URBS PANDENS is funded by the European Commission (Contract No. EVK-CT-2001-0052) and carried out by a consortium of nine partners in seven European countries.
Leipzig - Germany
The region
Together with the city of Halle (population around 270.000), Leipzig (population around 500.000) is the heart of an extended industrialised region in Central Europe, which is characterised by a relatively high population density (see a satellite image of the the region).
As everywhere in the former GDR, the economic and societal transformation of the 1990s imposed heavy structural changes on the region. Today, industry is no longer the region's leading economic force, but the service sector has by no means made up for the tremendous loss of industrial workplace. Thus, the Leipzig/Halle region has to be seen as economically underdeveloped compared to the German and also the EU's average. On the other hand, it belongs to the most advantaged areas within the German 'New Laender'. Recently, there have been some successful efforts to attract big companies to the region which have opened up industrial plants; in the north of Leipzig has been built a huge new exhibition centre; and nearby, in the town of Schkeuditz, situated between Leipzig and Halle, we find a competitive international airport.
The environmental situation in the region is still shaped by the industrialisation politics of the first half of the last century, in particular the opencast mining. In times of the GDR the region had one of the most (if not the most) heavily impacted landscapes in Germany. Since 1990, however, the region's environmental situation has improved enormously.
The city
Since the late middle ages Leipzig held a famous position amongst the German cities. Between the 16th and the 18th century this was mainly due to the Leipzig fair and the cities function as a Central European centre of trade. Moreover, Leipzig was famous for its crafts, its culture and its university. In the second half of the 19th century in the course of industrialisation Leipzig was able to further improve its position amongst the leading German cities, becoming the fourth city of today's Germany as to the number of inhabitants. From then on Leipzig was also an industrial centre, in particular in branches such as machinery, plants, printing, and the metal and textile industries; besides Leipzig was particularly important as a centre of publishing business.
Since the 1920s Leipzig was on its way to becoming a modern service metropolis. Many financial institutes and head offices of large companies based themselves here and the city's economy became more and more integrated into the international market. Around 1930, the population of Leipzig had reached its maximum with around three quarters of a million (living in an administrative area of around 170 sq km).
As almost every German city, Leipzig was badly hurt by the bombings of the second world war; important parts of the infrastructure were destroyed, but, unlike Dresden, the city's general structure by and large could be conserved. After 1945 many companies which had survived the war moved into what later became the Federal Republic. So, Leipzig saw an exodus of many of its headquarters, a process that was aggravated by the following dismantling and taking apart of industrial plants by the Soviets. Thus, Leipzig couldn't fully reestablish its former position, though in many respects the city could keep or regain its urban centrality and became a centre of fare and trade, insurance business, and publishing in the GDR; also, the industrial basis of the city was restored. The latter, however, remained by and large unconnected to the region's leading economic sectors, chemistry and energy, that were more privileged by the authorities of central economic planning, and so the industry in Leipzig city became more and more outdated (making it highly uncompetitive i.e. unattractive for taking over after 1990). Against this background, before 1990 there was no suburbanisation.
After the war the population of Leipzig never reached the former level and, furthermore, was in decline since the early 1960s. By 1989 Leipzig had about 540.000 inhabitants. Since the beginning of the 1970s the innercity districts began to empty due to the move of people into the newly erected housing estates on the periphery, but 'real' residential suburbanisation to the detriment of the core city was more of less unknown. Within the last two decades of the GDR Leipzig more and more became a 'notorious' example for the decay of residential areas and the outdated nature of urban infrastructure (which eventually turned out to be one important reason for the upheaval of 1989, starting from Leipzig).
Within the last decade Leipzig experienced a period of 'thorough' deindustrialisation. The number of industrial work places in Leipzig decreased from about 100.000 in 1989 to approximately 10.000 in 2002. In connection with this economic transformation, another burden for the city and its further development comes from the fact that a tremendous amount of people have left it since 1989. Leipzig has lost almost one fifth of its inhabitants within less than ten years; approximately half of this loss was due to migration into the - economically more prosperous - 'Old Laender'; the other half, however, was due to suburbanisation i.e. urban sprawl! This constellation lent Leipzig the peculiar character of a massively sprawling though generally dwindling urban region.Urban Sprawl
The 1990s saw Leipzig among Germany's leading cities as to the absolute numbers of people and facilities moving from the city into the suburban realm. The city suffered from a drop of population by more than 20 % in less than ten years. The effects of this dynamics could now be observed all around the former administrative boundaries of the city which meanwhile have been extended in order to make up for the negative effects of suburbanisation on the core city: New residential 'parks', industrial estates and shopping malls have changed the landscapes appearance considerably (see a map of the sectors of urban sprawl evolved in the Leipzig region).
Recently we can observe an astounding decrease of the dynamics of suburbanisation and sprawl - which virtually seem to have almost converted into their opposite. Though it might be too early to declare the recent processes of urban sprawl in Leipzig to be over, for the moment, these processes have almost faded away. All in all the recent processes of urban sprawl (in Leipzig and elsewhere) to large parts seem to be caused by specific conditions which are at least in parts unique.
