162 Critical Planning Critical Planning Summer 2006Summer 2009 · Luca Bertolini (Bertolini 1996, 1998; Bertolini and Spit 1998) is now more than ten years old. More importantly,

162 Critical Planning Summer 2006 Critical Planning Summer 2009162

Critical Planning Summer 2009 163

Contextualizing Rail Station Area Redevelopments as Crucial “Urban Renaissance” Mega-Projects in Times of Post-Fordist, Postindustrial Urban Restructuring

A primary aim of urban scholarship is a more sophisticated understanding of the complex dynamics of urbanization under the present conditions of a globalized capitalism and the emergence of a “network society” (Castells 1996). These dynamics are variously referred to as postindustrial, postmodern, post-Fordist, or neoliberal urban restructuring (Keil 1998; Scott and Soja 1996; Smith 2002; Brenner and Theodore 2002). In the face of a complex interplay of simultaneous processes of de- and re-territorialization decisively altering cities’ spatial configurations, roles, functions, and regulatory environments (Amin 1994; Sassen 1991), new normative visions and discourses on “good” or “sustainable” urban forms are emerging.

The focus of this paper is on transit-related nodal spaces, specifically inner-city rail stations, which are highly symbolic spaces for urban restructuring. The dynamics of rail station area redevelopment efforts represent an understudied phenomenon in critical urban studies today. Comparative case studies of rail station redevelop-ment mega-projects can help us better understand the specifics of contemporary urban restructuring processes and related “urban renaissance” planning agendas. The term “urban renaissance” is often indiscriminately used to encompass any redevelopment effort aimed at making inner cities more attractive places to work, live, study, or engage in entertainment and recreation by revitalizing a centrally located, transit-accessible urban

The Renaissance of Inner-City Rail Station Areas: A Key Element in Contemporary Urban Restructuring Dynamics

Deike PetersRail station area redevelopment mega-projects are key instances of planned, large-scale, stra-tegic interventions into the contemporary urban fabric aimed at better connecting and revital-izing key inner-city locales. They represent a crucially under-studied element in the postindustrial restructuring of urban cores. In theory, mixed-used developments around centrally located rail stations offer a perfect answer to the challenges of a future-oriented, post-peak oil, sustainable development agenda focused on transit-accessible urban cores. In practice, however, the imple-mentation of such mega-projects is highly complex, and the costs and benefits are unevenly dis-tributed. This article presents comparative insights gained from three current high-profile cases in Berlin (Central Station [Hauptbahnhof]), London (King’s Cross), and New York (Penn/Moynihan Station).


location. A more specific, stronger definition would also take into account improved urban design quality and mixed land uses, as well as a “greater environmen-tal sensitivity and commitment to urbanity” in the planning and implementation of these “new mega-projects” (Diaz Orueta and Fainstein 2008, 759). This article presents three high-profile rail mega-projects from Berlin, London, and New York, highlighting their common traits and key contextual differences.1

The ongoing remaking of urban cores through urban redevelopment mega-projects is part and parcel of the “urbanization of neoliberalism” (Brenner and Theodore 2002) and post-Fordist restructuring. Large-scale manufacturing employment and produc-tion have given way to an urban economy dominated by service-, knowledge-, and consumption-based industries (Harvey 1989). The heightened competi-tion for investments forces cities’ governing elites to search proactively for new opportunities of economic growth, leading to processes of disembedding (Castells 1996), the emergence of new “geographies of central-ity” (Sassen 1991), and a shift from a “managerial” to an “entrepreneurial” governance approach (Harvey 1989; Dangschat 1992). Meanwhile, new logistics and distribution gateways and terminals are emerging at the edges of large metropolitan areas (Hesse 2008). Central cities are gaining ground as key locales for capitalist consumption and culture. Urban cores are (re-)gentrified as attractive tourist spaces (Judd and Fainstein 1999; Hoffman et al. 2003; Hannigan 1999) and as prime living and working spaces for the “creative class” (Florida 2002). An updated version of urban “growth machine politics” emerges (Molotch 1976; Logan and Molotch 1987; Savitch and Kantor 2002) which, in Europe, is strongly related to the EU Lisbon Agenda and corresponding national politics.

The specifics of these processes need to be understood through solid macro- and micro-level analyses that feature in-depth comparative case studies of particular places and actors within particular cities. There is not one single dominant theory on contemporary urban restructuring, of course. Rather, there are several strands of literature vying for prominence, each con-tributing certain key insights to the complex subject matter and presenting sometimes-conflicting views on the same cities.2 Nevertheless, there is wide agreement among urban scholars that postindustrial, post-Ford-ist, neoliberal restructuring represents a double-edged sword for cities. High-speed communication and transportation infrastructures enable corporations to avoid the high land costs and negative agglomeration externalities associated with high-profile central city locations and relocate elsewhere. However, for many key, high-profile economic activities, “place still mat-ters” (Dreier, Mollenkopf, and Swanstrom 2004). Sassen (1991) first showed how advanced producer and financial services remain clustered in urban cores, and how certain centralizing tendencies in fact inten-sify in “global cities” that represent the most strategic command and control centers of the global economy.3

Currently, there are two distinct literatures on urban mega-projects. On one hand, there is a recent literature on infrastructure mega-projects that delivers profound critiques of irresponsible and inefficient public investment strategies and policies, particularly in the transportation sector (Altshuler and Luberoff 2003; Flyvbjerg et al. 2003; Flyvbjerg et al. 2008). Unfortunately, these contributions mostly focus on highways, tunnels, or rail lines and have little to say about rail stations and their related urban redevelopment impacts.


On the other hand, there is an extensive urban redevel-opment literature, often focusing on projects such as large shopping malls, stadiums, urban entertainment centers, or other high-profile “starchitecture” flagship projects as typical urban interventions in globalized, postindustrial times of international locational com-petition. And such flagship projects often form part of comprehensive, mixed-use mega-projects situated in central urban waterfront or other grey- and brown-field locations, which can include either abandoned or active railyards. Recent scholarly contributions by Moulaert, Rodriguez, and Swyngedouw (2005) and Salet and Gualini (2007) explicitly acknowledge the strategic dimensions of urban redevelopment mega-projects in Europe and the key role of the public sec-tor.4 Post-Fordist restructuring leads to complex new spatial hierarchies within metropolitan areas where locations in the very center of the city often experi-ence a boost at the expense of other, more secondary locations within the densified urban core. Hence the general need to develop a more sophisticated typol-ogy of strategic urban redevelopment mega-projects with rail station projects as an important subset.

Meanwhile, complex processes of spatial and socio-economic restructuring are further complicated by a wide-ranging re-scaling of urban governance and statehood (see esp. Brenner 2004 and Jessop 2002; Pierre 1999). This includes an increased recognition and integration of private actors and interests in deci-sion-making processes, and an increased institution-alization of different forms of cooperation between government, businesses, and other non-governmental agencies, superseding Fordist relationships of mutual-ity between cities and national accumulation regimes (e.g., Heinelt and Mayer 1992; Mayer 1994). New high-profile rail station area developments such as

the Euralille TGV interchange in Lille or the Ørestad land grid near Copenhagen have been identified as key examples of “premium (or secessionist) network spaces”5 (Graham and Marvin 2001) and as “pre-mium infrastructural configurations” (Brenner 2004, 248–50) which were created as a result of targeted, “re-scaled,” customized, special-purpose, and place-specific regulatory interventions. Rail station redevel-opment projects are prime illustrations of the complex new “interscalar” governance arrangements that have emerged in post-Keynesian, postindustrial urban regions. Meanwhile, public sector interventions for these rail nodes will always be dependent on private developers and rail companies as key strategic partners and drivers behind the development of these sites.

Overall, the period since the early 1980s is typically characterized as an era of incrementalism and frag-mentation during which urban planners, in the new context of a “co-operative state” (e.g., Benz 1997), have become largely dependent on achieving their limited planning goals through a focus on individual flagship mega-projects and big events (“festivalization”) (e.g., Carrière and Demazière 2002; Häußermann and Siebel 1993). Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, a majority of urban leaders and decision-makers favored a politics of piecemeal, opportunistic, flexible, entre-preneurial, and project-oriented urban management that typically lent big corporations and developers broad control over central urban locations. In many cases, influential semi-public or privatized develop-ment agencies were forged out of former state-owned authorities such as railway companies or port authori-ties. Extensive planning efforts and public subsidies were targeted towards the renewal, expansion, and upgrading of high-quality public transportation, tele-communications, and utility infrastructures in select


urban areas (see esp. Brenner 2004, 243–253; Graham and Marvin 2001; Häußermann and Simons 2000), but they supposedly remained “poorly integrated into the wider urban process and planning system” (Swyngedouw, Moulaert, and Rodriguez 2002, 542).

Over the past decade or so, the pendulum seems to have swung back in favor of strategic planning approaches (Albrechts, Healey, and Kunzmann 2003; Healey et al. 1997; Hamedinger et al. 2008; Wiechmann 2008). These approaches aim at more ambitious, more comprehensive, and more integrated efforts to successfully remake city-regions (and most prominently their core areas) for the demands of a 21st-century economy and society. This has not, mind you, meant an abandonment of the mega-projects approach, but just that individual, single-purpose flagship projects are now often more carefully and more ambitiously contextualized within larger strategic master plans for high-profile, billion-dollar, multi-purpose, mixed-use mega-project complexes (Bianchini et al. 1992; Carrière and Demazière 2002; Demazière et al. 1998). In this context, rail station area redevelopment projects have to be contextualized against alternative redevelopment mega-projects. Unlike most de-industrializing harbors, waterfronts, and other central brownfield sites, rail stations still have a continuing function and use attached to them. More importantly, rail mega-projects are both major real estate projects and public infrastructure projects at the same time, with a potential to sig-nificantly affect and restructure mobility patterns in the wider metropolitan area and beyond. This fact has been underappreciated in the literature.

So in theory, mixed-used developments around centrally located rail stations offer a perfect answer

to many of the challenges of a future-oriented “urban renaissance” agenda. In practice, however, there are many difficulties with this idealistic vision. For one, there is no unified set of “urban renaissance” goals or a unified discourse among the relevant actors. Public officials might emphasize public interest goals such as livable, affordable housing units while transport experts might care most about issues of effective and sustainable urban mobility and connectivity. Historic preservationists might emphasize specific urban design aspects and object to removing old structures on the site. Environmentalists are usually skeptical about any mega-structures and would prefer low-impact solutions instead. Meanwhile, railway companies and real estate developers might simply be interested in the most profitable commercially viable solution, and thus not subscribe to any strong version of an “urban renaissance” agenda at all.

Due to these divergent interests among the involved actors, the practical implementation of these mega-project developments is always highly complex and typically fraught with myriad difficulties. Meanwhile, no comprehensive international study of the chal-lenges, potentials, successes, and failures of rail sta-tion redevelopment mega-projects currently exists. The most important initial work on the subject by Luca Bertolini (Bertolini 1996, 1998; Bertolini and Spit 1998) is now more than ten years old. More importantly, this work was limited to comparing a handful of rail station area redevelopment plans across Europe. By far the best recent treatment of the subject is an edited volume published by Bruinsma et al. (2008), but the empirical outlook is based almost exclusively on recent policies and developments in the Netherlands, with some additional western European examples. The normative, urban design-focused


concept of a “renaissance of rail stations” in western Europe (specifically Germany) was promoted in the 1997 volume Renaissance der Bahnhöfe. This volume was published as a companion to the German bien-nial building exhibition with the same name, but none of the contributions were based upon original empirical research. Bartkowiak (2004) looked at a handful of different rail station area redevelopment projects in Germany, but the related case studies were brief, overly descriptive, and covered projects that have since been abandoned.6 Meanwhile, Wucherpfennig (2005) used a discourse-analytical “new cultural geography” perspective to critique the rail station restructuring concepts promoted by Deutsche Bahn (German Rail) since the 1990s. There are also some selected case studies of rail sta-tion areas as part of larger studies of redevelopment mega-projects (e.g., Simons 2003; Fainstein 2001). Other singular case studies are limited to certain specific aspects of the rail station redevelopment.7

All of this contrasts with a much larger literature on waterfront and harbor redevelopment, however, where coverage through both in-depth individual case studies and internationally comparative research is much more prominent. (For a good overview see Schubert 2002; for other recent German contribu-tions also see Schubert and Polinna 2007; Pütz and Rehner 2007; and the case studies in Dziomba 2008). Harborfront redevelopments have received more at-tention from urban theory scholars because they have been more prominently redeveloped as prime tourist and creative spaces that include residential uses.

Rail Station Redevelopment Mega-Projects in Berlin, London, and New York

Qualitative, case-oriented approaches produce find-ings derived from real-world settings where the “phe-nomenon of interest unfolds naturally” (Patton 2001, 39; see also Ragin 1987). Researchers have to navigate a delicate balance between the need for a consistent research design and the need to remain sensitive to the particularities of each case. Issues of convergence and divergence, and locally and nationally divergent paths must be expected and explicitly acknowledged (Flyvbjerg 2006; Pierre 2005; John 2005; Denters and Mossberger 2006; Kantor and Savitch 2005).

The three cases below represent one specific type of rail station area redevelopment, namely high-profile comprehensive mega-projects involving major inner-city rail stations in major metropolises. All three cases are really multi-part mega-projects consisting of a transport infrastructure component and one or more urban redevelopment compo-nents. The related planning processes are naturally extremely complex, involving many public, public-private, and civil society actors with both converg-ing and diverging interests. Specifically, all three cases exhibit the following common characteristics:

• The stations are located in major, lead-ing European and North American ur-ban regions (“world/globalizing cities”) with a multi-nodal, polycentric structure.

• The rail stations are central terminals located in central urban locations in or immediately adjacent to the inner city or downtown area.

• The actual stations were/are to be com-pletely or substantially rebuilt and the


rebuilding, restoration, or redevelop-ment of the active station can be con-sidered a “flagship” element of the entire rail station area redevelopment process.

• The integration and connectivity of local, re-gional, national, and international travel was/is a major impetus for the redevelopment.

• The rail stations are already operational as hubs for high-speed inter-regional travel.

• The area around the station is a major, high-profile, mixed-use redevelopment site for which official planning documents and a master plan exist and for which a limited number of large real estate com-panies, together with public, semi-public, and non-profit actors, are currently seeking a wide-ranging redevelopment of the area. But note that the rail station redevelop-ment areas are not the only—and not necessarily even the biggest—redevelopment projects in the urban region (differentiat-ing them from Euralille or Stuttgart 21).

• The project timelines of the projects are roughly similar in that crucial propos-als for the urban redevelopment of the sites were presented in the early 1990s, hit various setbacks, and got back on track towards realization in the 2000s.

There is thus a relatively high degree of comparability among the cases. The cases provide insights into the particular challenges and difficulties in successfully cre-ating attractive, high-quality, mixed-use sites at major rail stations in a complex urban situation where several alternative, large-scale urban redevelopment projects

are simultaneously vying for (or already have gained) prominence at other central inner-city locations.

Significant differences between the cases and their local and national context remain, of course. Germany and Britain are both countries with extensive intra- and inter-urban passenger rail systems, whereas the United States is not. New York’s large and dense regional passenger rail network is thus exceptional within its own national system, and the Acela high-speed rail service between Boston, New York, and Washington is in fact the only one of its kind in the nation. There are also country- and state-specific contexts to the overall politics of urban redevelopment. Berlin’s urban economy is significantly smaller and less dynamic than that of the other two cities. However, due to the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification, the dynamism in the overall restructuring of the urban landscape in Berlin has been closer to that of the other cities than the size of its local economy would sug-gest, and the construction of the new Berlin Central Station and the related underground infrastructures is one of the most important and spectacular recent cases of rail station area-based redevelopment.

The tables on the next two pages summarize information on the three case study cities and the projects. Additional details on the transport infrastructure and urban redevelopment compo-nents of the three projects are presented below.

1. The new Berlin Central Station (Hauptbahnhof ), and the Redevelopment of the Lehrter Stadtquartier/Heidestrasse and the Humboldthafen

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the


The Three Cities Compared

Berlin London New York

City Population13 3.4 million 7.5 million 8 million

Region Population13 6 million 12–19 million 18–20 million

Urban Area13 891 km2 1600 km2 830 km2

Urban Density8 3,800 pop/km2 4,800 pop/km2 9,600 pop/km2

Urban-regional Structure13 Strong, multi-nodal urban core with a steep density gradient

Strong, multi-nodal urban core with a modestly steep density gradient

Strong, multi-nodal urban core with a very steep density gradient

Gross City Product13 US$33,170 per capita US$49,000 per capita US$56,106 per capita

Urban Economy Size and Rank9

US$75 billion, 69th US$452 billion, 6th US$1.133 trillion, 2nd (after Tokyo)

Economy (Trend) Was slowly growing again before the international crisis

Growing, if not as dynamically as before

Growing, but international recession affects prospects

World City Status10 Gamma-levelCultural World City

Alpha-level FullService World City

Alpha-level FullService World City

Status in National Urban System

National capital,largest city in Germany

National capital,largest city in UK

National capital,largest city in US

Urban Politics: Mayor’s Approach and Party Affiliation

Fairly progressive,Social Democrat

Independent/Labour until recently, now conservative

Entrepreneurial,Independent/Republican


The Three Railway Station Sites

BerlinHauptbahnhof

LondonKing’s Cross/St. Pancras

New York CityPenn/Moynihan Station

The Rail Station as a “Space of Flow”

Nodal Functions? - Inter-city: ICE, i.e., (inter-)national hi-speed- Regional Rail- Local (S-Bahn, Bus)

- Inter-city: Eurostar, international hi-speed- Regional Rail- Local (Tube, Bus)

- Inter-city: Acela, i.e., inter-regional hi-speed- Regional Rail- Local (Metro, Bus)

New Rail Infrastructures Part of Rebuilding Plans?

Yes: multi-billion $ tunnel connection (opened May 2006). Still missing: North-south S-Bahn 21, U-Bahn 5/55, tram connections

Yes: Eurostar high-speed rail link (opened November 2007)

Yes: 7th Avenue subway extension (planned, but not approved yet)

Rebuilding of Train Station Building(s)?

Yes, entire station was newly constructed for more than €1.2 billion (opened May 2006)

Yes, ₤800-million restoration including a new Eurostar Terminal at St. Pancras (opened November 2007) and the new ₤400-million Western Concourse at King’s Cross (until 2012)

Yes, the multi-billion dollar plans involve moving (parts) of the station one block west and erecting a new building at the current site

Passenger Volumes 300,000 passengers/day N/A (combined annual ticket sales for regional rail: 25 million passengers/year, excluding tube volumes)

550,000 passengers/day

The Rail Station Area as a “Space of Place”Location Inner-city, adjacent to

new federal government quarter (across the Spree River)

Inner-city, in densely built-up neighborhoods (Camden and Islington)

Inner-city, in midtown Manhattan

Site Characteristics Station area sites are largely undeveloped/not built-up with significant structures

Station area site contains buildings for (light) industrial use, a nature park, and undeveloped parts

Station area site is built-up, redevelopment involves tear-down and/or re-use of other large buildings

Redevelopment History of the Site

Redevelopment interest started after fall of the Wall in 1989, several plans and proposals since

Several incarnations of redevelopment initiatives since the 1980s and 1990s

Initial proposal by Senator Moynihan in 1993, several different versions since

Current Redevelopment

“Lehrter Stadtquartier” and “Heidestrasse” by Vivico, “Humboldthafen” by Liegenschaftsfonds Berlin

“King’s Cross Central” by Argents St George

“Moynihan Station West/MSG” (at Farley) and “Moynihan Station East” (at Penn) by Vornado and Related Co.


The Three Railway Station Sites

BerlinHauptbahnhof

LondonKing’s Cross/St. Pancras

New York CityPenn/Moynihan Station

The Rail Station as a “Space of Flow”

Nodal Functions? - Inter-city: ICE, i.e., (inter-)national hi-speed- Regional Rail- Local (S-Bahn, Bus)

- Inter-city: Eurostar, international hi-speed- Regional Rail- Local (Tube, Bus)

- Inter-city: Acela, i.e., inter-regional hi-speed- Regional Rail- Local (Metro, Bus)

New Rail Infrastructures Part of Rebuilding Plans?

Yes: multi-billion $ tunnel connection (opened May 2006). Still missing: North-south S-Bahn 21, U-Bahn 5/55, tram connections

Yes: Eurostar high-speed rail link (opened November 2007)

Yes: 7th Avenue subway extension (planned, but not approved yet)

Rebuilding of Train Station Building(s)?

Yes, entire station was newly constructed for more than €1.2 billion (opened May 2006)

Yes, ₤800-million restoration including a new Eurostar Terminal at St. Pancras (opened November 2007) and the new ₤400-million Western Concourse at King’s Cross (until 2012)

Yes, the multi-billion dollar plans involve moving (parts) of the station one block west and erecting a new building at the current site

Passenger Volumes 300,000 passengers/day N/A (combined annual ticket sales for regional rail: 25 million passengers/year, excluding tube volumes)

550,000 passengers/day

The Rail Station Area as a “Space of Place”Location Inner-city, adjacent to

new federal government quarter (across the Spree River)

Inner-city, in densely built-up neighborhoods (Camden and Islington)

Inner-city, in midtown Manhattan

Site Characteristics Station area sites are largely undeveloped/not built-up with significant structures

Station area site contains buildings for (light) industrial use, a nature park, and undeveloped parts

Station area site is built-up, redevelopment involves tear-down and/or re-use of other large buildings

Redevelopment History of the Site

Redevelopment interest started after fall of the Wall in 1989, several plans and proposals since

Several incarnations of redevelopment initiatives since the 1980s and 1990s

Initial proposal by Senator Moynihan in 1993, several different versions since

Current Redevelopment

“Lehrter Stadtquartier” and “Heidestrasse” by Vivico, “Humboldthafen” by Liegenschaftsfonds Berlin

“King’s Cross Central” by Argents St George

“Moynihan Station West/MSG” (at Farley) and “Moynihan Station East” (at Penn) by Vornado and Related Co.

reunification of Germany in 1990, Berlin became subject to massive processes of urban restructuring. Multiple master plan and urban design competitions were held for the high-profile “starchitecture”-oriented mega-project redevelopment of Potsdamer Platz led by Sony and Daimler (Lehrer 2002; Roost 2008), as well as for the new government quarter around the Reichstag Building and the Brandenburg Gate. But Berlin suffered from severe economic decline and high unemployment, coupled with maladministration and decreased federal subsidies, leaving the city-state effectively bankrupt in the late 1990s (Krätke 2004; Mayer 2002). All attempts to position Berlin as a leading “global city” and internationally renowned service metropolis remained unfulfilled, even before the global financial crisis (Cochrane and Jones 1999;

Figure 1: Interior view of Berlin’s new Central Station (Haupt-bahnhof). Source: © Deutsche Bahn.

Läpple 2006).11 The local government places strong emphasis on integrating private actors and interests in the realization of ambitious development plans, and a series of strategic plans exemplify the city’s unbowed reliance on visionary and comprehensive plan making.

1.1 Berlin Central Station (Hauptbahnhof ): The Transport Infrastructure Mega-Project

The decision to build the new Hauptbahnhof as a new central crossing station at the approximate location of the former Lehrter Urban Rail Station was the realiza-tion of a long-time dream of Berlin transport plan-ners and engineers. A key decision was made in the early 1990s to construct a new billion-dollar tunnel

Figure 2: Aerial view of the redevelopment areas around Berlin Central Station and the Humboldt Harbor basin (This rendering does not show the vast Heidestrasse site north of the station, but it illustrates the area’s close proximity to the Chancellery, Reichstag, and Brandenburg Gate on the other side of the Spree River.). Source: © Berlin Partner GmbH.


underneath the Spree River and the Tiergarten Park as the centerpiece of a comprehensive restructuring of the metropolitan rail transport infrastructure system (see also Peters 2008). Berlin’s rail infrastructure had been divided and neglected after World War II, and no central crossing station existed for regional and intra-regional travel. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof was built for €1.2 billion as a new flagship rail station designed to impress as a piece of both architecture and engineer-ing. Advertised by the German Rail as “the largest and most modern crossing station in Europe,” it was officially opened after years of delays in May 2006 to coincide with the World Cup. The new station, with fourteen platforms at two different levels, is suppos-edly frequented by 300,000 passengers and by 1,100 long-distance and regional trains per day. (These fig-ures include local surface rail S-Bahn traffic, however.) It is also home to 161,000 square feet of retail space on three levels with extended shopping hours. But three years after opening, the station remains uncon-nected to the local underground and light-rail systems.

1.2 Berlin Central Station Area: The Urban Redevelopment Mega-Project(s)

Given its proximity to the former Berlin Wall, the area around the new station, located across the river from the new federal government quarter, largely consists of inner-city greyfields. While the area south of the river now features the Chancellery, the Norman Foster-upgraded Reichstag Parliament Building, and the refurbished Brandenburg Gate, the greyfields adjacent to the new Central Station are still awaiting redevelopment. The areas north and south of the station are controlled by the Vivico Real Estate Company. Vivico was founded by the German

federal government in 2001 to market former railway properties. The fully privatized company, which has a total property portfolio of about 74 million square feet, was bought by the Austrian property company, CA Immo, in early December 2007. Vivico plans to develop the Lehrter Stadtquartier according to a master plan by the German architect Oswald Matthias Ungers. This plan consists of a grouping of seven separate buildings, including one tall office building, allowing for a total of 1,550,000 square feet of office space. A professional master plan competition for the northern Heidestrasse area is currently in progress; the competition guidelines supposedly foresee an overall development potential of up to 6,566,040 square feet for mixed uses. In 2007, the Heidestrasse site was also the subject of the annual Schinkel Competition for young architects, resulting in substantial attention and press coverage. The hub function of the train station is a central factor in Vivico’s marketing strategy.12 The Humboldthafen (Humboldt Harbor) to the east of the station is being developed by the Liegenschaftsfonds Berlin, a real estate holding company owned by the state of Berlin. The Liegenschaftsfonds has devel-oped a detailed master plan with specific planning restrictions for the three-hectare site and divided it into individual building lots that are to be sold off in phases. The total building volume is 1,270,690 square feet, of which 30% is supposed to be housing. The sale and marketing of the high-profile lots is cur-rently ongoing, with continued local press coverage.

2. The Redevelopment of the King’s Cross and St. Pancras Station Area in London

A city atop the global urban hierarchy of late capital-ism, London has been in a perpetual state of spatial


urban restructuring for decades. Much of this was accomplished via the execution of ambitious high-profile mega-projects. Recent examples include the redevelopment of the Docklands in the 1980s, the redesign of Paternoster Square around St. Paul’s Cathedral as well as other central squares (e.g., Leicester, Piccadilly Circus, and Trafalgar), the expan-sion of the center around Liverpool Street Station (Broadgate, Spitalfields Market, and Bishopsgate), the construction of the Millennium Bridge and Dome, and the opening of the Tate Modern Gallery (Bodenschatz 2005). Urban planning approaches have recently evolved from a deregulated approach in the Thatcher era, to an increasingly urban design-con-scious approach in the late 1980s, to a first upswing in public sector-led initiatives before the millennium, and eventually to an increasing emphasis on urban re-centralization and a return to strategic planning during the Blair era. This also involved the creation

of the Greater London Authority and the election of Ken Livingston as mayor of London in 2000, as well as the publication of the London Plan in 2004. Moreover, the national New Labour government began propagating an “urban renaissance” agenda in the late 1990s (Bodenschatz 2006; Colomb 2007).

2.1 King’s Cross and St. Pancras: The Transport Infrastructure Mega-Project

In 1996, after many years of controversy and un-certainty, the government made the crucial decision to change the Eurostar high-speed rail terminus from Waterloo Station to St. Pancras and bring the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL) into the station at high grade. The CTRL was always explicitly ex-pected to generate significant regeneration benefits in the area around the stations, most notably around

Figure 3: King’s Cross Central mixed-use development illus-trative build-out. Source: © Miller Hare/King’s Cross Central Limited Partnership.

Figure 4: Rendering of Granary Square, at the center of the King’s Cross Central redevelopment site. Source: © GMJ/King’s Cross Central Limited Partnership.


St. Pancras/King’s Cross in inner-city London, but also along the so-called Thames Gateway at Stratford (the site for the 2012 London Olympics) and Ebbsfleet. The Eurostar’s arrival at St. Pancras brought about a multi-million dollar refurbishment of the station. Meanwhile, London Underground is undertaking a major upgrading of its tube links at King’s Cross/St. Pancras, the busiest link in the London tube network, while the Department of Transport, together with Network Rail, agreed to carry out major improvements to King’s Cross Station, including: the addition of a new platform, the con-struction of a completely new Western Concourse three times the current size, and the replacement of the old Southern Concourse with a piazza area.

2.2 King’s Cross Central: The (Main) Urban Redevelopment Mega-Project

The local authority of Camden has wanted to stimulate economic activity on the 134-acre site since the 1970s. It finally produced a strategy document calling for a comprehensive approach to the whole site in the mid 1980s that ambitiously limited office development in favor of relatively low-density mixed development (Fainstein 2001, 119). But the land was then controlled by the still publicly-owned British Rail and the privatized National Freight Consortium, and British Rail instead championed a proposal favoring over 6 million square feet of office space. A local community group opposing the plans, the King’s Cross Railway Lands Group, was established around that time, and remains active today. The proposal fell apart in the early 1990s, and the redevelopment of the site was later made impossible for many years because of the Channel link-related infrastructure

works taking place on the site. But, anticipating the timely completion of the CTRL link into St. Pancras by late 2007, the local boroughs of Camden and Islington issued a comprehensive ninety-five-page planning and development brief for the King’s Cross Opportunity Area, detailing their mixed-use, “urban renaissance”-oriented development preferences for the site in 2004. Already in 2000, the development team, Argent St George had been selected as the preferred developer for the central portion of the site. In 2004, Argent St George, together with the site’s new owners (London Continental Railroad and the logistics firm, Excel), presented a detailed regeneration plan for a sixty-seven-acre redevelop-ment. This redevelopment featured 8 million square feet of mixed uses, including 5 million square feet of office space, 495,000 square feet of retail, up to 2,000 new homes, twenty new streets, and multiple public spaces. The plans are awaiting implementation, now that the new Eurostar link is fully operational and the site is finally available for redevelopment.

3. The Redevelopment of Penn/Moynihan Station in Midtown Manhattan

Like London, New York is a first-rate global city (Sassen 1991; Fainstein 2001). The common critical urbanist narrative is that New York exemplifies local planning and governance’s function as a facilitator of neoliberal globalization by subsidizing business, dis-placing the urban poor, dismantling the local welfare state, and replacing long-term planning aimed at the public good for the benefit of short-term economic benefits for the city’s business elites (e.g., Sites 2003; Hackworth 2007). However, under the current ad-ministration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the city


has witnessed a return of comprehensive planning in-volving a heightened attention to strategic, long-term visions that explicitly address public interest goals. There is a recent proliferation of mega-projects of almost unprecedented scale and ambition. Commonly carried out in the name of economic progress, these projects include office, commercial, and housing developments. They also involve efforts to improve the city’s transport infrastructure, expand or enhance public space, or contribute in other ways to the city’s attractiveness as a place to visit, live, or work. Apart from Penn/Moynihan Station, several additional rail sites play a prominent role in the city’s recent renewal and restructuring efforts, particularly the Hudson Yards in Manhattan, the Atlantic Yards Terminal in central Brooklyn, and of course the rail hub at Ground Zero. These redevelopment projects exem-plify the shift in New York’s development patterns and practices towards “big, long-term visions” (former Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, quoted in Fainstein 2005, 1). The projects have also attracted considerable

opposition, however, and are criticized for replicating many of the qualities that turned people against urban renewal in the 1960s and 1970s (Fainstein 2005, 2).

3.1 Penn/Moynihan Station: The Transport Infrastructure Mega-Project

The transport infrastructure and urban redevelopment elements are tightly interwoven in this case, and unlike in the Berlin and London cases, the station building has not been (re-)constructed yet. The original 1911 Pennsylvania Station was demolished in 1964 to make room for Madison Square Garden, which still sits above the tracks. Despite million-dollar renovations carried out in the 1990s, Penn Station remains a badly lit, low-ceilinged, underground maze of tunnels and corridors, sharply contrasting with the adjacent Farley Post Office, the historic façade of which is reminiscent of the old Penn Station. Meanwhile, Penn Station serves up to 550,000 passengers a day (compared to

Figure 5: The Farley Post Office, the proposed future site of Moynihan Station. Source: © Annie Nyborg,http://www.flickr.com/photos/masnyc/345539757/sizes/l/.

Figure 6: At one point, the complex, multi-billion-dollar urban redevelopment scheme even included plans for a relocation of Madison Square Garden. Source: © The New York Times.


140,000 at Grand Central Station), making it by far the busiest train station in all of North America.13

The station is home to intercity rail services operated by Amtrak along the busy Northeast Corridor, com-muter rail services operated by New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Rail Road, and six different subway lines. Current plans to expand capacity as well as improve the efficiency and aesthetics of Penn Station include the following elements (see also RPA 2008):

• Moynihan West: relocation of Amtrak servic-es to the eastern end of the Farley Post Office;

• Moynihan East: billion-dollar rehabilita-tion of the station under Madison Square Garden, including grand new entrances;

• Moynihan North: multi-billion-dollar construction of a new NJ Transit terminus for the new Hudson River tunnel (ARC) arriving at 34th street (This tunnel mega-project would double the number of trains coming into midtown from the west. The terminus is to have an underground pedestrian connection to Moynihan East.);

• Moynihan South: multi-billion dol-lar construction of three new platforms and five new tracks under the block south of Penn Station (Block 780);

• Relocation of 100,000 square feet of ra i l road backhouse operat ions of f -s i te to increase c i rcu la t ion space .

3.2 Penn/Moynihan Station: The Urban Redevelopment Mega-Project

Penn Station is located in the heart of bustling and densely built-up midtown Manhattan, between 7th and 8th Avenues and 31st and 33rd Streets. Redevelopment plans received a first major impetus in 1993 when long-time New York state senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, announced a concept to build a new Penn Station inside the structure of the historic Farley Post Office building one block west. Initial plans failed, but in 2005, the Hudson Yards rezoning was passed, creating a transit improvement bonus of up to 2.4 million square feet in addition to already existing air rights, designed to further incentivize development. That same year, the state selected Vornado Realty Trust and Related Companies to develop a new Moynihan Station at Farley. The details of the plans have undergone several changes since, with total costs once topping $3.2 billion. In 2007, the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) purchased the Farley building for $230 million from the US Postal Service and released a scoping document to initiate public review of an expanded project calling for a complex plan involving two new station buildings. The entire rezoning and redevelopment plan allowed for more than 5 million square feet of additional space, primarily for retail.14

Due to a financial shortfall of more than $1 billion, no agreement could be reached on the most ambitious version of the redevelopment plan, which would have included a relocation of Madison Square Garden to the west. These plans have since been toppled, and the Garden will be refurbished rather than relocated.


So What Kinds of “Urban Renaissances” Are We Talking About?

The brief descriptions of the three case studies above obviously do not do justice to the complexities of the individual cases. They are merely designed to underscore the magnitude of the projects, the high stakes involved, and the great interest these locales have generated among leading politicians, planners, developers, and other stakeholders. This concluding section discusses the cases from a comparative perspective, highlighting some of the common threads and key differences.

First off, the high-profile redevelopment of central rail stations and their surrounding areas in major cities on both sides of the Atlantic underlines the reinvigorated significance of rail-based infrastructures in the post-modern, postindustrial, post-Fordist urban regional fabric. Whereas modernist urbanism was strongly tied to a vision of a functionally segregated, car-oriented city, the emerging postmodern urbanism of the 21st

century is strongly linked to a vision of multi-nodal, polycentric urban regions featuring vibrant, attrac-tive, walkable cores where commercial, residential, and leisure uses are not separated but mixed.

The three projects also exemplify the new consensus which is emerging among transport experts, urban planners, and many political decision-makers: that in order to be sustainable, efficient, and successful in the future, cities and their surrounding regions need to be structured around high-capacity public transit networks, and that transport and land-use planning must be better integrated. Several decades of large-scale investments in high-speed rail networks have already begun to alter both inter- and intra-urban

connectivity in Europe. Thanks to the $8 billion in high-speed rail funding inserted into the federal stimulus package in February 2009, this policy also received an enormous boost in the United States. Meanwhile, the rise of a transit-oriented “New Urbanism” agenda in North America (Calthorpe and Fulton 2001; Cervero 2004; Dittmar and Ohland 2003; Dunphy et al. 2005; Dutton 2000) and the corresponding “urban renaissance” discourse in Europe, especially in Great Britain (Bodenschatz 2005; Bodenschatz 2006; Colomb 2007), provides decision-makers with strong, additional, normative policy momentum in favor of integrated, rail-based transport and land-use development, and hence also a strong impetus for rail station area redevelopment. In Britain, the 1999 Urban Task Force Report, “Towards an Urban Renaissance,” triggered an extensive debate over government-sponsored urban regeneration and over the unequally distributed benefits and social consequences of gentrification (Imrie and Raco 2003). Many recent international case studies con-firm that urban renaissance initiatives often exclude or displace vulnerable residents (Porter and Shaw 2008; Punter 2009). Edwards (2009, 23) makes this point with specific reference to King’s Cross:

The composition of the [King’s Cross Central redevelopment] scheme, particularly its lim-ited provision of affordable social housing to rent and its strong provision of corporate office space, has been the main source of conflict. . . . Regeneration is not seen as primarily a process serving the low- and middle-income people in whose name regeneration policy was developed: rather it is seen . . . as essentially a business ac-tivity aimed at growth and competitiveness (Ed-wards 2009, 23).

This certainly also rings true in New York and Berlin.


However, inner-city housing has remained compara-tively affordable in Berlin, so there is less public outrage over the prospect that moderately-priced subsidized housing might play a relatively minor role in rede-velopment plans at prime locations near the station.

Meanwhile, the physical renaissance of grandiose rail-way buildings unquestionably carries strong symbolic meaning. The 20th-century automobile age is over. Today, “peak oil” threatens to affect future air and car travel. In this context, inner-city railway stations shed their grimy image and remake themselves into glitzy, high-speed travel hubs. They once again become a preferred locus for representative “public” architec-ture, be it via the extensive remodeling of existing architectural gems (St. Pancras), the new construction of expensive glass palaces (Berlin Hauptbahnhof ), or complex rebuilding efforts (Moynihan Station). In all cases, however, critics complain about the overly sanitized and highly commercialized atmo-sphere in the new stations. Upon entering the Berlin Hauptbahnhof, for example, visitors are essentially forced into a multi-story mall, the internal layout of which optimizes pedestrian throughput past shops.

Interestingly, with a few exceptions (Euralille prob-ably being the most important one), rail station sites’ attractiveness as new locations for businesses, leisure and entertainment, or residential uses still depends much more on their local and regional connectivity than on their long-distance connections. For example, Penn Station’s attractiveness as a redevelopment site has comparatively little to do with Amtrak’s long-distance Acela service, but everything to do with its function as the most important transit hub in the entire metro region. Conversely, the fact that the Berlin Hauptbahnhof is still relatively disconnected

from the rest of the city and its dense local transit system partially explains why the redevelopment of the area is still lagging. By the late 1990s, it became increasingly clear that the city was not growing as originally predicted. The office and retail markets were becoming overbuilt, and demand was limited, so planners and politicians gave priority to other large-scale redevelopment initiatives, especially around the Alexanderplatz transit hub and along the Spree waterfront in the east. In New York, efforts to rede-velop Penn Station are currently competing with the gigantic Hudson Yards redevelopment “giga-project” immediately to the west, the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, and the rebuilding of Ground Zero. And the experience of King’s Cross in London in the early 1990s, when the first major redevelopment plan fell apart, further underscores the volatility of these mega-projects to the whims of globally con-nected local economies and real estate markets.

Railway mega-projects have doubtlessly emerged as crucial loci for trans-scalar urban-regional policy-making. An important aspect for future comparative study is the ability of different actors to shape or affect the overall project setup and outcomes. Aside from planners and politicians, this particularly concerns the roles of transportation agencies and authorities, privatized railway companies, and private developers. On the surface, the presented cases seem indicative of a “roll-out neoliberalism” (Peck and Tickell 2002) in which the pursuit of various public interest goals, such as providing a safe and efficient transportation system, or creating representative public spaces in the urban core, is handed over to private or privatized profit-seeking actors. But it is also crucial to reiterate that railway stations and their pertaining infrastructures are gigantic public


works projects dependent on hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in support from federal and state governments (including so-called “budget neutral” expenses such as precious air development rights). There is thus an inherent obligation on the part of public officials and public servants to maxi-mize the tangible public benefits of these projects.

The trickiness is that these benefits are both hard to quantify and unevenly distributed across space and time. How does one quantify the symbolic value of a “reborn” or newly built railway station full of architectural splendor? These new-yet-old “cathe-drals of mobility” certainly inspire civic pride and quickly become sites of interest to visitors and locals alike. But admiration and awe alone hardly trigger persistent changes in people’s mobility patterns, so unless these redevelopment efforts are coupled with individually tangible benefits to the way people move about (or dwell) in the city, it becomes difficult to justify the often staggering cost of these new pieces of “starchitecture.” And in densely populated, widely transit-accessible city-regions such as New York, London, or Berlin, there are definite opportunity costs to concentrating billions of dollars of both public and private funds at select privileged nodes. Sustainable transport activists therefore typically argue that the “renaissance” and livability of the city as a whole would receive a bigger boost if funds were instead ap-plied towards improving local bus, rail, bicycle, or pe-destrian infrastructures as well as regional rail services. The case of Berlin also dramatically illustrates that unless the rail station itself is properly intermodally integrated with the rest of the transit system, rail sta-tion proximity does not necessarily equal good (local) accessibility. Both in Berlin and London, due to the sites’ vast expanses and complex terrains, the stations

themselves are not necessarily in convenient walking distance to all sections of the redevelopment areas.

So, in the end, inner-city railway station area re-development initiatives evoke ambivalent reactions among critical urbanists. The initiatives harbor much potential to serve as flagship developments for a new visionary future, but as always, the devil lies in the details. To date, much of their positive potential remains contested or unrealized.

Deike Peters is director of the DFG Research Group, “Megaprojects,” at Berlin University of Technology’s Center for Metropolitan Studies (www.megaprojects.metropolitanstudies.de).

Lead Photograph

Berlin’s new Central Station (Hauptbahnhof ), “The largest and most modern central crossing station in Europe.” Source: © Wolfgang Staudt, http://www.flickr.com/photos/wolfgangstaudt/2812991484/sizes/l/.

Notes

1 Please note that both projects (or at least major compo-nents thereof ) and the related research are still in progress, and that this paper merely attempts to summarize early insights from what will be a multi-year research endeavor.2 Note that only a minor portion of all this literature is com-


parative in nature. If it is, it generally includes two or at most three cases (most prominently Saskia Sassen’s authoritative “Global City” treatise on New York, London, and Tokyo, as well as Janet Abu-Lughod’s study of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles as “America’s Global Cities”). 3 In fact, simultaneous processes of dispersal and re-cen-tralization affect all “globalizing” cities with significant ties to the global economy, not just those at the very top of the global urban hierarchy (e.g., Keil 1993; Brenner and Keil 2006). The more encompassing term, “globalizing,” coined by Marcuse and van Kempen similarly reinforces the notion that “globalization is a process, not a state” (Marcuse and van Kempen 2000, xvii). 4 Yet their insights are limited to a western European perspective and mostly focused on second- or third-tier metropolises (e.g., Lisbon, Naples, Copenhagen). Moreover, many of their case studies deal with urban subcenters rather than the inner city (e.g., the Amsterdam Zuidas Station as opposed to Central Station).5 “Premium (or secessionist) network spaces” are defined as “a combination of urban and networked spaces that are configured precisely to the needs of socioeconomically wealthy groups and so at the same time are increasingly withdrawn from the wider citizenry and cityscape” (See Graham and Marvin 2001, 427).6 The case studies only covered pages 275–336 of the study and included descriptions of the following five projects: Bremen Promotion Park, Essen Passarea, Frankfurt 21, Munich 21, and Stuttgart 21.7 Two examples are Holgerson’s (2007) master’s thesis on King’s Cross, which focuses on class conflict, and Thamma-ruangsri’s (2003) Ph.D. dissertation in architecture, which uses space syntax to analyze rail stations in central London.8 All data and figures were assembled from the Urban Age documentation website put together by urban researchers at the London School of Economics, see www.urban-age.net (accessed March 7, 2008).9 All figures were taken from http://www.citymayors.com/

statistics/richest-cities-2005.html (accessed January 4, 2008). GDP figures include cities and their surrounding urban areas in 2005 and were based on PricewaterhouseC-oopers estimates as well as UN urban agglomeration defini-tions and population estimates.10 This categorization is taken from the frequently quoted 1999 GaWC Inventory of World Cities, according to which London and New York, along with Paris and Tokyo, are the leading Alpha-level global cities in the world, with Los Angeles and five other cities completing the Alpha-group of “full service world cities.” This group is followed by ten Beta-level “major world cities” (e.g., San Francisco and Mexico City). The list is then completed by a group of about thirty-five Gamma-level “minor” world cities, which includes Berlin.11 With a gross domestic product (GDP) of US$74 billion in 2002, Berlin still managed a place amidst the top ten rankings of European cities. This is a far cry, however, from the world cities of London and Paris, the GDPs of which were US$236 billion and US$132 billion, respectively.12 To quote from the Vivico project brochure on the Leh-rter Stadtquartier (p.7), the site is “the unique location in the heart of the city—the hub of major traffic routes. Here local and long distance trains converge, there are fast connections to the motorways and airports, and the new Tiergarten tunnel makes it easier to travel in by car. Even the river Spree features the perfect mode of transportation with its own special watertaxis. The Lehrter Stadtquartier is the capital’s central hub which is guaranteed to fulfill all mobility requirements.”13 Data in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Sta-tion_(New_York_City) (accessed March 3, 2008).14 Key data were taken from the ESDC fact sheet. The fact sheet and the detailed Draft Scope of Work for the plan are both available at http://www.empire.state.ny.us/moynihanstation/default.asp.


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162 Critical Planning Critical Planning Summer 2006Summer 2009 · Luca Bertolini (Bertolini 1996, 1998; Bertolini and Spit 1998) is now more than ten years old. More importantly,