My vantage of Cottbus (pictures and explanations)

Old and New-Acupuncture Infill at it's best.

For this post, I have inserted pretty much all of the pictures I have taken of Cottbus since I arrived in the beginning of August (2011).  I don't really like taking pictures, because I don't like carrying a camera, so I walked around my neighborhood one afternoon with the intention of taking pictures of cool buildings and streets I had seen.  There really is a lot more to see than what I have here.  There is a river and an extensive biking route.  There is an old chateau on the edge of town with an expansive garden and walking route called Branitzer Park.   There is an historic district with parts of the medieval wall intact.  There are lots of cool little alleys and architectural curiosities all over!  But, those pictures aren't going to be on this post.  This post just highlights some interesting views from my neighborhood, in this small town.

The picture above was taken from my street, Karl-Liebknecht Straße.  I read once about an interesting development Infill method which allows remaining/standing buildings to survive among new development.  I believe, the need to build anew must resist the desire to demolish an entire block to build a whole area of new buildings.  Above you can see three row-houses.  All three are different in time built, architectural style and function!  I think the one on the right is a law-office, the one in the middle is residential (of course--anyone would want to live in this one, right?) and the one on the left is an architecture studio.  Such a great way to preserve place by replacing what was lost, but not replacing what remains.  But then I wonder, what was the fate of the buildings here before?

In all likelihood, these new buildings replaced row houses over 100 years old, which were dilapidated due to neglect during the GDR (German Democratic Repulic/ aka East Germany).  Did they need to be torn down?  Whose choice was that?  Before the wall came down in Germany, East German urban planners made it nearly impossible for normal citizens to gain the financial resources or investment tools to maintain older buildings.  Many citizens saw the need to battle the city and her wrecking-ball type of urban planning.  Despite this, not everything was saved from demolition and "Re-Development".  Lots of Le-Corbusier type buildings, tower in the park-type buildings, were built to replace the older street pattern of row houses common in Europe everywhere.   I will try to take a picture of one of these buildings soon.

Demolished lots, previously row houses, now recycled for industrial space

Here you can see the vast emptiness that has ensued after whatever urban decay or demolition was permitted.  These empty lots are very common in Cottbus.  However, it isn't entirely a loss because lots of smaller start-ups, smaller businesses and small manufacturing companies profit from the low-rent and use the buildings for their own purposes.

I haven't really experienced any visible zoning patterns in most of Cottbus.  For the most part I see industry, residential and other economic activities going on all at once side by side.

For example, we live in a building which is partly residential, partly small manufacturing offices and also provides space for a chemistry laboratory for the local university.  Across from my window is storage for a paint-ball gun company, an small insurance company office, and an organic food co-op.  In the same area, accessible from the same entrance, are two pizza-delivery companies and a all-women's gym.  At any given time, there is a very strange mix of people wearing either over-alls (blue-collar industry-workers), hippies shopping at the organic grocery store and cafe, geeky university students, young teenagers hanging out at the pizza places (usually drinking a beer outside; it's Germany after all) and middle-aged women going to spinning class or yoga or whatever at the gym.  Talk about diversity!  Then there are the residents.  I think we are the minority though and it is very quiet here in the evening, when everything closes.

Beautiful row-house, still gray until renovation

Another investment opportunity- Row house needed some care

This row house has been renovated and is shares a wall with un-renovated row-houses

To me, a strange building: the Opera House, also under renovation

Row-houses, now looking very loved and no longer neglected, if they ever were.

Appears to be a recent renovation-just finished.

Unique artchitecture, probably Gründerzeit Style, but I'm not sure.

A lonely row house, sitting all by itself. 

 The above row house apparently used to be surrounded by other row houses.  Now it is last remaining house and can't really be called a "Row-House" because the row has disappeared, or was demolished.  What was the history of this street?  How sad, in a way.  Commercial buildings are hidden behind the building and the sign for it is in the right side of the picture.  Mostly parking lots fill the empty lots left behind after the previous buildings.  Not my PREFERRED use for this land, if only becuase it encourages people to drive around instead of bicycling.

Lars told me that there is a new law requiring many stores to offer parking spaces relative to floor space.  I understand this logic, if I assume that people must travel by car.  But, I cannot assume this if I don't want the ensuring consequences: air pollution, demolition of bildings for parking space, etc.  Besides, a lot of people here enjoy the bike paths and it is quicker to get around like that anyway, than to park.  Plus gas for cars and car insurance are super expensive.  So why this law for parking spaces? 

By assuming that people must travel by car, we also have to get rid of valuable real estate to accommodate the possibility of car travel and parking, which is not a necessity, as I just said.  Once we give up real estate for parking though, the demand for real estate goes up if population density stays the same, but we have less space for development/real life use (not car storage).   This is probably essentially a driving mechanism of suburban sprawl.  I wonder if I am right.

Industrial vantage point from the street.

 This is an interesting picture and one of my favorites!! I was standing on the street with some remaining row houses, looking into a side allow, not a street, to take the picture.  I looks as if this is a street, but it doesn't have a street sign, so I don't think it is one.  It just appears to be an entrance to a lot of industrial buildings.  To the left is a building where lamps are manufactured or assembled and below is the store.  To the back appears to be a storage and loading facility for industrial or building materials.  Certainly with all of the renovation and new development going on in Cottbus, this new building economy is thriving, and business profits and tax-revenue are staying in-town, since the businesses appear to be mostly locally-run.  I am glad the residents have found a way to recycle space for industrial purposes as well.  In the US, I rarely saw residential buildings being reused for industrial purposes, but I often saw industrial buildings being reused for residential purposes, as in loft-living.  Where is all the industrial space in the US?

I have been reading in The Battle for Gotham that it is a hard fight for small start-ups and smaller industrial firms with 25-100 to not be zoned out of their industrial areas as the demand for loft-living in northeastern cities grows even trendier each year.

Lausitzer Straße, parallel to my street. 

The Red brick fronts of the row houses on the left face the plaster and brick fronts of the houses on the right in this mixed residential and commercial street.  The street isn't heavily commercial, though there is a bakery, a pet store, a Second-Hand store, a jewelry shop and restaurant on this short block.  The trees are young here, so the initiative to spruce up the aesthetic quality of the street must be a recent one. 

Lars at "Franky's"-the American-Diner style restaurant in the old market square

Although it is hard to see, Lars is holding up a little American flag, which came on top of his burger at this Diner-style restaurant called "Franky's", as in Frank Sinatra.

The love of "American-style" this or that never ceases to bewilder me.  On the one hand, I never feel very far from home because images and cliche's of the US are always at hand.  However, I am also regretful for the residents here because the typical style German-restaurants can be quickly replaced by American-style ones.

On the positive side again, these restaurants aren't chains.  The residents of this town really love American-style restaurants and coffee shops, so they opened them up.  Lars and I have found three such Diners already, equiped with checkered linoleum floors and red leather booths.  Pictures of American celebrities (and presidents, oddly) look down at you from the walls and hung next to the black vinyl of classic rock-n-roll music records, also on the wall, just like in a real-diner, or so I have heard.  I wouldn't even know what a real-American diner should be, since I have never experienced it.  So common an experience in Cottbus doesn't appear to me to be common in America. 

Sometimes I think to myself, wow, I would like to visit this America, which others can recreate.  I guess, I'll only visit it in Germany, where some long-lasting nostalgic remembrance of my cultural heritage has been copied and preserved, for all to experience.

Life's Choices and other thoughts

Lars goes to work everyday and I contemplate what it is I want to spend my days on, generally.  How much income do I want to have (which can also limit our choices of what we want to do professionally) and how important it is to do something of real value to me.  Some people say, make the money, then do something good with it.  Other people (and scientific studies) say, doing something you enjoy makes you better at it, which makes you more marketable and may increase life span. (!)  Well, I'd like to live a long time.  Best case scenario would be that I find something I like that allows me to make a lot of money, live between two countries (which requires a sort of financial freedom) and which is rewarding work for me personally.

So, that brings me to another question: What do I value; what is rewarding?  The obvious list of things to value comes to mind, i.e. family, love, honor.  Then the less obvious list, i.e. beauty and place, equality and justice.  Those are important to me.  Most days, for the last two years, I have thought about the effect of the built environment on our lives; specifically, on the economy, on our social history, on our health, on our mental health, on our personal energy consumption, on our vehicles and buildings' energy consumption. I am consumed by my interest in these topics and would love to work in a related field.

For a long time now, I've been considering whether it is worth it to turn myself into some kind of expert in infrastructure, economics, architecture, real estate, land-use law or planning (combination of them all, but not as lucrative in itself as a profession as any one of them).  I have really struggled with this option.  I could choose one of these and make a good living, possibly have some job security and financial security for myself and my children if I choose anything, which means good money.  When I came back to Germany to live with my husband, Lars, part of my thinking was that it would be a good idea to take advantage of Germany's affordable university programs.  I passed the German-language test, an agency converted my former GPA into the German equivalent, and VOILA! I'm free to sign up for courses.

But what should I study?  Is being an expert in any field a guarantee of professional success in achieving the goal of, say, ending urban sprawl?  The most influential thinkers in the literature on the topic are themselves avant-garde rebels, who reject the establishment and the Experts.

Here's an interesting quote:

The problem with planning is that it has been overtaken by mathematical models--traffic, impact assessment, public costs and so on, discarding common sense and empirical observation."
-Andres Duany

and,

"The pseudoscience of planning seems almost neurotic in its determination to imitate empiric failure and ignore empiric success." -Jane Jacobs

And I want to be a planner, or some expert?  ..... Well, not really!!

It bothers me that destruction can be called "development" and change and preservation can be undervalued.   Demolition under the guise of "urban renewal" projects has been for American and German cities the biggest fiend since WWII.  I am reading a book by Roberta Gratz called "The Battle for Gotham", which reviews the harm done by Development crusades in NYC and the grass roots fight to stop the destructive trend in planning in all American cities.

The trend in planning after WWII has been (and still is in many places in many ways) to hammer and chisel the car-city out of the cities people lived in, which was very pedestrian and of a small-livable scale.  These older businesses made it possible to go to 10 shops in walking distance without getting in a car, so there was no need for a big box-chain store like Wall-Mart.  Wall Mart's only competitor in most of America's cities today is another Wall-Mart type store, a K-Mart, Target, Lowe's whatever.  A small, locally run store can never compete with the prices of a huge international discount supermarket, like those big box Wal-Marts.  But, these small stores continue to exist in city neighborhoods where density reaches a certain number.

This doesn't mean that small towns can't be dense and thereby nurture locally-owned smaller stores, just that it has been easier for planners, developers and everybody else to convert, through zoning ordinances and other mechanisms, the dense urban fabric of human habitation into a car-mobile settlement, not really a city in any classical sense of the word, as far as I can tell, if cities are characterized by commerce and social interaction, and not just by drive-by hello's and big box shopping.

Planners after WWII made it legally possible to change cities and build so speedy automobiles had access in and out of the city, and this was more important than life in the city.  But where will drivers (from out of town) park the cars?  They need space for parking lots too, of course!

There's a racist component to re-zoning for suburban like living, but I won't go into that here, in this post.

The renewal projects resulting in an amazing amount of New Yorkers dislocation from their neighborhoods as the homes and businesses were demolished to make way for highway ramps and tall "towers in a park", (think Le Corbusier).  Fortunately, many of the planning projects were defeated through a very long historical battle between citizens and planners/developers.  Roberta  Gratz gives some startling statistics from her book to describe the effect of the "urban renewal projects".

"Title 1 of the 1949 Housing Act was the primary vehicle for building middle-income housing on cleared land. Projects removed 100,000 people from Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn, and ... created a diaspora of at least twice that number. Site clearance forced out at least 5,000 businesses of all sizes. Municipal experts declared that these losses... were negligible. But in Central and East Harlem, Bedford Stuyvesant, and other minority ghettos, these enterprises nurtures a sizable portion of the black and Hispanic middle class. In other neighborhoods, redevelopments wiped out larger businesses or forced their ruinous shift to other quarters. Job loss as a direct result of redevelopment was between 30,000 and 60,000 in the postwar period. " -Joel Schwartz

"Many poor neighborhoods simply collapsed from the spatial concentration and temporal peaking of these modes of housing destruction. Health areas of the South-Central Bronx, for example, lost 80 per cent of both housing units and population between 1920 and 1980. About 1.3 million white people left New York as conditions deteriorated from housing overcrowding and social disruption. About 0.6 million poor people were displaced and had to move as their homes were destroyed. A total of almost two million people were uprooted, over 10 percent of the population of the entire Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area." 

-Deborah Wallace and Rodrick Wallace in A Plague on your houses.

~~~~~~~
"If the ends don't justify the means, what does?"
"When you operate in an overbuilt metropolis, you have to hack your way through with a meat ax."

- Robert Moses, Master Builder and most influential American City Planer of all time, Democrat and New Deal Development expert.

After reading the last two quotes, I feel angry at Robert Moses, who taught a lot of planners though example and encouragement how to be terrible planners and overstep their jobs.  We live in the shadow of the land-use changes they helped bring about by radically changing the way we finance construction of new buildings, renovations of older buildings, zoning and all sorts of other things.   I feel totally immobilized- I don't want to be one of these experts for fear of doing it wrong.  Just being an expert doesn't mean that you will do good things.  If anything, as an expert, you should always listen to the democratic voice....and try not to screw up too many things.

So I really understand the riddle of it all.  I get it.  I don't want to make changing the political machine my main job.  How would I make money?  Planner have to compromise.  I don't want to compromise.

Also, it is probably boring.  I understand that planning requires an understanding of law above all else, which can be boring and dry.  Planning requires a sort of commitment to a city or place.  You can't be a traveling nomad as I have been.  You have to understand a place truly deeply.

I don't think I want to be a planner.  I might want to be a designer of sorts, or maybe an analyst, but I don't want to push anything on anybody.  And if I do, and fear that side of myself.

But, I do believe that what we need, all over the world, now more than ever, is more of a personal-connection and responsibility for our "places" we visit in our daily lives.

Most of us live in a car culture in American and European suburbs, which keeps us isolated and carries us from Point A to Point B with efficient speed (or so our Transportation Planners assure us), come home to a TV, which only delivers information to us, prepared by other people.

Speaking from my own experience, I have noticed that many of us work in a downtown or some office building and don't have any real personal responsibility or concern for the place we work or the neighborhood the building is in.  I  have experienced so-called "Corporate America", which demands that workers park in parking garages or parking lots, perhaps crossing a parking lot bridge from lot to tower (so as never to set foot on the street unnecessarily), where workers work in a cubicle and have no time for lunch, so there is little time spent in the downtown or office park, except in the cubicle.  Many workers are not connected with the clients except through email or telephone, which makes it easy to care very little about the client.

We need a more democratic society, in which people know their neighbors, and don't just circle around it secluded in a car, isolated from everyone else.  I remember the frustration as a teenager of just wanting to go somewhere, anywhere, but not having anywhere to go because "loitering" was not permitted anywhere in town.  There was no where to go TO, just roads to drive ON.

I understand the internet, telephone, tv, cars, etc. are now ubiquitous and only a a certain naiveté would allow me to hope that we would not embrace it all.  But I don't embrace it all, and I am not unique.  Many productive people I know simply have no time for tv and watch what they want on computers: an activity, which requires a certain amount of user-friendly interaction.  Many people dislike driving cars or can't afford to or are unable to.  Eventually we do get old, can't see much.  Some of us are too young to drive, or some of us are sick and disabled.  We can't ALL be drivers!!  Unless the definition of "ALL" in our culture only means "person with car", as it might, since our form of personal identification is currently equivalent to a driver's license.  In a more civilized country, the sick, old, disabled and young would continue to live normal lives without feeling like they have no freedom of movement because they cannot drive. 

I digress. Surely planes and trains could replace long-distance travel, and walking or biking (or light rail/bus) for short-distance travel is a healthy alternative to driving for those of us who are not yet too old, too young or physically unable to drive.  It also saves us money.  We surely do invest a lot of energy and worry on "Energy-politics" and alternative energy developments, but what if we just don't need so much energy in the first place?  Why do I need to walk on a treadmill, instead of the street?  The treadmill requires lighting in the gym, gas for my car in order to go to the gym, electricity to run the machine, and paid employees to make sure I am a gym-member?  Who pays for the road to take me to the gym?  I have to pay car insurance and maybe health insurance.  I have friends who went bankrupt from medical bills following a car accident.  Who pays the cost of the car-culture?

I would rather just go for a walk in my neighborhood and frequent a locally-run shop or eatery, magazine shop, cafe, whatever, run by a neighbor or local, who I might know by name, and get get out of the house, without endangering my life.  I might find out more about what is going on in my town/city and we might, together, start to care about each other and about ourselves, in a meaningful way.

Cottbus, Germany

Life in Cottbus, Germany is not the beginning of the story.  No, the story for me began with a passport, some $2000 and assurances from friends that it would be easy to find a job as an English teacher in Dresden, Germany in 2007.  About a year later, I was back in the states living in Philadelphia, but my relationship with Lars, who I met in Dresden, was just beginning.  We continued our long-distance relationship and have been together since September 2008.  That was almost three years ago, but a lot has changed for us in our lives.  I was studying at the University of Pennsylvania at the time and the job outlook for him as a German lawyer in the US would require him going back to school for an American JD degree or LLM.  So, I was the one who sold all of my furniture and most of my possessions to come to Germany in order to pursue our relationship together.  Luckily, I was equipped with my German language skills and a love for traveling.  In May 2010, I subleted the rest of my apartment lease in Philly, got all the paperwork to bring my dog Charlie along, and boarded an Air-Berlin flight non-stop  from JFK Airport, New York, to Shönefeld Airport, Berlin.

Since then, I have moved a couple of times.  After not finding any work at all in Germany, I came back to the US about three months later, as required by German law since my Visa Waiver only lasted three months.  I moved back to Philly and back into my own apartment actually, and worked as a part-time research assistant the university in the Department of City and Regional Planning.  I had hoped that I could broadly apply my skills in quantitative research methods to another field.  What happened was that I became fascinated by urban issues ... even though my part-time position became no-time, after the project was done with the stage of research I was helping with.

In November 2010, I moved back to Europe, but this time to England since my then-boyfriend, Lars, was doing a short-time placement in St Albans near London.  I lived there and we cramped into a little room in a house-share.  Charlie came too, of course!!!  Let me tell you: It's not easy to bring a pet to the UK!!  It is even harder to find a job as a non-EU citizen in the UK.  My experience was pretty shocking.  The border control harassed me "quite" fiercely, as the Brits say, when I entered the country from Germany after Christmas vacation.  They wanted to know why I was unemployed and what my intention was in the UK.  Fair enough, although the reason I am unemployed in the UK is because the UK's ban on hiring foreigners made getting a job there impossible!  They probably didn't appreciate that answer.   I wanted to say, "Hey, my great-grandparents were British.  I'm like, 3/4 British-American.  If any country in the world should be American-friendly, it should be the UK!!  What do you have against me?"  Alas, I think that would have gotten me a tight-lipped frown at best; at worst: entry-denial!

After living in England for two and a half months, I came to Berlin in January 2011 to look once again for jobs.  I threw in the tool for my loftier career goals and decided to just try to work as an English Teacher, freelance, like I did in 2007-2008 when I lived in Germany before.  I put in my application at, I believe, every language school in Berlin, except at the primary schools (I don't want to work with kids again... sorry).  After two months, I had completed a training in English teaching with an online language Company called LearnShip.  I have nothing good to say about them.  I had completed the online training, studying full-time for three days, only to be told that I wasn't teacher-material.  Ouch!! So much for back-up plans!

At that point, I was flying back and forth between England and Germany in order to visit with Lars and look for jobs in Germany.  I knew that if I didn't find a job in Germany, I would have two choices in order to stay in the EU with him: marry Lars in order to have a marriage visa with all rights afforded to me, or find a job so that I can have a work-visa, with limited rights, but essential ones afforded.

Somehow during this time, I got the sneaking desire to return to the US, where border officials favored me and finding a job would be easier, despite the recession.  I missed my family terribly and wanted to live closer to them, for once.  Lars was ok with this because he also dreamed of emigrating to the US eventually, probably with me.  I found a job in Orlando, Florida USA in February 2011 as a paralegal and worked for Morgan & Morgan, P.A. for five months.

I ended up quitting my job to move back to live with Lars in Germany.  I decided that living in Florida was a dream that I could postpone in order to live with Lars and simultaneously pursue a career that suits me better (and is paid better) than being a paralegal.  An advantage to Germany is that education is very affordable, tuition being about 500 EURO a semester.  If I was going to start over, best to do it in Germany so that finding a job internationally would cease to be such an annoying effort, someday.

So here I am, living in Cottbus with my NOW husband Lars.  I am applying for the Spouse Visa and have been accepted to some university programs.  I am not working, but I am very happy.