Matthias Möller

Dietenbach: Freiburg's newest district is currently somewhere between imagination, planning and realisation. Covering an area of around 110 hectares, it will one day provide living space for around 16,000 people. This makes it the largest urban expansion project in Freiburg's history. The plans are for affordable housing in an ecological, lively and liveable district. Nevertheless, the project was and still is controversial. The transformation of woodland and farmland into urban space represents a breaking point at which debates about the city of tomorrow ignite in a particular way. This often involves major social issues of the future, which are negotiated locally with and through the new urban district. The intensive debates that accompany the project enable a variety of perspectives on cultural issues of urban development, some of which are brought into focus here in 12 articles. This volume is therefore aimed at anyone interested in the complex relationship between culture and urban space. How much space does a person need? What does Dietenbach have to do with the climate crisis? What role do emotions play in planning? What will it be like to live in the new neighbourhood? And what other new beginnings and abysses are there to discover?