Case Studies  The Karolinenviertel Case in Hamburg - St. Pauli

Visions for the future

Today the Karlolinenviertel can be viewed as an unconventional, urban development engine. It belongs to the few multi-functional neighbourhoods in Hamburg which above all create the atmosphere of real metropolitan-life. Here, in this relatively dense area, you can find an agglomeration of social, cultural and economic trends and tendencies of the society, some times even up to a critical point. However, you can only speculate about the area’s future since it depends on many external factors which only in part can be influenced by the neighbourhood itself, respectively with means of urban regeneration. Nevertheless, the following assumptions about future developments shall be made:

The conversion of the redevelopment aims – adjustment of the building structure to social, hygienic, economic and cultural demands, improvement of economic structure, adjustment of urban building structure to demands of environmental conservation, demands to healthy living and working conditions of the inhabitants and the development of the population, conservation, regeneration and further development of the neighbourhood character, consequently lead to a revaluation of the neighbourhood with an inevitably increase in rental prices, increase of the goods offered in the neighbourhood and changes within the population structure. These changes controlled by the redevelopment advisory board, area manager, public administration and politics will give impulses for a sustainable development which has to act on its own, without any further public sponsorship after the end of the public funded programme.

On the one hand new commercial spaces will develop and establish and external buying power will be brought into the area. This will lead to new impulses for further development. On the other hand this development together with the expected realisation of self-owned apartments will promote a revaluation process which always means driving out certain commercial units and inhabitant groups. Real estate agencies predict a further rise of commercial / apartment rental prices due to increasing demands, which won’t be affordable any more for low-income households.

The identification of inhabitants and entrepreneurs with their neighbourhood will probably decline since more and more event- and trend-orientated people and branches will settle down in the area. These newcomers will use the neighbourhood more as a hip and fancy scenery and a lasting identification with the location will more likely decrease. This development combined with the problem of inhabitants who are leaving the neighbourhood because they feel unable to cope with the existing problems and challenges, can lead to a tendency where increasingly people will move into the neighbourhood which only ‘consume the location’ with its offers but do not intend to live here permanently.

The regeneration concept steps up to this trend with a high share of public funded family oriented living space as well as the extension of social and leisure time orientated infrastructure facilities. The future will show whether this concept under participation of the local activists as well as the process orientated regeneration procedure will offer a basis for future developments.

A standardised or stipulated vision for the time after the regeneration procedure does not exist. However, the major objective of the regeneration concept is the conservation of the neighbourhood as an inner-city living and working location in the future. The individual visions or aims have to be differentiated subject to the different groups of protagonists. For example the City of Hamburg and the district Hamburg-Mitte have in part different objectives than the people in the neighbourhood. In addition the objectives of the inhabitants differ from those of the entrepreneurs. There are for example huge differences in the discussion about the subject ‘revaluation and gentrification’ of the area.

Different visions also exist for the neighbourhood in connection with the development of the exhibition centre which will be realised in coming years in close and direct neighbourhood to the Karolinenviertel (new building of exhibition halls as well as extension of areas which will be used by the exhibition centre). The city of Hamburg is mainly interested in an attractive and functional inner city exhibition-location. The inhabitants of the district fear further burden due to heavy traffic and streams of visitors.

Also the lacking attractiveness for families, respectively households with children is an important factor for the future of the neighbourhood. The reasons for this are manifold and only partially neighbourhood specific. The general trend of sub-urbanisation is also in this neighbourhood situation responsible for such development, for example attractive leisure time offers, open spaces or the traffic and garbage situation. One consequence of this development can already be seen today in the decline of school registrations which will lead to imminent shut-downs of schools in the future.

2.3. Change of the regeneration process    2.5. Losers and winners of the regeneration process