DYNAMIC BORDER LANDSCAPES IN EUROPe
A new round of discussions on European integration begins between rigid borderlines and vibrant border landscapes: On the one hand, the border between nation states is primarily interpreted as an administrative and restrictive boundary with new border fortifications within the context of global migration flows. On the other hand, the territorial borders are understood as economic spaces and habitats in order to encourage the convergence of cross-border city networks and regions, landscapes and cultural spaces at a political level. From an individual perspective, the networked society opposes this effort, virtually independently of national borders to a great extent, fluctuating between a retreat to the private sphere and a rebellious civil society reorganizing itself into urban and regional movements and units. Therefore, in addition to border issues impacting national frontier regions, the processes behind establishing new borders and dissolving existing ones epitomize urban and rural environments across all of Europe. Planning and design issues manifest within this field of tension for the Europe of the future in transnational everyday places, city districts and regions.
These border landscapes serve as the venues for negotiating and defining European urban development policies. Within the framework of a summer school, the universities open a critical debate regarding border spaces and topics related to future urban development in Europe. Up-and-coming planners and designers scrutinize prescribed interpretations of territorial lines, describe the dynamics of transition zones within cities and regions, and search for new perspectives on people-friendly development in Europe. The focus of the borderline city is shifting towards spatial phenomena and forms of cooperation along border landscapes. More than ever, the evolution and transformation of habitats, from the architecture to the region, needs to be mapped out in order to describe the dialectics and concurrence of dynamic developments contextualized on different scales. This is the only manner in which necessary actions of particular interest from a planning and design perspective can be introduced into the debate on the further development of European integration and the Leipzig Charter. For that reason, Summer School 2020 will be devoted to the places that are most impacted by border processes:
Isolated and borderless locations and districts
Cross-border urban spaces that galvanize inspiration and
innovation at the local level
Transborder urban spaces and landscapes confronted with conflicting
developments at the regional level
Interregional spaces for cooperation and city networks with
trend-setting urban development targets
Everyday processes behind establishing and dissolving borders
Social coexistence is not just structured based on national borders. The dissolution of spatial and temporal borders is steadily becoming more visible and palpable in European villages, cities and regions in particular. Greater flexibility and digitalization in commonplace activities such as work, consumption, leisure and mobility are leading to a growing disintegration of collective time structures, thus altering the rhythms of our cities. (cf. Pohl 2009) As a consequence of approximating institutional frameworks and technological advancement, the functional and infrastructural requirements for a city are changing. At the same time, the boundaries between the spheres of work and private life are becoming progressively blurred, which will have additional repercussions for the functional relationships in urban spaces and how they are organized in the future. The digitalization of work is creating greater physical independence from the place employment, making it necessary to renegotiate mobility and location issues. Flexible and borderless work is changing everyday life in the city. Spatial, temporal and functional change processes must not be considered separately but instead are rife with parallels and interdependencies.