Welcome City: Refugees in Three German Cities Neis, Hans Joachim; Meier, Briana; Furukawazono, Tomoki
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www.ssoar.info Welcome City: Refugees in Three German Cities Neis, Hans Joachim; Meier, Briana; Furukawazono, Tomoki Veröffentlichungsversion / Published Version Zeitschriftenartikel / journal article Empfohlene Zitierung / Suggested Citation: Neis, H. J., Meier, B., & Furukawazono, T. (2018). Welcome City: Refugees in Three German Cities. Urban Planning, 3(4), 101-115. https://doi.org/10.17645/up.v3i4.1668 Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Dieser Text wird unter einer CC BY Lizenz (Namensnennung) zur This document is made available under a CC BY Licence Verfügung gestellt. Nähere Auskünfte zu den CC-Lizenzen finden (Attribution). For more Information see: Sie hier: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.de Urban Planning (ISSN: 2183–7635) 2018, Volume 3, Issue 4, Pages 101–115 DOI: 10.17645/up.v3i4.1668 Article Welcome City: Refugees in Three German Cities Hans Joachim Neis *, Briana Meier and Tomoki Furukawazono Portland Urban Architecture Research Laboratory (PUARL), University of Oregon, Portland, UO 97209, USA; E-Mails: [email protected] (H.J.N.), [email protected] (B.M.), [email protected] (T.F.) * Corresponding author Submitted: 1 July 2018 | Accepted: 5 September 2018 | Published: 20 December 2018 Abstract Since late 2015, the authors have studied the refugee crisis in Europe. In this article, we analyze local factors that are significant for urban planning to include in an integration plan through case studies in three cities in Germany. We have chosen to study Germany because of the country’s touted Willkommen Kultur (welcome culture), which was prompted in large part by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s “Flüchtlinge Willkommen” (“refugees welcome”) stance. Now, three years af- ter Chancellor Merkel’s declaration to the world, although international and national policies set many parameters for refugee integration, responses to the uncertainty of the situation are fundamentally informed by local contexts. Germany has adopted a policy of distributing refugees to communities throughout the country according to the so-called “Königstein Key”, which sets quotas for each state according to economic capacity. We have selected case study cities and a county that are at different scales and regions: Borken in Hessen (13,500 people), Kassel County (200,000), and Essen, a larger city (600,000). Here we investigate the ways in which German citizens and refugees interact and integrate, with a focus on the social-spatial aspects of refugee experiences and the impacts on urban planning policy, urban morphology, building typology, and pattern language formation. Beyond crisis, we are looking at how refugees can and will try to integrate into their host countries, cities, and neighborhoods and start a new life and how host communities respond to refugee arrival. Urban architecture projects for housing and work opportunities that help the process of integration are part of this study. Particularly, in this article, we investigate the reality on the ground of the positive Willkommen Kultur and the high expec- tations and implied promises that were set in 2015 by Chancellor Angela Merkel and German society. Keywords building projects; pattern language; refugee acclimatization; urban design; urban transformation; welcome city; welcome culture Issue This article is part of the issue “European Cities Planning for Asylum”, edited by Frank Eckardt (Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany). © 2018 by the authors; licensee Cogitatio (Lisbon, Portugal). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribu- tion 4.0 International License (CC BY). 1. The Willkommen Kultur (Welcome Culture) and Its of thousands of earlier arrivals, particularly in Germany, Implied Promises on the Ground where more than 300,000 asylum seekers arrived in 2016 alone (Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, 2018a). The United Nations estimates that there are about These forced migrants joined the nearly one million who 250 million migrants in the world, of which more than arrived in Germany in 2015, many still in limbo await- 65 million people are refugees (United Nations, 2015). ing asylum approval or appeals. In Europe and in the This means that every two seconds another person is dis- United States, migration issues are divisive and at the placed by war, violence, and persecution (United Nations fore of public debate and protest. How the world re- High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR], 2018). Al- sponds to this global crisis will arguably impact the tra- though the rate of refugee arrivals in Europe has slowed jectory of peace and well-being on this planet for gener- since 2015, newcomers continue to join the hundreds ations to come. Urban Planning, 2018, Volume 3, Issue 4, Pages 101–115 101 In 2015, in response to the ongoing conflict and and implied promises that were set in 2015. Our dis- humanitarian crisis in Syria, German Chancellor Angela cussion and findings are drawn from field research con- Merkel welcomed refugees into Germany with a wide- ducted by the authors in Germany in August 2016, as open door to help them in a direct and humanistic well as preliminary visits undertaken by author Dr. Neis way. At the time she calmed down the concerns of the in December 2015 and March 2016, as well as follow-up German people with the now famous expression “Wir visits in December 2016, in the spring of 2017, and in the schaffen das!” (“We will manage that!”; Merkel, 2015). summer of 2018. Merkel’s Willkommen policy has generated a large num- Here we refer to the people who arrive in Germany ber of positive reactions and activities in Germany at all in response to Chancellor Merkel’s Willkommen policy administrative levels of federal, state, county, and munic- as refugees; we recognize that many distinctions can be ipality, as well as an overall positive response by civil soci- drawn between categories of migrants, refugees, asylum ety with its social, religious, and private associations and seekers, and those whose asylum has been denied and organizations, families, and individual citizens. Initially, who are now living illegally in a host country. Our choice a Willkommen Kultur emerged in communities through- to use the term refugee is an effort to acknowledge that out Germany. Communities took on the role of “arrival whether circumstances are solely political, largely eco- city” (Saunders, 2010), and collectively generated an at- nomic, or a mix of many factors, the majority of peo- mosphere of “making Heimat” (Figure 1). “Heimat” is a ple arriving have been in some way forcibly displaced meaningful German term that describes the place for from their home countries and are in a situation in which one’s own life, feeling, well-being, and belonging, embed- they must rely in some way on the host country for help ded in the history and community to which one belongs in reestablishing their lives. To illustrate, in our visit to (Schmal, Elser, & Scheuermann, 2016). In 2018, help Germany in 2016, when asked if he had a sense of how and support continues in a pragmatic fashion after three people then living in refugee camps felt about being re- more years of up and down events and experiences. ferred to as refugees, one Syrian collaborator responded The American-based Portland Urban Architecture with the simple statement: “They have no other word Research Lab (PUARL) at the University of Oregon has with which to call themselves”. begun preliminary research by developing a set of focal Our research focuses on the ways in which the invi- areas situated within the broader context of this inter- tation for refugees to come to Germany is playing out in national crisis. These focal topics are also referred to as communities in regard to primary immediate needs for building blocks within this larger study of refugee escape, refugees and in regard to the initial impacts on the Ger- assimilation, integration, and return to original home man citizens and social-spatial aspects of German com- country. Initial versions of this research were presented munities. To this end, we selected three German cities at the PUARL Conference in San Francisco in 2016, at the that serve as case studies: the small town of Borken in ISUF Conference Valencia in 2017, and at the PURPLSOC the state of Hessen, the larger city and county of Kassel, Conference in Krems in 2017. and the much larger city of Essen (see Table 1). In this article, we investigate the local experiences Our initial research included informal interviews of the Willkommen Kultur and the high expectations with German officials at various levels. Given Dr. Neis’ Figure 1. Syrian refugees reach Munich with trains from Austria on Sunday, 6 September 2015. ©UNHCR/Gordon Welters. Urban Planning, 2018, Volume 3, Issue 4, Pages 101–115 102 Table 1. Case study cities and data. Case Cities Population Region Refugees in 2016 Borken 13,500 Central Germany 200 Kassel County 200,000 Central Germany 1,500 Essen 600,000 Western Germany 20,000 German citizenship and wide network of contacts in sions that illustrate how these three communities are Germany, we were also able to meet with a number working to address the more immediate, basic needs of of German citizens working in the private and volunteer refugees. Specifically, we examine the following factors sectors, as well as university faculty members. Professor in each of the three cities or county: a. overall support Alexander Schmidt and doctoral candidates at the Uni- structure for refugees, b. refugee shelter and housing, versity of Duisburg Essen provided a number of meet- c. communication and acclimatization, d. work opportu- ings and tours of refugee facilities in Essen, and they nities for refugees, and e. the formal, legal asylum ap- also shared the final report from a masters’ degree plan- plication process and structure. We end the article with ning seminar (Wehling et al., 2015).