Air Base: Many a citizen has concerns

Created: 10/28/2022, 3:00 p.m

By: Hans Moritz

Great interest in the museum: The dialogue process for the conversion of the air base has started.

The first of six speakers was Alain Thierstein, Professor of Spatial Development at the Technical University of Munich © Klaus Kuhn

The interest was huge: the first information evening at the Erding Museum on the mammoth project to convert the Erding Air Base with Alain Thierstein, Professor of Spatial Development at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), was overbooked.

Erding - the conversion of military land to civilian use is the largest such project in southern Germany, and Thierstein had a number of key messages with him.

The project will take at least 20 years and will probably outlast the term of office of all local politicians.

This places special demands on those responsible.

Thierstein's advice: "You need a lot of stamina." This was linked to the appeal to "keep the fire blazing".

By that he meant the public interest, the enthusiasm for this future project.

But it is still a restricted military area - and that until the end of 2024. So people cannot yet get a real impression of the development potential.

After all: The "citizen participation evening", according to Mayor Max Gotz, encourages him.

Thierstein went through the whole range of possible topics that are pending: mobility, demographic change, digitization and the associated changes in the world of work, for example.

He would like to see the term trade replaced by "value-adding activity".

And he said that "politics should have the courage to say no to one or the other interested party".

The planning expert described the winning design of the urban planning competition as "the basis for all further considerations".

"How do we use the space efficiently?" was one of his core questions.

Most of the questions from the audience related to mobility and its management.

So there were quite a few who wanted to keep individual traffic with cars.

On the other hand, there was the proven enormous space requirement for this.

The central connection via the new train station that was to be built was a point of criticism, as this is planned exactly where there are old trees.

Moderator Franco Patane from the Drees & Sommer project management office said: "Planning means making compromises." The winning design turned out to be the best in terms of the balance of nature.

There were also questions about the financing: As is well known, the city wants to acquire the entire area.

The appraisal has just started.

There were doubts as to whether the city could handle it.

Some even doubted that real estate would be acquired at all.

However, Patane assessed the risk of the purchase negotiations failing as “low”.

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Another question related to municipal infrastructure.

The answer: Of course there will be new schools and kindergartens.

Even a university was brought up for discussion.

However, the professor waved his hand and ruled out a public university: "That doesn't fit with Germany's university landscape."

There are five more lecture evenings that build on each other.

Gotz appealed to the public to take advantage of these offers.

Registration is necessary due to the limited space available, preferably by email to flughorst@erding.de.

Klaus Kuhn