Once utopia and back.
The MCube Speaker Series has concluded the aqt Summerschool (aqt = Car-reduced districts for a liveable city - one of the 14 MCube innovation projects) and presented exciting suggestions, visions, facts and ideas for the district of the future. Free of charge and outside, on September 23, 2022, in the middle of the Au, on a centrally located public square that is normally designated for 10 parking spaces. For one day, this space was rededicated, a transportable bicycle stage was set up by Green City and the entire space was transformed into a meeting place of the future by TUM students. The mobile exhibition and participation bike trailer from club.loko was used as an exhibition space for the interim results.
As part of the summer school, TUM Master's students from various disciplines spent two weeks researching two neighborhoods in Munich - the Südliche Au and in Giesing at Walchenseeplatz - and asked the opinions and attitudes of local residents in small interventions. They wanted to know: How can we all work together to shape the urban districts of the future today?
More than 80 interested citizens and experts came together at the end to discuss the street experiments carried out and their innovative ideas for the future of the Au and Giesing districts. The findings will serve as a prelude to an exchange with regard to two large-scale real-world laboratories next summer.
Embedded in the MCube Speaker Series "Future of Mobility", the following questions were raised and topics discussed:
x From "Greater, Greener New York" to the "FreiRAUM district in Munich": Elena Schirnding de Almeida (architect and urban planner at the Chair of Urban Design at TUM) presented contrasting top-down and bottom-up strategies for change in public spaces and encouraged both students and politicians to really have more courage to make changes.
✳️ "Change begins in the way we see the world!" Jan Kamensky (visual utopian from Hamburg) presented his innovative approach with unique animations in which he playfully visualizes the transformation of car-friendly streets into people-friendly places. His vision: After viewers have been able to take a look at the contrasting utopia, they return to reality with a sharpened view - an invitation to reflect on the current situation.
⚒️ "Come to us! Dare to do something! And try it out!" Jörg Spengler and Dr. Uwe Kranenpohl (district committee representatives from Au and Giesing) invite the students and all aqt project staff to try out the two neighborhoods, to conduct intensive research, to work together with the citizens to design public spaces in a more experimental way and thus to question habitual mobility behavior.
A big thank you goes especially to the aqt Summerschool students. You make the world a better place: Elias Bradl, Katja Stiefenhofer, Ruike Sun, Jingyi Xu, Julia Carstens, Karolin Scharf, Jodok Kroitzsch, Pauline Sirch, Anne-Sophie Hofmann, Leventcan Er, Julián Sandoval Ávila and Camila Barquero.
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