Research project "Urban Turnaround": New website online

Who were the people who organized themselves here? How did they think and how did they act? How much did the resistance to the decline of the old city play into the general opposition movement against SED rule? And how did those active at the time shape urban planning policy in East Germany beyond the Peaceful Revolution of 1989?

The Department of Urban Renewal and Planning Theory at the University of Kassel is conducting research on these questions in a joint project with the Technical University of Kaiserslautern, the Bauhaus University of Weimar and the History Department at the Leibnitz Institute for Spatial Social Research (IRS) in Erkner. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research is funding the project "Urban Renewal at the Turning Point - the Significance of Citizens' Initiatives against Old Town Decay for the Turning Point in the GDR", or "Stadtwende" for short.

A central component of the research and communication work in the network is the project website stadtwende.de: Here, comprehensive information is provided about ongoing project activities, such as events at the sites studied. Above all, however, initiatives at over 30 locations are documented here, in short texts, pictures, original documents and, in the future, videos and interviews with contemporary witnesses.

Until now, the website was available in a beta version. From now on it appears in a new design and with extended functionality. Entries - called "city turning points" - can now be searched for specifically using filters such as "person", "institution", "citizens' group" or "place", as well as a map view.

Further information:

The project on the website of the University of Kassel: https://www.uni-kassel.de/fb06/fachgebiete/stadt-und-regionalplanung/stadterneuerung-und-planungstheorie/forschung/stadtwende.html

To the website: https://stadtwende.de/