Piazza Spinelli – A Training Ground for the City

A book for a new planning culture

At the interface between urban development and networking, the book Piazza Spinelli – Übungsraum für die Stadt (Piazza Spinelli A Space for the City to Practice) makes a convincing case for a new planning culture. Based on years of experience in a conversion process in Mannheim-Käfertal, Sally Below and Christopher Dell, together with experts from various disciplines, examine how existing structures can be further developed and expanded while remaining locally anchored.

On the basis of the experiences with the Spinelli FreiRaumLab, a network of institutions, church parishes and administration initiated by Sally Below together with the city of Mannheim, this book shows how cross-institutional negotiations, conversion concepts, the generation of public awareness and interventions on a 1:1 scale can be used to create a cooperative methodology for dealing with complex urban situations.

With contributions by Sally Below, Davide Brocci, Christopher Dell, Martin Ehret, Ralf Eisenhauer, Hanno Ehrbeck, Karl-Heinz Imhäuser, Anne Keßler, Rainer Kilb, Daniel Koch, Peter Kurz, Wiebke Lawrenz, Reiner Nagel, Dominique Peck, Stefan Rettich, Sabine Tastel, Renée Tribble, Jean-Philippe Vassal, Jens Weisener, and Stephan Willinger

published in July 2024 in German, available in bookstores and directly from JOVIS Verlag