Erwerb des Grundstueckes Ecke Tibusstraße/Breul, Gemarkung Muenster, Flur 5, Nr. 672 (1997)
Sculpture. Projects in Muenster 1997
Media, materials, events
Property corner of Tibusstrasse/Breul, Province Muenster, Hall 5, No. 672. Text “What is the origin of a city? Land register and cadastre. To whom does the city belong? How public is public space? How private is private property? The city of Muenster. Purchase of land (acquisition of land). Which piece of land? Location/position. Change of ownership/change of property. Real value/symbolic value”. Purchase and sale of plot at corner Tibusstraße/Breul, Province Muenster, Hall 5, No. 672. Notarial registration of the real agreement. Signing of the bill of sale. Bills of sale. Entry of the changes in the land register. Extract from the land register. Cadastral map. Documentation of the property purchase. Documentation of the work of the “Verein zur Erhaltung preiswerten Wohnraums e.V.”, Muenster. Publications, city maps, photographs. Resurveying of the property. Transfer of the proceeds from the property sale to the building renovation budget of the “Verein zur Erhaltung preiswerten Wohnraums e.V.”, etc.
Places, institutions
Land registry, Muenster district court. Westfälisches Landesmuseum. Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe. Plot at corner Tibusstraße/Breul, Province Muenster, Hall 5, No. 672. Verein zur Erhaltung preiswerten Wohnraums e.V., Muenster. Real Estate Office (Liegenschaftsamt) of the City of Muenster.
Purchase of the Plot at Corner Tibusstrasse/Breul, Province Muenster, Hall 5, No. 672 (1997)
What is the origin of a city? – From initial settlement on, cities develop and change through acquisition and occupation of land, through conquest, subjugation, exercise of power, trade, war, peace, destruction, reconstruction, and city planning. Settlement and residence are connected with possession and property, and therefore with the accumulation of possessions and property.1 Property requires protection. Fortifications, watchtowers, and moats signal and emphasize the readiness for defence. Cities were conquered, razed, fortified, defended, opened up. Cities arose through trade and served as markets. Since the High Middle Ages, the “city” has been associated with the idea of the university.
A city is first of all “city”, and then a particular city, for example Muenster. The founding of Muenster goes back to Charlemagne’s conquest and conversion of the Saxons. Around 793, Liudger was sent as missionary to the West Saxons and the Frisians. The geographical and economic advantages of the site (the river Aa and the intersection of two important trade routes) determined his choice of location. The plan of the monastic settlement formed the nucleus around which the city developed. The settlement grew from the marked of the tradesmen. Muenster was the seat of a bishop as well as a centre of trade. It attained municipal status around 1170 and was a member of the Hanseatic League from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century. The years 1534-35 saw Anabaptist rule and 1648 the Peace of Westphalia; Muenster was the capital and residential city of the prince-bishop until 1803 and capital of the province of Westphalia from 1816 on. Up to 63% of the city was destroyed in the Second World War; 1975 saw the incorporation of nine outlying municipalities.
Land-register and cadastre – The cadastre was established for purposes of property taxation, the land-register for safeguarding of real property and property transfer.2 (In Max Geisberg’s Bau- und Kunstdenkmaeler Westfalens, Stadt Muenster, vols. I–VI, Muenster 1932–1941, each illustration and description of a building is accompanied, under the heading „historical information“, by the names and occupations of its successive owners and residents according to historical street cadastres.) The cadastre is the public register maintained by the land-registry office, which represents and describes the real property of a region. It contains information (name, date of birth, occupation, address) on the owners of property and buildings and those with the legal right of construction and use. On the basis of survey, it indicates the division of the land into parcels and provides individual specifications (location, size, use). The results of a survey are entered in a cartographic apparatus that is maintained in the form of skeleton maps or area maps. The cadastral maps constitute the representational part of the real estate cadastre. In the maps, parcels and buildings as well as other important objects are represented to scale. A parcel is a section of the surface of the earth, enclosed by a boundary line fixed in the real estate cadastre and designated by a number. In the real estate cadastre the parcel is treated as an individual object.
The land-register (property, easements, change of owner, servitudes, mortgages) records the material rights on real property as well as changes of its status. It serves as proof of possession and of other rights on pieces of property. The register is continually updated and can be referred to at the land-registry office. The basic unit of the land-register is the plot. A plot can consist of a number of parcels, but a parcel cannot consist of plots. Parcels not subject to record are resident-owned watercourses, waterways, and ditches. In its designation, description, and delimitations of plots, the land register is based on the information in the real estate cadastre. Both instruments together constitute complete documentation.
Each piece of land is surveyed, registered, and owned. The property value map indicates the value of a plot. Unlike air and water, land can be acquired and compared. Comparison always presupposes ownership. In contrast to other commodities, land as a definable whole cannot be reproduced.3
To whom does the city belong? – Private property is for the most part enclosed and delimited by gates, fences, or walls; it is not freely accessible. Public property is the property of the city or province. Public facilities, the media, TV and radio programs, squares, streets, and paths all constitute so-called public space. Is public space available to all? The image of the city as the mirror of practices in defence of the norm. Who or what is the norm, and who defends the norm? Examples: Do-not-walk-on-the-grass signs on public lawns, parks and squares opened and closed according to bureaucratic schedules, benches replaces by individual seats, the spigots of public fountains turned off, public toilets closed. Prohibitions and signs impose certain rules of behaviour. No parking without resident permit. Buildings are not renovated in an effort to hasten and legitimate their demolition.4
Muenster: The Hotel Lindenhof (Kastellstrasse 1) was to be torn down and a large international chain hotel erected on the plot. Opposition on the part of residents prevented the demolition; now the former Hotel Lindenhof is occupied be immigrants from CIS countries. Parts of the building stand empty and neglected.
In 1989, students occupied emergency housing on Steinfurther Strasse which, despite the general housing shortage, was scheduled to be cleared. The occupants placed their own apartments at the disposal of foreign students and demanded that the city confiscate empty apartments and repair or renovate houses that were unrentable or threatened with demolition.
Imagine: Sinti and Roma living on Schlossplatz.
The entrance area in front of the Regierungspraesidium is frequented by skaters, who are not tolerated; they are identified by the police and excluded by means of fines.
Students wanted to roll the Giant Pool Balls by Claes Oldenburg into the lake. The lawn on the lake Aa was “their” lawn.
The houses Breul 31–38 and Tibusstrasse 30a–c were scheduled for demolition; the area was to be redeveloped with expensive condominiums (1989). The tenant association founded the “Verein zur Erhaltung preiswerten Wohnraums e.V.” (Association for the Preservation of Affordable Housing) and went public with posters, flyers, petitions, press conferences, and street festivals. Radio, television, and the press fanned the flames of widespread public interest. Today, the Verein is the tenant and administrator of the buildings.
Berlin: caravan locations in the inner city are cleared by the police (e.g. Engelbecken caravan on Waldemarstrasse in Berlin-Kreuzberg in 1993). Currently there are twelve caravan sites in Berlin, of which two on the periphery of the city are officially approved. According to a decision of the Senate from July 1996, the ten inner-city caravan sites in the area around the Wall are to be cleared until end of 1997.
New York: Property tax in poor districts can amount to half the rent income. Often it is cheaper to let the buildings revert to the city than to pay the property tax. Owners let the buildings decay until they have to be torn down for fear of collapse. (In the late 1970s and the early 80s, 65% of the houses in Harlem, a large part of the buildings on the Lower East Side, and numerous buildings in Brooklyn and the Bronx were burned down to collect insurance money, given up by the owners, or confiscated by the city to cover back taxes.) The city leases the ruined plots to residents and transforms them into Community Gardens, among other reasons to preserve or increase their value. The users do not own the plots. If the city wants to sell the plots, the lease is not renewed and the gardens are cleared.
How public is public space? – The city is the owner of land and real estate. The boundaries between private property and state or city property are fluid. Private enterprises receive state subsidies. The private economy participates in state projects and plays a role in city planning. The owner determines what happens on and with the plot. What other owner than the University of Muenster would accept the sculpture Black Form – Dedicated to the Missing Jews (1987) by Sol LeWitt (two parts, a black stone block in the central axis of the Baroque Schloss and a white pyramid at the end of the axis in the Schlossgarten, destroyed after the exhibition at the request of the university) on university property?
Can the ground on which a sculpture stands be separated from the sculpture? How mobile or immobile is a sculpture? The more immobile, the more lasting, the more valuable? To what degree does art and the presentation of art influence urban development? What activities or works address the theme of ownership and property? Examples: Alan Sonfist, The Time Landscape (1969), New York; George Maciunas, Koop-System in SoHo (1965), New York, Prefabricated Building System (1965), New York; Diana Balmori, Margaret Morton, Transitory Gardens, Uprooted Lives (1993), Yale University Press; Gordon Matta-Clark, Reality Properties: Fake Estates (1973), Queens und Staten Island; Michael Asher, Property Line (1973), Los Angeles; Simon Rodia, The Watts Towers (Nuestro Pueblo = Our Town), Los Angeles (1921–1954); Verein zur Erhaltung preiswerten Wohnraums e.V., Muenster (since 1989).
How private is private property? – Privacy is only made possible and protected through ownership and/or tenancy. Money.5 Up to a certain point: under certain circumstances, even owners and tenants are threatened with expropriation, removal, clearing.
Examples: In 1987 in San Francisco, Donald MacDonald set up two City Sleepers (minimal shelters for the homeless) in a parking lot rented by him. The owner of the lot (California Department of Transportation) initiated a legal process against him. MacDonald was forced to move the City Sleepers onto private property. In 1988 in Atlanta, madhouser – a group of young architects – built accommodations for homeless in module construction and placed the huts on public and private property.
In Lipstick Traces, Greil Marcus describes how the Anabaptists, under the leadership of the baker Jan Matthys, took over Muenster in 1534 and established a theocracy: “All property was expropriated and money abolished. They saw to it that the doors of all houses stood open day and night. All books other than the Bible were burned on a huge pyre. ‘The poorest among us,’ stated a Muenster broadsheet aimed at converting the surrounding countryside, ‘who were despised as beggars now go around clothed as elegantly as the highest and most aristocratic people’. All things ‘were to be common property’, Jan van Leyden later said. There was to be ‘no private property, and no one was to do any work, but simply trust God.’ Without exception, the new decrees were enforced with threats of execution.”
Property and ownership can be transferred, sold, inherited, forfeited, stolen. Owners can be dispossessed by the state. Example: “Insofar as the houses were in the possession of Jews, i.e. now in the possession of the state, the costs are to be covered from the estates of the Jews.” (Minutes of a confidential conference on November 20, 1941, in: Geschichte original – am Beispiel der Stadt Muenster, No. 5, Muenster 1988). “The Aryanization of Jewish possessions/property. Almost without exception, shops, businesses, and real estate were sold far below the actual commercial value. In these cases it is therefore justified to speak of a state-supported and sanctioned ‘plundering’” (in: Muenster–Streifzuege, ed. Ulrich Bardelmeier, Andreas Schulte Hemming, Muenster 1995, p. 75).
The city of Muenster – The master plan “Rahmenplan Muenster-Altstadt – Altstadt und Bahnhofsviertel” (1995), commissioned by the city of Muenster from the Office of City Planning and Urban Research, gives an overview of urban development in Muenster.6 It publishes the planned usage of squares, open areas, and interspaces, of “waste areas” and “building gaps,” and integrates zoning plans. By means of a catalogue of deficiencies, potentials, and solutions,7 districts including the cathedral area, the Marktring, the north edge of the city, the railroad station and university districts, Hindenburgplatz, the Ueberwasser and Kuh districts, the Martini district, the Promenandenring, and the Aa loop are analysed, with possible or planned changes being indicated.
Every open space, every fallow piece of land in the city is integrated into the zoning plan. Usage is defined and planned from the beginning to forestall the acquisition and occupation of places for purposes other (e.g. for mobile dwellings and lifestyles) than those producing economic surplus value.
Public spaces are those spaces whose use is not (pre-)determined and fixed, not those that are designated “public”.
The following statement holds true for almost all of the proposals in the master-plan: “What is needed is more the involvement of private investors than that of the city. In many places, we can even count on income from the sale of municipal plots. There would then be an urgent need for an active clearing station for property questions, including the active mobilization of municipal plots.” Private investors change the city. The old city of Muenster is, according to the writers of the plan, not a “crisis region”. Rather, the urban planning measures to be undertaken are “everyday tasks”. “Questions of property, for example, are hardly ever so complicated that they can only be solved through transferral or expropriation.” (“Expropriation” = the withdrawal or limitation of property rights by state power according to Art. 14 of Basic Constitutional Law for the common weal and only by law or according to laws regulating the type and amount of compensation.)
The development of the inner city in recent decades has led to the disappearance of affordable housing and/or to the driving up of rents through repair and renovation. People who can’t afford expensive housing have been gradually pushed out of the inner city area. Satellite suburbs like Berg-Fidel, Kinderhaus/Brueningheide, and Coerde have arisen. Citizen initiatives demand that the city provide and maintain affordable housing in the central district. If necessary, the city must make use of its right of eminent domain in order to gain possession of affordable housing threatened by demolition.
The case of Breul/Tibusstrasse is exemplary in this respect, and also with regard to the entanglement of municipal politics and private enterprise. At the end of the 1980s, the owners (at that time the city and private investors) strove to exploit the advantageous central location of the property under exclusively economic considerations (i.e. demolition and lucrative redevelopment). The Verein zur Erhaltung preiswerten Wohnraums e.V., formed out of protests against eviction, has in the meantime become the tenant and administrator of the property; the sole owner is the city. The residents developed a model proposal for the modernization of the building and in a comprehensive working paper (December 1996) formulated their social, ecological, and architectural goals.
The proposal “Entwurf zur lokalen Agenda 21” (commission of the Rio Conference 1992), developed by the project group “Zukunftsfaehiges Muenster”, contains 15 theses. Thesis 7 reads: “Muenster puts a stop to land consumption. Within the next ten years, the city of Muenster along with its surrounding municipalities will end additional consumption of land for purposes of residential development. The alternative: reuse of existing building areas.” Thesis 12: “For an ecologically, socially, and developmentally sound promotion of communal place of work and business. Even in Muenster there is a growing number of welfare recipients, homeless, and unemployed. The integration of these segments of the population into the labour market must be more forcefully addressed in future projects.”
Land usage in the city, a total area of 3245 hectares, is classified as follows: built and open areas 5101 hectares, commercial 137 hectares, recreational 559 hectares, traffic 2248 hectares, agricultural 16304 hectares, forestry 4590 hectares, water 766 hectares, and “other” 540 hectares.
The civil engineering office of the city of Muenster offers “creek sponsorships”. The city of Muenster supports the nature conservation society with the purchase of rental of land to establish water biotopes and frog ponds. In the area of water maintenance, the Muenster civil engineering office supports ground unsealing and cooperates with the owners of plots to realize projects for improving the water quality of the river Aa. Waterways of the first order are the property of the province insofar as they are not federal waterways. Waterways of the second order are all other waterways. In Muenster, the Ems and the Dortmund-Ems canal are waterways of the first order.
Purchase of land (land acquisition) – The work consists in acquiring a piece of land. It comprises all the transactions and procedures involved in the purchase/sale of a plot, including research of open areas for sale, viewing, choice, title transfer, change of owner, entry in land-register, and use.
Which plot? – The plot is to be an undeveloped open space in central Muenster. Particular specifications such as position, location, size, price, and owner will become clear in the course of the acquisition: Which plots (open areas, building sites) are offered for sale? Size? Address/location? For what price? By whom? Reason for sale?
Location/position – The choice of location is determined by the availability of open plots and the deliberate search for plots. The plot is acquired as a plot.
Change of owner/Change of property – Contract of sale. Title transfer. Who was the owner, who is the new owner? How is the change recorded? Notarial certification of the legal agreement. Entry of legal change in the land-register.
Real value/symbolic value – The real value of the work is constituted by the transactions and procedures involved in the acquisition and use of the plot. The real value increases or decreases with the size, location, and use of the plot. The symbolic value of the sculpture increases with the reduction of the real value. The greater the real value, the less the symbolic value.
Pictures
Former Hotel Lindenhof, Kastellstrasse 1
Facade ruin on Julius-Voos-Gasse
Facade ruin in interior courtyard of Stadttheater, Neubrueckenstrasse 63
Garden/gap between buildings at Domplatz 25 (old cathedral chamber)
“Ballfield for Everyone” on the grounds of Alter Zoo between Himmelreichallee und Huefferstrasse
Tenting on the sports field
Sculptures on public and private property (Domgasse: Daniel Buren, “Tor,” 1987; Harsewinkelplatz: Thomas Schuette, “Kirschensaeule,” 1987; Himmelreichallee 40: Otto Heinz Mack, “Wasserplastik,” 1977; Henry Moore, “Dreiteilige Skulptur (Wirbel),” 1968/69)
Improvement of water quality/standing water, Schlossgraben/Kastellgraben
Artificial waterfall, Promenade/Kreuztor
Oxygenation for improvement of water quality, Schlossgraben
Gap between buildings on Von-Steuben-Strasse/Hafenstrasse
Skater in front of Regierungspraesidium, Domplatz
Overnight accomodation on large benches, Promenade/Wallgraben
Military security zone, German/Netherlandish Corps, Hindenburgplatz 73
Single seats, Aegidiikirchplatz
Public fountain, Promenade/Kanonengraben
Closed public toilets, parking lot between Schlossplatz und Hindenburgplatz
Bibliography
Hannah Arendt: Vita activa oder Vom taetigen Leben, 8. Auflage, Muenchen 1996
Ulrich Bardelmeier, Andreas Schulte Hemming (Hg.): Muenster – Streifzuege, Muenster 1995
Beirat fuer Kommunale Entwicklungszusammenarbeit der Stadt Muenster (Hg.): Thesen „Zukunftsfaehiges Muenster“, Muenster 1995
Elisabeth Blum (Hg.): Wem gehoert die Stadt, Basel 1996
Buero fuer Stadtplanung und Stadtforschung (Hg.): Rahmenplan Muenster-Altstadt, Muenster 1995
Klaus Bussmann: Architektur der Neuzeit, in: Geschichte der Stadt Muenster, Bd. 3, hg. v. Franz-Josef Jakobi, Muenster 1993
Rolf Cantzen: Weniger Staat – Mehr Gesellschaft, Grafenau 1995
Mike Davis: City of Quartz. Ausgrabungen der Zukunft in Los Angeles und neuere Aufsaetze, Berlin/Goettingen 1994
Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari: Tausend Plateaus, Berlin 1992,
Max Geisberg: Bau- und Kunstdenkmaeler Westfalens, Stadt Muenster Bd. I –VI, Muenster 1932 – 41
Grundbuch- und Katastersysteme in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland –Entwicklung und aktueller Stand, (Schriftenreihe DVW): Stuttgart 1993
Grundstuecksrecht, (Beck Texte im dtv), Muenchen 1996
Juergen Habermas: Strukturwandel der Oeffentlichkeit, 5. Auflage, Frankfurt/M. 1996
Gerhard Koehler: Deutsches Privatrecht der Gegenwart, Muenchen 1991
Gustav Landauer: Aufruf zum Sozialismus, Nachdruck der 4. Auflage 1923, Philadelphia 1978
Greil Marcus: Lipstick Traces, Hamburg 1992
Rainer Nitsche: Haeuserkaempfe 1872/1920/1945/1982, Berlin 1981
Stadtarchiv und Stadtmuseum Muenster (Hg.): Geschichte original – am Beispiel der Stadt Muenster, Nr. 5 und Nr. 18, Muenster 1988 und 1992
Telephone conversations
City of Muenster, Land office, Mr Althues: „Building gaps are being closed, open areas remain open; I refer you to the building plan. What do you intent to do with the plot?”
Property manager Mr Heidmann: „Price per square meter for undeveloped open spaces in the city centre is between 500 and 1000 DM; plots are hardly available on the open market, they’re sold under the table.“
City of Muenster, Civil Engineering Office, Mr Wermers: “Why are you interested in creek sponsorships when you don’t live in Muenster?”
Verein zur Erhaltung preiswerten Wohnraums e.V., Erich Varnhagen: „I’ll send you a chronology of events.“
Irmtraud Gruensteidel, author: „That’s the whole problem. The people are not the owners of the Community Gardens and don’t have any rights. They themselves can’t buy plots that cost $6000.“
Reprint of the proposal relating to Purchase of the Plot at Corner Tibusstraße/Breul, Province Muenster, Hall 5, No. 672 (1997), Sculpture. Projects in Munster 1997
1 Regarding the distinction between possession and property: Proudhon, for example, gives an unequivocal answer to the question, „what is property“: „Property is theft“. Property is the comprehensive, exclusive sovereignty of a person or a number of persons over a thing. The owner of a thing can, insofar as it does not conflict with the law or the rights of a third party, dispose of the thing at will and exclude others from influence over it. The basic constitutional law of Germany subjects property to a so-called social obligation and allows expropriation under special circumstances. The right of possession, on the other hand, means the rights to that which suffices for work and consumption. Income from credit transactions, houses, land, capital, inheritance, and the like are to be distinguished from the “possession as usufruct” of the means of production. Possession is tied to use by the individual. Like Proudhon, Gustav Landauer also distinguishes between possession and property; Landauer, however, does not reject possession, but rather the lack thereof. His demand for equality of property proceeds on the assumption that all cultures from time immemorial have been founded on possession and that the real problem is not ownership, whether common or private, but rather dispossession: “In the future I see private ownership, cooperative ownership, communal ownership in their finest flower – possession not merely of the things of immediate use or the simplest tools, but that which is so superstitiously feared by many, possession of all kinds of means of production, of houses, and of land.” (Landauer: Aufruf zum Sozialismus, p.136). He rejects only “laborless income”, i.e. that property that makes possible the private appropriation of surplus value.
2 Generally speaking, the legal foundations of the cadastre and land-register systems can be divided into two main classes: those influenced directly or indirectly by Roman law (e.g. via French legislation during Napoleonic rule), and those influenced by Anglo-Saxon law (e.g. colonization or via common development with Anglo-Saxon countries). The German Civil Code has been in effect since January 1, 1900. In the establishment of a uniform private law, the concern was to carry out social reforms and/or adapt the existing law to changing social relationships. The model was France with its Code civil. The individual German territories such as Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Wuerttemberg, and Baden had been independent states since the Peace of Westphalia (1648), claiming for themselves the right of legislation and jurisdiction. The cadastre that exists today in the Federal Republic of Germany arose out of the different cadastral surveys of the former kingdoms and duchies at the beginning of the 19th century.
3 Cf. David Ricardo: On the Principals of Political Economy and Taxation; Fernand Braudel: The History of Civilization; Friedrich Engels: The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State; excerpted in: Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari: Tausend Plateaus, Berlin 1992, pp. 588–655.
4 Cf. Hannah Arendt: Vita Activa, pp.75-76: It seems to lie in the essence of the relations prevailing between private and public realms that the decay of the public in its final stages is accompanied by a radical threat to the private. Insofar as these things have been dealt with at all in the modern era, discussion has continually focused on the question of private property; and this is no coincidence, for even in ancient political thought, the word ‘private’ loses its private character and is no longer necessarily opposed to the public when it appears in connection with property, as in private property. Clearly, property possesses certain qualities which, though of a private nature, are nonetheless highly essential to the political.”
5 Cf. Theodor W. Adorno: Minima Moralia, London, 1984, p.39: “It is even part of my good fortune not to be a house-owner,’ Nietzsche already wrote in the Gay Science. Today we should have to add: it is part of morality not to be at home in one’s home. This gives some indication of the difficult relationship in which the individual now stands to his property, as long as he still possesses anything at all. The trick is to keep in view, and to express, the fact that private property no longer belongs to one, in the sense that consumer goods have become potentially so abundant that no individual has the right to cling to the principle of their limitation; but that one must nevertheless have possessions, if one is not to sink into that dependence and need which serves the blind perpetuation of property relations.”
6 In the foreword the authors write: „Real estate prices in the more attractive city centres are oriented increasingly not to the local market, but to regional, national, and international standards. In the future, prices could reach a level to which, besides the traditional property owners such as the city, state, and church, only especially well-financed, trans-regional investors could aspire. The latter, however, contribute relatively little to the specific quality of a city-centre; rather, they render it interchangeable with any other city and thus do more to hurt it than the automobile or telecommunication. Over the course of millennia the impetus for development in European cities has always been above all the involvement of the citizens. Spatially speaking, exorbitant real estate prices could push this involvement further and further back into only a few remaining niches of the inner cities. For this reason, it is of the highest political priority to recognize and bridle this trend.”
7 Examples of deficiencies: In the cathedral area, lack of design at the south edge of the square; hard-to-find, bicycle-filled passages between the university buildings; awkward, indeterminate tree locations. In the Marktring/Bahnhof district: desolate areas; pollution from motorized traffic; ruptures between City/Altstadt and City/Bahnhofsviertel. On the Aa loop: incongruously located buildings at the edges (large-scale structures in the west, gas station with annexes in the east) as well as at the city pool in the middle. Ueberwasser and Kuh districts: few, but awkward building gaps; optical breaks in the southern Juetefeld Strasse; shortage of parking for residents.