Around 70 percent of the world’s population will be living in cities by 2050. This will require effective, carefully considered concepts.

“Urbanization has a massive effect on the dynamics of our society.” In his opening speech, Prof. Wolfgang Wende from TU Dresden, co-organizer of the “Urban Studies in Education and Research” symposium at the end of November, anticipates the challenges that humanity will face in the next 30 years. Forecasts predict that 70 percent of the world’s population will be living in cities by 2050. Creating more housing for a rapidly growing urban population has an impact on other areas such as urban infrastructure, quality of life, mobility, resource consumption, and the environment. That is why we need new ideas and interdisciplinary approaches. In collaboration with leading partners such as TU Delft, CTU in Prague, and the Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development (IÖR), these issues and their relevance for teaching and research were discussed in keynote lectures and workshops with junior researchers and students. UJ spoke to Prof. Wolfgang Wende, Chair of Urban Development and Head of the Landscape Change and Management Research Area at IÖR, and co-organizer Prof. Angela Mensing-de Jong, Chair of Urban Design, both at the TUD Institute of Urbanism and Urban Planning.

To go back to your opening quote, what effects of urbanization were you thinking of in particular?
Prof. Wende: I was thinking about our consumption of resources; about the environment. And also how we live together – how that will change, in particular on an international scale. Many new urban structures are already being built. In China alone, urbanization is currently affecting a further 250 million people. In the process, new formal and informal structures are emerging. In technical jargon, this is referred to as spontaneity. One example comes from a doctorate from the Dresden Leibniz Graduate School on the topic of refugee camps. A camp set up in Jordan has led to the emergence of a whole new structure. The study examined how such an urban structure forms and becomes established. Research uncovered many informal and wholly unplanned processes. For us, the question is how we can support and monitor those processes in order to create a town that includes and involves socially deprived groups, for example.

The symposium addressed the issue of water-land relations. To what extent are aspects of climate change, such as extreme weather, already part of research and teaching?
Prof. Wende: Water-land relations are a major topic at IÖR. A Humboldt fellow from Jamaica has developed a potential analysis of how a city can deal with heavy rainfall events – be a “sponge city.” The analysis shows that urban land use planning must include green roofs, caverns, urban greening, and reducing the area of paved and other impervious surfaces. I am also increasingly incorporating the topic of climate change into teaching. We need to give students the tools to consider this issue in their development plans and, for example, to plan for lots of open space while still contributing to inner urban development.

Does that mean that the growth of cities could result in a return to highly functional housing, like the new-build blocks of the ’70s and ’80s? They were later demolished or partially dismantled and more green spaces were created to improve the quality of living. How do you create more housing for more people on what is, in some cases, very limited available land?
Prof. Mensing-de Jong: That is the challenge for urban planners and urban designers: to think not only about the allocation of space, but also about land use distribution and impact. We need more compact and also more sustainable cities; we need to optimize structures to avoid excessive consumption of resources such as energy. Metropolitan areas have a shortage of affordable housing. Here, we require not just project-specific perspectives but also the interdisciplinary skills of the many people involved in the planning of our environment, for example landscape architects, traffic planners, and architects. We need sensible, functional planning, but also and above all, we need cities with a good quality of life – and a mix of social groups and concepts that combine living and working. We can all learn from each other, and from examples and experiences.

Prof. Wende: There is no rule for the perfect building density. It is also difficult to say how much greenery is required to meet people’s needs. Culturally, quality of living can be perceived very differently. There is a greater acceptance of dense development in Asian countries. In Europe, comparable density of development would simply not be possible. In an R&D project with Strasbourg University, we are exploring the topic of mobility together with urban, traffic, and green space planners. A lot of space is given over to transport in the EU context. We want to investigate how far that space can be reduced while still providing the same mobility. To achieve this, we need to redirect traffic flows to make room for green infrastructure.

The symposium also addressed training and the need for a greater focus on this area in teaching to meet the challenges of urbanization. What advice would you give students?
Prof. Mensing-de Jong: I would like to raise students’ awareness of the context in a global society and increase their awareness of global problems at an early stage instead of focusing solely on a broad contextual approach. That is why we are running a workshop on the Czech-German border in the 2019 summer semester with more than 60 participants (students and lecturers) from our partner universities in Prague, Gothenburg, Strasbourg, and Delft as well as from TUD. The workshop is an opportunity for participants to learn from each other, learn about different teaching practices, and establish new networks and practical partnerships.

Prof. Wende: We must be open to new approaches. We need them if we are to get the effects of urbanization, in particular on the environment, under control.

The interview was conducted by Diana Uhlmann.

This article was published on December 11, 2018, in the 20/2018 Dresden Universitätsjournal. You can download the full issue as a PDF for free here. You can also order the UJ in print or as a PDF from doreen.liesch@tu-dresden.de. More information is available at universitaetsjournal.de.