2023-11-18 11:56:00
Culture satellite cities
Scholz the builder
As of: 1:29 p.m. | Reading time: 3 minutes
Like a Roman fever dream: high-rise buildings on the edge of Colonia
Quelle: picture alliance / Geisler-Fotopress
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In the housing shortage, the Chancellor is again promoting building on greenfield sites – like in the 1970s. A bestseller was already published back then: In the 17th volume of Asterix, Caesar planned to wear down the indomitable Gauls with a new housing estate. Olaf Scholz should have read the comic.
“Live like God in Gaul.” This is what the marble tablets promise Baumeister Square advertises his new building settlement in the northwest of the Roman Empire: “Less than three weeks from the city center of Rome and just under a week from the city center of Lutetia.” Quadratus plans to clear the forests of Armorica and build a satellite city in the countryside. Julius Caesar, in turn, pursued the strategy of breaking the last resistance of the Gauls by urbanizing the conquered province. A geometrically laid out city of typical buildings around the village of the indomitable warrior Asterix. “The forest,” the emperor orders, “will be felled!”
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Building on greenfields
At the beginning of last week in Heilbronn, the German Chancellor advocated a renaissance of such satellite towns on greenfield sites. “We probably need 20 new districts in the most popular cities and regions – just like in the 1970s,” said Olaf Scholz and called for a major rethink back to fast-growing residential areas made up of high-rise buildings and prefabricated buildings. Whereupon the German city planners and architects have already announced that they will bitterly resist him, the little Caesar of Heilbronn.
Published in 1974 “The satellite city” by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo in German. In the 17th volume of the heroic saga about the Gaul Asterix, the banlieues in France were caricatured. Quadratus was an early brutalist, a Roman Le Corbusier as a visionary of modular construction for the masses. In Germany, too, the satellite towns were growing out of the ground at that time. As social housing estates in the west, as a state housing program in the east. The Berlin dialect edition of the comic is called “Die Platte Jottweedee”.
Also available as a console game: “Asterix – The Satellite City”
Quelle: picture alliance / dpa
Like many architects in the 1970s, Quadratus is convinced of the triumph of his satellite city over the barbarism of old buildings: “Long live progress!” The floor plan of the standardized apartment, the Cenacula Type 1, is celebrated on the advertising board. “An orgy with the neighbors” ensures sociability. Other needs can be satisfied within walking distance in the Kauf-Domus. But all social utopias are disenchanted in everyday life. When the bard Troubadix moves in and plays music on staircase A, last floor, number CLV, he rents out the entire block. The attractiveness of the buildings and the architectural aesthetics also suffer from the adversities of living together. The village elder Methusalix is the first to say it: the houses of Quadratus are “hideous”.
Even temporary use by the Roman army could not save the satellite city. It is cleared and dismantled by the Gauls. One Gaul says: “The building wasn’t bad.” But a second Gaul objects: “Maybe, but these modern buildings are not exactly solidly built.” In the end, forest and meadows triumph over the ruins again. New buildings age poorly.
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