Culture-led – and Sub-Culture-led Urban Regeneration in Germany

During the last decades, culture-led urban regeneration has been a key element of urban policy and planning all over Europe. The chapter concentrates on the German experience, which differs from other European countries. Here, a special relation to culture has long let to a different approach that can be called “culture-aimed”, is based on secular traditions, a critical review of post-war demolitions and civic engagement and still reflects Weimar Classicism’s motto by acting “for the good, true and beautiful” in culture itself. However, the culture- led instrumentalisation of cultural assets has by now gained ground but has been contested in professional as well as public debate. Using a quantitative analysis of public contestation manifested in nearly 3,000 planning protests in seven major German cities between 2005 and 2020, the chapter explores how citizens and civil society challenged both culture-led and culture-aimed plans for urban regeneration. It asks whether the alternatives to urban policies articulated in some of these protests themselves represent sub-culture-led and sub-culture-aimed approaches of urban regeneration. Viewing local culture as an important aspect of collective and individual identity It argues that during the last two decades the contestations reflect both a wish to preserve secular traditions and to use cultural assets for more contemporary interpretations of “the good, true and beautiful” as the public policy has become more diverse. Culture is therefore a very much debated aspect of German urban regeneration, highlighting the importance of questions of identity in many planning protests, that on first sight address the provision of some sort of infrastructure.