Re-Thinking Cautious Urban Renewal. the Iba (Berlin, 1984/87) As an Early Attempt for a Politicized Strategy for a Sustainable City

Apart from the fact that the strategies for a sustainable city today form the basis of a neo-liberal urban, mainly environmental policy, the main question remains of the genealogy and initial potential of some of the key concepts. The International Building Exhibition (IBA) in Berlin in 1984/87 with its two areas IBA Alt and IBA Neu, and the two strategies of a critical reconstruction and a cautious urban renewal, seen as a paradigmatic case study in light of the specific situation in Germany in the 1980s, especially the conditions in West Berlin, by linking urban rehabilitation with social and ecological objectives produced alternative, but ultimately normative models of urban regeneration, not only with regard to European urban planning, but of global interest. This paper analyzes, to what extend primarily the IBA Alt – as a paradigmatic concept of development in response to the policy of redevelopment by demolition and reconstruction of the 1960s and the common squatting practice, with its procedures and highly conflictuous processes of advocacy, participation, and self-building for the socially engaged and responsible restoration and maintenance of old tenements, new forms of responsibility and ownership, the provision of green spaces and social infrastructure – at first promised a politicization and democratization of urban renewal and everyday life. Since the IBA, funded by federal and state agencies, is called back to mind for its projects and protagonists with various research, exhibition and publication projects to mark its 25^th anniversary, I will discuss the function of cautious urban renewal, both its positive achievements and uttered criticisms. In revisiting the IBA, I intend to provide a historically argued contribution to the current debate on sustainability and the city, by not only by highlighting planning processes, but by challenging the dimensions of the ecological and the social.