EAT.COM
SHRINKING CITY

Halle / Leipzig

ASSIGNMENT

Urban Competition

collaboration

with Wolfgang Aichner

completion

2003

TASK

Improve the region's viability as a business location by creating jobs and training vacancies for young people at low capital investment; facilitate production of commodities; and keep costs of living low.

Give Halle/Leipzig an uniqueness, an image which would make the region famous and would attract people worldwide. Improve the living conditions within the cities to prevent people from leaving for the periphery, by transforming urban space. Green spaces and gardens in urban areas, which would generate deceleration instead of acceleration. Ensure living conditions are more family-friendly and healthy. This would establish an attractive urban mesh of living, working, commercial, ecological and recreational space. Link people emotionally to the city by appealing to their sense of responsibility towards urban "wastespaces". Allow the acquisition of possession of leasehold property.

PROPOSAL: EAT®

The proposal seeks to reuse and appropriate existing abandoned and derelict urban “wastespaces.” It imagines the people themselves as the thriving force of interventions; urban reconfiguration and urban planning as a non-governmental activity; and small scale businesses being self-governed and self-operating. We propose EAT® as a strategy which turns the shrinking city phenomenon into a controlled metamorphoses with economic, environmental, and social benefits for the region.

Economic Benefits:
The proposal introduces an innovative live-work idea to the region: market gardens and fish farms are positioned in empty multi-storey high rise buildings and in the derelict buildings. It is estimated that these gardens can provide 70% of the required fruit and vegetables for the city’s residents.* The implementation of EAT® businesses would require only low capital investment. We imagine the development of urban market gardens of sufficient size to be economically viable as a business proposition for at least one or two persons. Economic urban agriculture is creating jobs and training vacancies for young people. The relationship of urban agriculture with low income groups is particularly positive. It enhances well-being for low-income families and pensioners as they have better access to healthy food and income.
*Within Europe a plot of approximately 100m² will supply all of the annual fruit and vegetable requirements of an individual [A..Vilijoen, A.Tardieu, 1998]

Ecological benefits:
Urban regeneration zones are considered foremost to be ecological regeneration zones. Vacant and waste spaces are transformed into an urban landscape which is edible. This is productive space, which at the same time is enhancing the environment for living and from an ecological point of view increases biodiversity within an urban surrounding, rather than diminishing it. Waste is food, while sewage and garbage are prime inputs into food production. EAT® turns the city into an ecologically closed-loop system. While urban agriculture should not be expected to provide autonomy for fruit and vegetable requirements of a whole region, it could make a significant contribution to reducing the city’s ecological footprint.

Social benefits:
Consumers would be in close contact with the producers of the food and the food source. Urban families would be reintegrated with nature. The transformation of “wastespace” into green space will improve the recreational and aesthetic values of the city. Gardens within empty and derelict buildings would make living space in the adjacent houses more attractive as there would be the possibility to create garden flats on every storey.

PROTAGONISTS

EAT® is a cooperative of local people who devote themselves to the urban agriculture movement. This means they privately or commercially produce, proceed with and promote ecologically viable agricultural products. EAT® comprises of commercial and private market gardens, fish farms, food processing facilities, drug manufacturers, green-grocers and restaurants. The agricultural faculty of the Martin-Luther University Halle/ Wittenberg is engaged with research projects on urban agriculture technology. The implementation of facilities in derelict “wastespaces” is backed by the government with ICHAG loans. For planning and tax purposes co-operatives; "Bürgerstadt-AGs", would be able to implement urban-agricultural projects on a large scale. Housing associations/ house owners of empty buildings would be freed of the maintenance costs as they would be taken over by the EAT® cooperative. In the long term the city would provide basic legal assistance which would enable people to implement urban businesses in “wastespaces”. Yearlong unused flats and buildings could be legally dispossessed. Tax concessions would drive housing associations to sell or rent out their estates, if necessary only temporarily, to economically and ecologically viable projects, at a low price. Tax concessions which would drive people to the suburbs would have to be abolished, in favour of tax policies which would encourage economically and ecologically viable investments within the urban city fabric. The city would be in charge of designing building/ areas suitable for urban agriculture and would legislatively control the redesigning of the urban space.

STRATEGY

The first stage of the project would be a wide spread promotion campaign, financed by the "Ministerium für Aufbau Ost" which would promote EAT® regionally and nationally. It would address people from Halle/ Leipzig region who would be interested in engaging in the project and setting up EAT® businesses. Along with the pioneering protagonists, we hope to find housing associations / house owners to let us use their derelict buildings in order to create a prototype, which would give an idea of future development.