Deike Peters

Chapter 10 Railway Megaprojects as Catalysts for the Re-Making of Post-Industrial Cities? The Case of Stuttgart 21 in Germany

The purpose of the chapter is twofold. First, it discusses the causes and characteristics of the current proliferation of rail station area redevelopment megaprojects around the globe, revealing them to be an important subset of the new generation of megaprojects discussed in this volume. Second, it offers a detailed and timely account of recent struggles surrounding “Stuttgart 21,” a massive, hugely controversial rail station redevelopment megaproject in Southern Germany, drawing lessons from the controversy over Stuttgart 21 for urban megaprojects more generally. This study is a qualitative case study analysis that involved interviews and document analysis. The experience of “Stuttgart 21” validates previous criticisms of megaprojects regarding transparency and public accountability in decision-making, environmental challenges, and cost-overruns. The political conflicts over “Stuttgart 21” are intimately tied to fundamental disagreements over future urban development and transportation policy, the costs and benefits of multibillion Euro megaprojects, and related democratic decision-making procedures. Rail stations emerge as an important, as-of-yet underexplored subset of urban megaprojects. Rail stations, especially those serving new high-speed rail corridors, are crucial development nodes within complex postindustrial urban–regional restructuring processes. But they also have a distinct character and historical identity. As the mass protests in Stuttgart show, they also clearly serve important identification functions in citizens’ lives.

Rail City Berlin Rail Infrastructure Development and Intermodality in the Reunified German Capital

Berlin is known for an expansive transit system featuring a variety of different rail services. But Berlin was divided by a heavily guarded concrete wall for a quarter century, with rail systems operations developing in quite different ways in East and West Berlin. Berlins rail system was critically evaluated before, during, and after the times of the Berlin wall, with emphasis on the postreunification period. Several valuable lessons can be learned both from Berlins best practices and from its less shining moments. Berlin is a particularly interesting example of rail transit redevelopment and expansion because of its repeated “zero hour” situations after war-related destruction and after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. After 1990, extraordinary sums were invested to completely restructure Berlins urban and regional rail networks and to connect the city to the high-speed rail network in West Germany. In the end, postreunification Berlins triple challenge of simultaneously developing new high-speed connections to other cities, completely overhauling and restructuring its internal rail system, and ensuring that the new system would be properly and intermodally connected to the rest of the transportation network, is not dissimilar to the situation many U.S. cities are facing today. The core issues that warrant critical discussion are the relationships and trade-offs between the various investments into long-distance, regional, and urban rail lines.