Openness is a central theme of current social debates when questions of belonging, security or resource distribution are discussed. These debates are particularly tangible in urban spaces. Drawing on findings from a wide range of disciplines, the urban research discourse recognises the importance of openness for the emergence, development and sustainability of cities. Openness, in contrast to its antagonism closedness, is expressed in three interlinked dimensions: in the openness of physical spaces, as the openness of social, economic and ecological systems and as future openness in the sense of a temporal dimension. The OPEN CITY project addresses these three facets and uses the example of Berlin to analyse which new approaches, strategies and tools of urban development result from the combination of concepts and approaches of openness of the city and society. The fundamental question is how openness in its aforementioned dimensions can offer new approaches to questions of urban transformation by systematically integrating it into urban development processes. The aim is to sound out concepts and approaches for dealing with the multiple uncertainties in urban development processes against the background of current challenges, without irrevocably obstructing tomorrow's future opportunities today.
Project Lead Prof. Dr. Vanessa Carlow (TUBS ISU)
Team Dr. Michael Strohbach
External Cooperation Partners TUBS ISU, Deutsches Institut für Urbanistik, TU Dortmund: Stadt und Regionalsoziologie
Duration 2017-2020
Funding Body Robert Bosch Stiftung