Emden, Germany

[ronald1987]

Went to a congress of Northwestern Europe's urban planners last week in Emden, a city in Germany's extreme northwest. The focus there was on waterside development. Not only was this congress interresting, the town itself was quite nice aswell.
Here are some pics:

my hotel


a street nearby the city center


the city's central square at night


view of the city center from the top of the town hall


the harbour


all houses are made of (red) brick


the center again


view of the central square


the town hall


some shots of a residential neighbourhood


can you believe that the same house in holland costs 5 times as much as this one?


there are poorer areas aswell. mostly Russian immigrants live in these flats.


an abandoned military base, built in 1910.


these buildings just sit there, wasting away.


an old war bunker.


a pic from the inside (reminds me of "medal of honour", a pc game that I played a few years ago)


the shopping area in the city's center


quiet residential street


that's all, hope you enjoyed them

 

[ganjavih]

Very cool, thanks.

 

[Observer Walt]

Nice pictures. Thank you.
The buildings which you say are "just wasting away" surely could be a good opportunity for adaptive reuse. I'm not sure where they are located in relation to other features of the city, but a little imagination could surely result in a good new use for these. They reminded me somewhat of a former psychiatric hospital in Toronto (similar age), which has now been converted to an attractive college campus.

 

[ronald1987]

^That's exactly what I was thinking.
The problem is, that the city is shrinking. It had 65,000 inhabitants in the 70's and today it has got 50,000.
There already is a community college in the city, there is not enough demand for a university-campus, student housing, a hospital (they already got a hospital), or even a prison. I asked the local town planner whether all these possible functions for this complex would be a realistic option. He said, "in a shrinking city there it just isn't economically possible to give new life to these older buildings".

 

[building babel]

Nice to see a street named after August Bebel, the great Marxist.

 

[simply Dan]

August Bebel Strasse is actually a common German streetname, with many towns and cities (particularly in the east) having such a street.

 

[ronald1987]

^I was about to say that They even have an August-Bebel Institute in Berlin. And a city in former East-Germany used to be called "Carl-Marx City" (Karl-Marx Stadt). It has its old name back now, "Chemnitz".