Urban Design Colloquium - hybrid

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Patient City Center

Therapies and concepts for the city of the future

For decades, we have given our city centers a mono-functional overhaul and given retail the right of way. The problem of the uniform orientation of many city centers has been an issue for years, because the entire economic sector "retail" has experienced dramatic upheavals and transformations due to the rapid increase in online retailing. The Corona pandemic has acted as an accelerator, leading to veritable chain reactions of vacant retail properties. The department stores as "giants" in prominent inner city locations, once popular in their heyday, are becoming real problem cases, especially in the current crisis situation of Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof. That the inner city has become a problem case and requires therapy as a patient seems undisputed. 

The future of the city center is the subject of numerous institutions, research projects and funding programs. Most of the diagnoses come to the conclusion that a real "reinvention" of the inner city is long overdue. 

The "Urban Planning Colloquium" series of events at the Faculty of Architecture at RWTH Aachen University aims to stimulate discourse on the reinvention of the city center in the summer of 2023. The colloquium will discuss the following questions: What role can new uses play in terms of mixed-use concepts? Do downtowns need more density and/or more open spaces? How do we arrive at a new "heart of the city" that invites people to meet in physical space?

Organizer

• RWTH Aachen, Faculty of Architecture, Chair and Institute of Urban Planning
• ILS Institute for Regional and Urban Development Research gGmbH, Dortmund 
• Network Inner City NRW 

with the support of

• Association for Urban, Regional and State Planning e.V. 
• Information circle for spatial planning, IfR e.V. 

Venue

Foyer of the Reiff Museum I Faculty of Architecture + digital connection

Each event is recognized by the Chamber of Architects of North Rhine-Westphalia with 2 teaching hours as continuing education in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture and urban planning for chamber members. Subject to change without notice.