- Teaching
- Urban Design Projects
- October 15, 2015
Urban Design Project III What’s life like in Parapolis? 2015/2016
„Asylum seekers, international students, terrorists, members of diasporas, holidaymakers, business people, sports stars, refugees, backpackers, commuters, the early retired, young mobile professionals, prostitutes, armed forces. These and many others fill the world's airports, buses, ships," (Sheller and Urry 2006)
With this year’s focus of study we will analyze the urban reality in terms of translocal relationship structures and study the city under the premise of increasing migration, refuge, tourism, and commuter activity as a highly complex structure whose “form is vague and difficult to define — mainly because the conditions of proximity and distance are no longer determined by purely geographical neighborhoods. The city is perforated and agile and has a number of distant and almost invisible suburbs.” (Terkessidis 2010). Mark Terkessidis coined this “large or small city” “Parapolis” and compares it to the constructed notion of the “European city” as a definable cultural unity. Who is where and when a resident? Who is a citizen? How is this loose conglomerate gathered, produced, and negotiated under the name “Hamburg”? What is life like in Parapolis, here in Hamburg, and what is the connection to other places like?
We will talk about how to deal with those seeking refuge, as well as about forms of living and everyday life in an era of increasing mobility and translocality. How does this effect social (and urban) reality? Which (construction) arrangments (Löw) will result and on what scale? How can we develop future models that will recognize these new realities and cultivate new urban cohabitation? The UDP 3 is designed as an interdisciplinary project together with architecture and urban planning. The projects can be developed from a research-based and/or design planning perspective.
10 CP
Gerald Herbert / AP file. http://www.nbcnews.com
contributors
Prof. Dr. Alexa Färber
Professor, Urban Anthropology and Ethnography
Prof. Dipl. Ing. Bernd Kniess
Professor, Urban Design
M.A. Marieke Behne
Academic Staff, Ph.D. Candidate
2016/2017
Parapolis

City of Residents
Approximately 1.7 million people currently live in Hamburg. 31% of these Hamburg residents statistically have a background of migration. In addition, in 2013, 5.8 million tourists entered the city, 325,000 people commute to Hamburg in a day-to-day basis, and there is also a growing number of refugees waiting in cramped lodgings for the outcome of their asylum proceedings. Who is where and when a …