Hintergrund 26

Description

The reasons for this are more or less obvious: Many cities have reached their limits. Metropolises have outgrown themselves and form megacities. In some parts of the world, cities have grown together to form new groupings with multiple cores. Other regions, in turn, are collectively shrinking. More recently, new European Union policies have reinforced this shift away from cities and toward regions. Many core issues at the European level have to do with economic competitiveness, but social cohesion, identity and sustainable development are also key. Spatial planning is a means to manage all these concerns.

We are in the midst of a “Second Modernity” defined by global communication and transport networks. Naturally, this also generates changes in architecture and urban planning. Franz E. Kneissl, Bart Lootsma, Michael Hamiyeh and Peter Sloterdijk shed light on the different facets of the topic “regions” in their contributions.