Lessons from
Tempelhof Airport

Ringvorlesung

Ruder

Public Participation and Cooperative Development:
Lessons from Tempelhof Airport

With Dr. Francesca Weber-Newth von paper planes e.V. ehemals Tempelhof Projekt GmbH


This lecture explores the potentials and challenges of public participation and cooperative approaches to urban development. Tempelhof Airport — one of Europe's largest inner-city development sites — serves as a case study. Built between 1936 and 1941 Tempelhof Airport demonstrates the monumental self-staging of the National-Socialists. Closed as an airport in 2008, it is now home to Berlin’s traffic management, over 3,000 police officers, a university and nightclub — as well as various temporary events including art-fairs and music festivals. In the coming years and decades, the aim is to refurbish and transform the building into a site for arts, culture and office space for Berlin’s administration.

The lecture focused on the learnings that can be drawn from this case study: What are the necessary (political) conditions needed to carry out public participation? How might a successful collaboration between the administration and civil society look? Particular focus will be on the politics of urban regeneration.

Die Veranstaltung ist Teil der Ringvorlesung Stadt. Kulturgetriebene Regeneration. Raum – Wissen – Partizipation, die im Sommersemester 2024 stattfand.

ZUR RINGVORLESUNG

Bio-Note

 
Dr. Francesca Weber-Newth is a British-German urban sociologist based in Berlin. She formerly worked in the strategy team of Tempelhof Projekt GmbH, the state-owned company responsible for the redevelopment of Tempelhof Airport. Currently, she is an active member of paper planes e.V., a think tank that reimagines cities of the future, which most recently published the Free Street Manifesto (2022). Her academic background includes doctoral research on urban regeneration in Berlin and London, the monograph The Game of Urban Regeneration (2019), research and teaching at the Humboldt University Berlin.
 

Termine der Ringvorlesung