Michael Ziehl, Future Viability through Cooperation: The Renovation of the Gängeviertel/Laboratory Report, 2017, Hamburg

Michael Ziehl, Zukunftsfähigkeit durch Kooperation: Die Sanierung des Gängeviertels/Laborberricht, 2017, Hamburg

 

In Future Viability through Cooperation: The Renovation of the Gängeviertel, Michael Ziehl reported from the Gängeviertel real-world laboratory in a lecture. Since the Gängeviertel was occupied in 2009, the City of Hamburg and the Gängeviertel Initiative have been working together to develop the neighbourhood as a lively district with affordable rents for living and for socio-cultural uses. As part of his research, Ziehl examined how city administrations and citizens‘ initiatives can work together to develop cities for the future. At the same time, he actively participated in the cooperation process. In his lecture, he shared insights into his previous research on cooperation and provided preliminary recommendations for cooperation partners that were discussed with the audience. Furthermore, he first presented an artistic-scientific Laboratory Report in the form of a brochure. This publication included results of a building symposium on the cooperation procedure, which had been part of the research setting as a real-world experiment. The Laboratory Report was conceptualised as a boundary object in the sense of a shared reference for the cooperation partners. Ziehl’s aim was to invite the cooperation partners to reflect upon their behaviour in the cooperation process and thus to encourage them to overcome the deadlock in the cooperation. Furthermore, with the help of the booklet, Ziehl asked for feedback about his interpretation of obstacles and conflicts. Although representatives of the local administration ignored this call, the Laboratory Report was productive within his research process as it collected a diverse range of critical feedback from the Gängeviertel activists and associated researchers and influenced the final outcome of the research: fourteen suggestions for action for civil society and public actors to cooperate effectively and to co-produce urban resilience (Ziehl 2020).

 

Researcher: Michael Ziehl

Participants: Gängeviertel activists, architect of redevelopment planning, members of the postgraduate programme Performing Citizenship

Formats: Intervention into the Real