Grün im städtischen Alltag

Abstract

Green spaces and urban space are an unlikely couple. In the urban context, green areas are subordinated to functional aspects of the city like infrastructure and housing. Nevertheless, there seems to be a consensus about the relevance of green spaces for wellbeing. By stressing this relevance, central traits of urban green often stay unquestioned. In what instance does urban green get relevant or not in urban everyday life? The research investigates the everyday perception and appropriation of urban green. Further, it conceptualises the utilization of these investigations in spatial planning. In a phenomenological perspective, people appropriate urban green by the way they experience it with their senses. At the same time, the appropriation is led by social concepts that define a common understanding of urban green. This two dimensions in which urban green is constituted can be joined by focussing on social practices. Referring to theory of social practices the relevance of urban green is an outcome of doings and sayings, in which urban green becomes concrete. These doings and sayings follow socially learned, shared orientation of making sense of social reality. According to this orientation, urban green gets relevant in a distinct way. For identifying this relevance, it can be asked how urban green appears in the social reality of different groups of people. While the research is explicitly focussing on the context of urban of everyday life the relevance of urban green is conceptualised as an outcome of social productions of urban space according to LEFÈBVRE (1974). Qualitative empirical studies in the cities of Dortmund and Kiel illustrate how urban green is simultaneously perceived, conceived and lived. The way urban green is conceived is explicated in how people argument about space during a guided interview. How urban green is perceived is investigated by walking interviews. Here the researcher follows citizens on their daily routes while they describe their perception of the environment. The way urban green is experienced is documented by a camera, which the interviewees use during the walking interview. As a result eight modes can be abstracted which describe how urban green becomes relevant in everyday life. In the first mode, urban green is an explicit matter of daily doing while in a most contrasting mode urban green not explicitly perceived. Here the focus lies on doing certain activities in an efficient way. At the same time, urban green is conceptualised as a beautiful or convenient entity in the first mode, while in the contrasting mode it is seen as a creature, which is claimed to be respected by citizens. Along with this duality, urban green is understood as accessories for beautifying the environment or as a part of living nature. Beside that, in the other modes urban green is experienced as a spatial-temporal setting, which enables a liberation of social control or social commitments. Furthermore urban green underlines an impression of a save and good neighbourhood. For making these findings fruitful for questions of local planning it is highlighted how the actors of urban planning can refer to the empirically identified modes to enable a participatory way of city development. Here the identified modes give an orientation for practices of place-making in spatial planning.