Great Reset - Innovations in Urban Planning, Crisis as Catalyst?

Elena Schirnding de Almeida, 2020-2025

Ongoing climate change and rapid urbanization worldwide have shifted the question about urban change processes to the center of political attention.  The adoption of the 2030 Agenda by the United Nations means that cities all over the world have committed themselves to the paradigm of Sustainable Development. Taking for granted this unifying principle, the research project asks the questions: How can cities get the job done on a local level? How do local, historic, political, and administrative circumstances determine the urgently needed urban change processes? How does innovation intersect with urban design practices? In 2020 one could observe rapid and unexpected changes in urban spaces, such as “Pop-Up Bike Lanes” and “Shani gardens” (sidewalk seating for restaurants) - projects that were discussed for years, but never realized. This is followed by the question of whether we can learn something from the current Covid-19 crisis that could serve as a profound strategy to design cities in the 21^st century.

Elena Schirnding de Almeida is an Architect and Urban Planner, currently leading the Public Planning Lab at the Professorship of Urban Design at TUM. She started her research project in 2020 under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Benedikt Boucsein.

“IN BETWEEN. Exploring hybrid planning for redeveloping informal settlements in the mumbai metropolis.”

Ayesha Müller-Wolfertshofer, 2020-2025

Informal settlements, slums, favelas, gecekondus, barrios or townships, part of cities across the globe, are an immediate response to the lack of affordable housing in them. Urbanization in the search for economic, social or political improvement has led to a densely populated urban fabric where the common man struggles to find a home in real-estate markets driven by neo-liberal policies. Citizens are forced to build tenements on vacant plots of land without authorisation, often lacking electricity and basic sanitation. These settlements become a base for the underprivileged and alienated, sheltering people In-Between regulations, jobs and housing, as they attempt to improve their status.

Mumbai is presented as a case study for understanding the context of informal settlements, where participatory planning methods will be studied to integrate top-down and bottom-up initiatives into the redevelopment process. Current ‘slum-redevelopment’ projects primarily take into consideration residential requirements of informal communities, without providing adequate spaces for economic or public services. This dissertation project explores mixed-use hybrid buildings as a means of combining Mumbai’s housing needs with the individual and community requirements of inhabitants.

Ayesha Müller-Wolfertshofer completed her Bachelor in Architecture at Vidyavardhan’s IDEA, Institute of Design Environment and Architecture, in India between 2010 and 2015. At the Munich University of Applied Sciences she completed her M.A. in Architecture with a specialization in Urban Planning from 2015 to 2017. Ayesha has worked in various architectural and urban planning firms since she began her studies and is an architect under the Bayerische Architektenkammer since June 2020. In July 2020 she officially began her thesis at the Technical University Munich under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Benedikt Boucsein and in collaboration with her Mentor, Hussain Indorewala, from the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture and Environmental Studies in Mumbai.