Cities of the future: this is how we will build, live and work

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Friedrich von Borries

Photo: Anna Tiessen / DER SPIEGEL

SPIEGEL:

Mr. von Borries, mankind has known about the consequences of environmental degradation for 50 years at the latest and is acting contrary to this knowledge.

Where do you see the biggest mistakes in architecture with regard to the climate?

Borries:

In the expansion of the cities from the post-war period into the 1980s, with ever new suburbs, ever new single-family houses - urban sprawl, a waste of land for too few people.

SPIEGEL:

Up until the pandemic, the opposite trend could be observed.

Families tended to like to stay in the cities, urban spaces were compacted, and fallow areas were opened up for apartments and shops.

Borries:

Yes, we've seen efforts going in the right direction.

The conversion of old port areas into residential areas is part of this, such as Hamburg's HafenCity, or the conversion of old track areas into parks, such as the Gleisdreieck in Berlin.

And then we also experience these delicate attempts to ban certain forms of very dirty mobility from inner cities with environmental zones.

These are developments over the past 15 years that have made cities denser on the one hand, and greener on the other - and it's about both.

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