Germany
Project history
With a population of 1.3 million people, Munich
is the third largest city in Germany. The new area
around the Munich Exhibition Centre is currently
being developed as a new city quarter. The project
has been evaluated as ‘one of the most interesting
projects of urban development in Europe’.^4
Although property is expensive to buy or rent in
Munich, the city is known as one of the most
attractive places to live in Germany, because of its
proximity to the Alps and to the lovely lake environ-
ments just south of the city. Living standards are
high, as are the facilities for recreation. The city’s
approach to its urban development is represented
by the slogan ‘compact – urban – green’.
It was decided in 1992 that Munich’s Riem Airport,
built in east Munich between 1936 and 1939, was
to be relocated to Erding, further north-east of
the city. This decision marked the beginning of
the development of the Munich Trade Fair and the
Exhibition Centre of Riem. Six years on, the new
exhibition buildings, which form the core of a new
city quarter, have been opened. This kind of regen-
eration process is typical of so much recent urban
development throughout Germany and Europe in
general. The basic principle for developing such
new districts is the so-called ‘three parts solution’:
one-third of the area zoned residential, one-third
allocated for industry or business development, and
one-third for parks and open space.^5
Based on an ecological concept which allows ‘living
and working among greenery’, the new city quarter
of Riem will offer housing space for 16,000 people
and 13,000 jobs by the year 2013, not including the
trade fair and exhibition grounds.^6
The main advantages of the new district in the east
of Munich are the good transport connections (the
highway and the subway), the international flair of
the trade fair and exhibition areas, the high-quality
infrastructure and the partially completed landscape
park with its large lake and bathing facilities. The
landscape park hosted the national garden exhibi-
tion (Bundesgartenschau) in 2005. This was regard-
ed by the city of Munich as a six-month-long house-
warming party for its new city quarter.^7 It is the first
time that such a garden exhibition has taken place
in a park which was planned entirely independent of
the temporary event.
The national garden exhibition follows a sustainable
urban development approach and clearly demon-
strates the ecological demands of the project. All
phases of development have been thought through
with ecological aspects in mind, from the demoli-
tion of the former airport, to the creation of the new
landscape park as the linking element between the
