Variety – The Südstadt in Tübingen as a model for the city

Abstract

In the 21st century, more people now live in cities than in rural areas. In western societies in particular, people’s everyday lives, and what they can and cannot do, are shaped by their urban environment. This apparent triumph of the city cannot, however, be attributed to a single model of the city but rather to a bewildering assortment of urban concepts and developmental processes. The much-vaunted European city -with its compact, diverse mix of functions — is now no longer the dominant form, both in terms of quantity and influence, and has been relegated to a less relevant branch of urban practice. Since the 1950s at the latest, the ideal of the functionally separated, zoned city has dominated. Theoretical discourse too was similarly convinced that the future lies in the “city without qualities” (Rem Koolhaas), the post-city, the vertical city and the suburban city — urban typologies that flourish without the dense mix of functions and qualities that characterise the European city.