ABSTRACT
Mannheim, an industrial city with a population of about 315,000, is located at the confluence of the Rhine and Neckar rivers in southwest Germany. It has a distinctive gridded centre dating from 1606, and between 1720 and 1777 it was the residence of the Electors Palatine. But ‘by 1799 [it] represented a straightforward exercise in unimaginative drawing board geometry’ (Morris 1994: 235). And in a survey of twelve industrial cities in Germany in 1971, Mannheim was ranked a clear last (Panten 1987: 92). Few respondents were impressed by the city’s urban quality, its green spaces or the leisure opportunities that it offered. The staging between April and October 1975 of the Bundesgartenschau – Federal Garden Show – was intended to address these shortcomings.
