Die Metropolregion

in Ermann, Ulrich (Ed.) Die Region. Eine Begriffsbestimmung (2022)

Mit dem Begriff der Metropolregion werden traditionell große Verdichtungsräume und ihr Einzugsbereich bezeichnet, gelegentlich auch Millionenstädte. Im europäischen Raum wurde der Begriff der ... [more ▼]

Mit dem Begriff der Metropolregion werden traditionell große Verdichtungsräume und ihr Einzugsbereich bezeichnet, gelegentlich auch Millionenstädte. Im europäischen Raum wurde der Begriff der Metropolregion seit den 1990er Jahren für die räumliche Planung und Forschung zunehmend relevant. Lag die klassische Rolle der Raumforschung im Metropolenkontext bei Fragen der Identifikation, Abgrenzung und inhaltlichen Bestimmung von Raumeinheiten, wurde die Metropolregion zunehmend zum Gegenstand räumlicher Entwicklungspolitik gemacht. Dazu bediente man sich einer diskursiven Rahmung, eines framings, das spezifische Assoziationen um diesen Begriff konstruierte: die Verbindung von Großstadt und Moderne, die Konnotation von Region mit Wachstum und Wettbewerbsfähigkeit, der Anschluss der Raumplanung an den Geist der Zeit. Mehr als 25 Jahre nach Einführung der Metropolregionen als Kategorie der deutschen Raumordnung bietet sich eine kritische Reflektion dieser Praxis an: Welchen Einfluss hat diese Rahmung auf politische Diskurse ausgeübt, welcher Regionsbegriff wurde zugrunde gelegt, wie wurde diese Setzung empirisch begründet? Auf diese Weise werden das Metropolenkonzept und sein diskursives framing problematisiert. Außerdem wird gefragt, ob es alternative wissenschaftliche Ansätze zur Analyse des Wandels von der Region zur Metropolregion gibt. [less ▲]

Zones and zoning: Linking the geographies of freeports with ArtTech and financial market making

in Geoforum (2022)

Freeports and special economic zones (SEZs) are established policy tools to attract foreign investment at specific locations, based on the de-coupling of sovereignty and territory. As a result, they ... [more ▼]

Freeports and special economic zones (SEZs) are established policy tools to attract foreign investment at specific locations, based on the de-coupling of sovereignty and territory. As a result, they emerged not only in developmental contexts, but also in tax havens and financial centres. Recently, freeports and SEZs have shifted from responding to global competition for spaces best suited to attract tangible manufacturing to responding to competition for spaces with best conditions to enable value extraction and wealth shielding. We develop the argument on the emerging industry of ArtTech and new ‘fine art freeports’ that thrive on two core social practices: fracturing property rights to enhance financial liquidity and trading activity in highly exclusive fine-art markets, and offshoring – or zoning – to exploit freeport-facilitated relations for market making and rent-seeking.Besides such practices to make and game markets, freeports supply important physical infrastructure for fine-art technical and custody services that precondition any form of value creation. As such, freeports are important spaces for policy experimentation. Contrary to the conventional belief about free zones in general and freeports in particular, however, their economic impact remains limited. We explain this by conceptualising freeports as ‘zones’ defined or designed by specific processes of ‘zoning’ that link their multiple geographies. We conclude that freeports are no sites of exception but spaces that help legitimise novel institutional and economic arrangements emergent in the economy at large. [less ▲]

Luxembourg-Kirchberg: heading towards the new European city

in Briesen, Detlef; Strubelt, Wendelin (Eds.) A New Beginning? Spatial Planning and Research in Europe between 1945 and 1975 (2022)

This chapter explores spatial planning and spatial research in post-World War II Europe from the perspective of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. While spatial planning and, even more so, spatial research ... [more ▼]

This chapter explores spatial planning and spatial research in post-World War II Europe from the perspective of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. While spatial planning and, even more so, spatial research were established in the country only recently, both the Grand Duchy and its capital city have undergone a remarkable trajectory of growth and change over the past decades. Within roughly forty years, a diminutive Luxembourg has almost doubled its population and reached a top position measured by global economic indicators. One of the major sites implicated in this economic success is the Kirchberg Plateau, a 365-hectares area that now hosts the European and banking district and also some components of nationally important infrastructure. Initially agricultural land, it was developed by the central government from the early 1960s. It was mainly designed in the fashion of a modern office town, with high-rises, ‘starchitecture’ and wide boulevards, dedicated to localising employment in future sectors, aimed at compensating for the decline of the country’s once dominant steel industry. Kirchberg provided space for expansion by experimentation, put in place by a state fund through state power and with the ability to expropriate land, offering a blank sheet of territory for development and clearly offering direction and momentum for a new trajectory. This is the known part of Kirchberg. The unknown part is also addressed here: Kirchberg has a pre-1945 history of planning, a dark side related to Nazi occupation and the attempt to “Germanise” Luxembourg’s development and building policies. While initial ideas for development were based on Hubert Ritters Generalbebauungsplan of 1943, and none of these had been implemented, some features laid the ground for the site's development afterwards. And the overall modernist function and layout of the Kirchberg, to become a template post-war European city, still challenge current attempts to further urbanise the site. [less ▲]

FINCITY -- Excerpt from project description

E-print/Working paper (2022)

The Myth of Beirut’s Resilience: Introduction to the Thematic Issue

in Urban Planning (2022), 7(1), 82-86

This editorial introduces a thematic issue of Urban Planning on recent developments in Beirut, Lebanon. It emphasises the multiple crises the city has been undergoing for some time, which include an ... [more ▼]

This editorial introduces a thematic issue of Urban Planning on recent developments in Beirut, Lebanon. It emphasises the multiple crises the city has been undergoing for some time, which include an enduring political and economic crisis, the impact of the Covid‐19 pandemic, and most recently the devastating impact of the blast that happened in the port of Beirut on 4th August 2020. The editorial outlines the specific challenges resulting from these crises and addresses the concept of resilience, which is taken up by the articles included in this issue. [less ▲]

Technocratic urban development: Large digital corporations as power brokers of the digital age

in Planning Theory and Practice (2022)

Large digital corporations such as Amazon.com or Alphabet Inc. are forging their position in cities by promoting themselves as the sole providers of so-called essential urban infrastructures. In this ... [more ▼]

Large digital corporations such as Amazon.com or Alphabet Inc. are forging their position in cities by promoting themselves as the sole providers of so-called essential urban infrastructures. In this paper, we reflect on how the behaviours of these current-day ‘tech giants’ are similar to those of the mid-20th century, a time period also known for dramatic infrastructural change in North American and Europe. Specifically, we are reminded of Robert Moses and how he pushed for infrastructural change in New York City and State, which were also supposedly the height of state-of-the-art urban planning at the time. He pushed his agenda, however, by brokering power and strong-arming the urban and regional development field. We reflect on Alphabet Inc.’s project in Toronto and Amazon’s search for a second headquarters in New York City and how these LDCs were similarly armed with executive and financial power and an ability to bully the field of urban development in their own interest. Behaving as digital-age power brokers, they engaged managerial-technocratic modes of urban governance to instigate projects that ultimately failed. We argue that Alphabet’s and Amazon’s strategies not only resemble those of Moses, but that all three deploy tactics that debase planning practice itself. [less ▲]

Disruption der internationalen Stadt. Alternative Geographien für Luxemburg

in Mein, Georg; Pause, Johannes (Eds.) Self and Society in the Corona Crisis. Perspectives from the Humanities & Social Sciences (2021)

Land and the housing affordability crisis: landowner and developer strategies in Luxembourg’s facilitative planning context

in Housing Studies (2021)

The issue of land and its ownership remains under-explored in relation to the housing affordability crisis. We argue that the concentrated ownership of residential land affects housing production in ... [more ▼]

The issue of land and its ownership remains under-explored in relation to the housing affordability crisis. We argue that the concentrated ownership of residential land affects housing production in Luxembourg through the interplay of landowner and developer wealth accumulation strategies. Drawing on expert interviews, we first show that the country’s growth-centred ecology has produced a negotiated planning regime that does little to manage the pace of residential development. Through an investigation of the development of 71 large-scale residential projects since 2007, we then identify the private land-based wealth accumulation strategies this facilitative planning regime enables. This analysis of land registry data identifies land hoarding, land banking and the strategic use of the planning system. The Luxembourg case – with its extremes of land concentration, low taxes and public disengagement from land – provides a glimpse at the influence of landowner and property developer strategies on housing affordability free of the usual mediating impact of the planning system. [less ▲]

Die Ökonomisierung des Raums

in disP : The Planning Review (2021), 57(1), 88-89

„Place de l’Etoile“/Stäreplaz. Goldgrube mit grünen Dächern

Article for general public (2021)

Stadt ist Markt. Der Warentausch war, neben Militär und Kirche, immer ein wichtiges Movens von Stadtgründung und -entwicklung. Will man die heutigen Konsumlandschaften reflektieren, muss man am Konsum von ... [more ▼]

Stadt ist Markt. Der Warentausch war, neben Militär und Kirche, immer ein wichtiges Movens von Stadtgründung und -entwicklung. Will man die heutigen Konsumlandschaften reflektieren, muss man am Konsum von Grund und Boden ansetzen. Solch ein Blick erklärt, in welche Richtung sich viele Städte gegenwärtig und zukünftig entwickeln werden. [less ▲]