This compilation showcases urban design approaches to revalue existing infrastructures. Participants of the studio-class at Biberach School of Architecture re-interpret the environment of selected metro-stations in the Stuttgart Region, pointing at resting potentials to relieve an overheated housing market. 

There is an extensive and functional network of public transport in place in the Stuttgart Region. It has been installed as an everyday utility taken for granted, maintained and financed. To a large extend its potentials to guide, let alone drive, truly effective compact and integrated settlement have remained unutilized, though. Quite a number of stations sit on the edge or in-between the small and medium sized towns they are built to serve, lateral to main local attractions, dividing neighbourhoods, getting in the way of rather than connecting peoples’ paths. These “hubs”, are supposed to service a regional catchment area of 4 Mio people, economically one of the nation’s most stable and best performers. Yet, their immediate surroundings are neglected, easily accessible localities offer little attractiveness, little density, little diversity and poor qualities of public spaces. At the same time, individual municipalities are still relying on external development, increasing the settlement area along the fringes and at the expense of the landscape. This detached approach misunderstands the obligation for careful land-use expressed in principal in European law. It exacerbates the region’s traffic problems and wasteful sprawling. The aim of the project is to develop dense mixed-use and green urban quarters, new living and production areas within a radius of 500m within walking distance of the existing hubs, that make responsible use of the existing public transport structures and pool development options on a metropolitan scale.