PARKS

The planned green connection of the “Alster-Bille-Elbe Green Corridor,” which is currently being planned and implemented by the Ministry of Environment, Climate, Energy, and Agriculture (BUKEA), will connect the Alster and Elbe rivers beyond the paved roads. The conversion of the former recycling center in Hammerbrook, located between the Bille River and the Bullerdeich, as well as the connection of the adjacent (green) spaces, have been part of a process-oriented and collaborative design project since 2019 – PARKS.

PARKS is a programmatic push in a new direction – a collective negotiation of what public space can be, a new way of thinking, planning, designing, using public green spaces and thus creating new practices of collaborative planning. The project was initiated and supported by the many neighbors, local associations, artists and representatives of the commissioning authority for environment and energy and the administrative district office Hamburg Mitte as well as numerous supporters and visitors. The initiation year 2019 was implemented together with these stakeholders in a program of planning workshops, structural interventions, walks, cultural events and gardening activities. In the years that followed, the area has changed again and again, changing along with those who use it.

The PARKS team was encouraged to take on the public space by the possibility of a process with a lasting influence on urban planning that brings together the interests of the immediate neighborhood, other stakeholders and city representatives. Ideally, this joint negotiation will result in a model project of communal open space planning that considers cultural and green spaces, their use and caretaking as belonging together and constantly negotiates what public spaces and especially parks mean for an urban society and how they are created.

More information at: www.parks-hamburg.de