ABSTRACT
What is Städtebau? A formal product, a social process, an object to be analyzed, an academic discipline, a practice-oriented profession, a material process? The German word Städtebau actually covers all of these meanings. Nevertheless, the term Städtebau is by no means uniformly defined, but changes according to discipline, region and time period. How we define Städtebau is of extraordinary importance. The definition – or rather, the concept of Städtebau decides what and how we perceive, what we ignore and which points we focus on, it decides on the quality of the scientific investigation itself.
My proposal is to choose a complex concept that understands Städtebau as the production of the city. A concept does not offer answers, it primarily organizes the search for answers and requires great openness and constant reflection. It includes product, production, relationships of production and propaganda. In my contribution, I shall first discuss my own concept of Städtebau and then present some considerations concerning the concept of the history of European Städtebau.
