HafenCity Hamburg

The contemporary city requires new strategic development guidelines that tend to curb urban sprawl, limiting the use of land, regenerating the existing reversing the processes of abandonment and decay, acting on the urban voids and disused structures. The sustainable re-use of parts of the city now abandoned, is an important opportunity for the development of the city itself. Currently in Europe the largest urban regeneration operation is underway in Hamburg, Germany. The city, situated on the river Elbe, is the second most populous city in Germany after Berlin. The main port of northern Europe, had until the beginning of the nineties a development similar to that of other large European cities, spreading and incorporating several neighboring villages. The Hanseatic capital has taken a green turning in urban development policies, redeveloping brownfield sites and the most degraded neighborhoods, strengthening the network of public transport, of bike lanes, increasing green spaces open to the citizens, until you obtain, in 2011, the title of European Green Capital from the European Commission. HafenCity, this is the name of a great intervention of urban regeneration of a vast abandoned dockland area of 155 hectares in Hamburg. The project is the result of a complex process of consultation which was attended by planners, architects, institutions, political parties, universities, artists, experts in sustainability, energy management, urban traffic and various associations.