Green Social Hub. An urban development strategy for the post-pandemic recovery. Case Study: Driescher Hof, Aachen/Germany

A project by Seher Ulusoy, Ane de Souza, Christiane Gerwenat, and Parissa Mohammadi

Integrated Project I

Lecturers: Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Christa Reicher, Dr. ir. Ceren Sezer

summer semester 2021

In this project, the sections of Background, Theory, Analysis, Vision and Tools are conducted by Ane de Souza, Christiane Gerwenat, Parissa Mohammadi and Seher Ulusoy. Poster ‘Application’ represents the intervention designed by Seher Ulusoy.

Driescher Hof (DH)/Aachen is under the transformation discussion due to its special socio-economic problem, concentration of poverty and is called as “District of Special Challenge” (P1).

The project explores the role of comfortable outdoor public spaces on social resilience in DH. Attention taking shade is to create positive reflections on human-environment to benefit from the comfortable public spaces where people tend to experience further. By this aim, the project manipulates the built environment to change the perception of climate. Comfortable outdoor spaces are intended to back the social resilience of DH community through connection and communication. More auxiliary for the pandemic, comfortable spaces support wellbeing, strengthen the dialog among individuals, and more resilient to overcome crisis (P2).

Analysis shows the low income, social groups segregation, lack of amenities are the main issues that cause inactivation of public spaces, less contact among residents, and low community engagement (P3).

The Vision ‘Green Social Hub’ aims at higher interaction and creating sustainable/resilient communities to recover the impact of crisis such as the pandemic, also local issues like poverty and segregation. The indicator clusters of urban climate are applied as urban morphology, Green&Blue Infrastructure at Park Stettiner which provides socializing space mainly for residents (P4).

Three intervention clusters help increase climate comfort in macro scales and energize the use of public spaces with new facilities, such as new playground equipment and water effects. Based on the thematic background and the main findings from the analysis, the Green Social Hub argues an urban development strategy for a post-pandemic recovery (P5).