Piazza Spinelli

How can city planners of the green building transition rethink and reuse what already exists, rather than perpetually looking for something new? What planning cultures does an open society need? What points of collaboration are missing between city officials and local stakeholders? This book highlights Mannheim-Käfertal as a compelling case study to explore these questions, given its exceptional transformation driven by the conversion of former military sites in the neighborhood. Through an experimental process, diverse stakeholders are working to establish a social and green center that combines old and new. Cross-agency partnerships, urban development, the creation of public spaces, and interventions at a 1:1 scale are being employed as part of a cooperative strategy for revitalizing existing urban spaces. Piazza Spinelli demonstrates how complex urban environments can be reimagined, developed, and anchored in the local community.

Sally Below is an urban theorist, curator, and consultant to government departments, communities, and institutions. She leads the practice sbca and has initiated numerous urban development and dialogue projects. Her work focuses on the design of sustainable urban transformation processes, research on cities and society, and public space interventions. Christopher Dell is an urban planning and architecture theorist and composer. He has served as a professor in urban design studies at HafenCity University Hamburg, TU Munich, and Berlin University of the Arts. He currently heads the Institute for Improvisation Technology (IFIT) in Berlin. From 2022 to 2023, he held a Bundesatelier für Architektur fellowship at the Cité Internationale in Paris.