Beyond Beauty or Urban Design of Responsibility

In recent years, urban spaces all over the world have been effectively staged, sometimes all too obviously, and urban design has often concentrated on the implementation of “beautiful” lighthouse projects and globally oriented lifestyle urbanism. However, beauty – also in the broader sense of a beautiful experience – cannot be an end in itself in urban planning. An urban design of responsibility has to be committed to all residents and address the pressing challenges of our time, for example: the almost unlimited consumption of land, water and energy; floods and heatwaves due to climate change; lack of decent living conditions for large parts of the population. Against this background, five strategic guidelines for the integrated and responsible planning of our cities have been developed. These include “comprehensive” and integrated neighbourhoods, a mobility turnaround, interconnected blue and green infrastructure, a circular resource economy and space sharing, and the exploitation of the opportunities of digitalisation for a social and ecological city.