Metabolic urbanism. A practical application of the urban metabolism model in Berlin's fringe area

Hammarby Sjöstad in Stockholm, the BO01-district in Malmö, BedZED in London or Masdar City in Abu Dhabi – in these prestigious green-city-projects, the idea of adjusting the urban design to the metabolism of energy, water and food flows has already been applied in practice. Although these attempts are promising and commendable, they do not exceed a showcase character and therefore inevitably raise the question about the next step of implementation - the translation of urban metabolism from a scientific paradigm into a design tool for the everyday planning practice. For cases which are rather dealing with densification and retrofitting than large-scale developments. For settings with the need for flexible and adaptable guidelines instead of holistic long-term masterplans. For tasks with solutions rather found in participation and cooperation than in top-down planning hierarchies. In places rather located at the faceless urban fringe than representative central areas. In these mentioned cases the practical implementation of metabolism-based design currently either remains at the building scale (green housing industry) or the metropolitan scale (material flow analysis), but so far it has not succeeded in addressing the in-between level - the scale of the everyday urban project. In order to tackle this gap and to focus on the practical relevance of the urban metabolism model, the work was kick-started with an ad-hoc participation at the ‘Schinkel design competition’. The testing of initial ideas at a real spatial setting at the urban fringe of Berlin set an opportunity of filtering out the practical feasible approaches and raising the relevant research questions. Based on these insights the thesis promotes the implementation of a performance-based zoning-method, which guides through a set of operations the metabolic and built-up transformation of the existing urban structure. It utilizes the urgently needed developments as a tool for a metabolic complementary densification. A systemic approach which derives the requirements for the future use of the individual building plot from the goal of creating neighbourhoods with metabolic complementary consumption and production patterns. Each new intervention fulfils the general need for built-up densification, while its functional and spatial design is adjusted to the specific metabolic requirements of its surrounding. Instead of supporting an accumulation of several individual ‘green projects’, the method implements a synchronized network by utilizing each building plot as a part of collective energy, water and food systems. By that the concept creates a synthesis between the two current urban challenges of the area: On the one hand it addresses, as a consequence of the ongoing urbanization process, the demand for new living, working and recreation spaces. And on the other hand it faces, as a reaction to climate change and global resource scarcity, the need for a metropolitan balance between the production and consumption of energy, water and food. While identifying the urgent need for transformation in order to adjust the urban fringe to the environmental challenges of the 21st century, the work serves as a contribution to the ongoing discourse about potential qualification methods regarding the existing built-up structure at the city’s edge. Furthermore the thesis aims to reinforce the necessary exchange between scientist, architects and urban planners in order to forward the discourse about the practical application of the urban metabolism studies in urban design. An exchange which has to be addressed sooner rather than later, because the global trends of urbanization, resource scarcity and climate change will not excuse a further postponing of this challenge.