Cooperative Planning Procedure Campagne Innsbruck
Innsbruck is in transition from a rurally shaped to an urban space. Alongside social and spatial challenges, this means that the relationship of Innsbruck’s inhabitants to their city and to themselves will change profoundly. The partly still rural structures in Innsbruck are slowly dissolving and making room for the new and unexpected. For this it is important that different possibilities, diverse interests and unfamiliar structures meet and can flourish in their complexity. This transformation provides the necessary tension, creates contradictions and qualities, and offers the city’s inhabitants spaces and opportunities in which to lose and rediscover themselves. The city becomes a space for discovery and progress – in short, a cultural space. “Alongside language, the city is humanity’s greatest invention,” as Richard Sennett put it. The French writer, poet and surrealist André Breton spoke of the “chance encounter”, the possibility of the most diverse things meeting during a walk through the city. For urban design, this means that it is not only about bringing together as many programmes and levels as possible within the city, but also that the generation of sensations should be guided and planned through routes and axes.
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Innsbruck is divided into three parts by the Inn meandering along the valley floor; yet the city relates to the river at only a few points. The Campagne-Reichenau site lies in one of these border zones and, as a connecting element, can play an important role in Innsbruck’s urban development. On the axis between Innsbruck’s historic centre and the well-developed O-Dorf, the planning area lies exactly in the middle. The west–east axis corresponds to Innsbruck’s current growth, along which several sub-centres will emerge in the future. Morphologically, Innsbruck’s various districts possess clearly distinguishable urban qualities and are clearly legible – what is missing is the connecting element. The Campagne-Reichenau site offers the future opportunity to form a new centre for its surroundings as well as for the city and to act as a cultural attractor. The Campagne-Reichenau area is to be charged with a wide variety of programmes: housing in many different forms, local supply, infrastructure, green spaces, activity areas, culture, commerce and sport. The Lange Weg currently creates a clear separation between housing and commercial uses. As a border space, however, it also offers the opportunity to open up new connections and to upgrade and redefine the area through design interventions. The same applies to the northern part of the Campagne Reichenau and its relationship to the water there.
Vertical growth can be a thoroughly promising as well as necessary option for the city. Given the low costs (according to current studies between 900 and 1,200 euros/m²), the sunlight, the large open ground floor area and, not least, the fantastic views, there is nothing to prevent building upwards in Innsbruck too. In addition to providing public outdoor spaces, however, the desire for a private outdoor space (the dream of a house in the green) must also be addressed. This also corresponds to the city’s wish not to build “only” social housing in the zone, but additionally to create alternative housing for people from all social backgrounds. Besides affordable housing, the new district needs affordable, flexible and easily adaptable creative spaces to open up opportunities for residents in all areas of their lives. The “Hallenwohnen” in Zurich should be mentioned here as a reference project. We propose investing the money for part of the planned parking spaces in projects such as car sharing or in larger lifts for bicycles (e.g. “Bau aufs Rad”) as well as roof gardens. Phenomena such as do-it-yourself 3D printers, home gardening, home production and home office point the way to a new city, a better city. It is therefore the responsibility of all of us to open up new fields of activity and work through urbanistic and architectural approaches.
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