited in the first place the Stadtplanungsamt of Stuttgart with urban city development, city planning en greenplanning departments.

It was a week full of lectures and presentations  about Stuttgart, the organisation, the problems and solutions , projects and planning in theory as well as short glimpses of the actual work of the civil servants in Stuttgart. And of course bicycle trips through the city to visit some of the projects and locations that have been built, were under construction or just where something was to going to happen.

Asked what I learned from this internship, regarding my first interest and topic I have chosen to examine, I can draw two main conclusions.

1. The importance of green and public space is very prominent in big scale plans and concepts. Urban development is mainly seen in context with green and public space. One reason for the importance of this approach is the necessity of having 'green' for climatologically reasons (local heat effect and as a result of it pollution, air quality etc.) not just because of aesthetic or modern reasons.

2. On a smaller scale (project scale) Stuttgart handles some instruments to maintain the quality of green and public space within each building project. One is SIM with a catalogues of qualities that each project has to fulfill (like density, green standards, green roofs, energy labels etc.). Another is the Eingriffsregelung (a calculation principle to find out the impact of a project on nature and the necessary compensation) and the Ökokonto (areas whose ecological value has been upgraded and can be used for compensation.

In general I saw a lot of inspiring projects during my stay. In the scale of urban and landscape planning as well as built in quarters, parks and public space.  I can recommend a visit to Stuttgart to everyone. Especially in the field of urban and landscape planning. If I had the choice I would rather go in summer to enjoy the heat and the amount of green spaces in and outside the city.

For further information also visit the webpage : www.stuttgart.de

Ulrike Centmayer March 2012