The high pressure on inner-city areas to transform due to structural change is made clear by the effects occurring in German cities. Jobs and infrastructures in cities are changing because of the transition from an industrial to a knowledge- and service-oriented economy. The increased need for qualified and specialized professionals as well as new jobs requires restructuring in the infrastructural and urban areas. On the other hand, there is the loss of jobs in the old branches of industry, representing the challenge in overcoming social injustice. The work focuses on industrial production areas in the urban space and their importance for the sustainability of cities, in the context of the productive city. The investigation in this work includes the derivation of morphological typologies of the productive city, from the dimensional preconditions of the production process and the spatial stock, as well as the potential for reintegration using the example of a specific site. The application on a real area with existing factors shall provide answers to industry suitable for the city, and as catalysts of a mixed neighborhood. The method includes a clustering of production facilities based on a catalog of criteria. The grouping of similar forms should enable the derivation of typologies. Second, a spatial analysis of an inner-city industrial area is carried out, which is tentatively overlaid with the previously determined types. This forms the third methodological step to obtain knowledge about the potential of urban production areas in the sense of the productive city.
As the daughter of Greek parents, who grew up in Germany, Alexandra Radounikli graduated 2014 in Architecture. She has worked as an architect and project manager in planning offices for cooperative urban planning in Berlin, architecture in Rotterdam and industrial construction in Cologne. Her projects include the urban development concept for Nuremberg, the development plan in Bremen, the new HARIBO headquarter and production site and a BASF factory for battery components. She has also been teaching at the University of Wuppertal in the Chair of Urban Design, in which she does her doctorate.