6. Audi, Siemens, Ikea, Haus der Kunst, Igreja Universal: Five Urban Strategies

As the next major step in this book, I want to bring the conceptual background developed before in direct touch with the reality of the urban sphere. This does not mean that the framework I offered is merely a tool to understand a new urban reality that has already established itself to the full extent possible. To me, it seems as if most economic, cultural or social institutions do not yet engage with the urban realm to the degree it would be possible and make strategic sense for them. And yet, there are urban strategies that seem encompassing enough to justify a closer examination at this point. This examination is what I will do next. And while each of the cases presented below is certainly unique, with its own strategic drivers, its own problems, and its own spatial specifics, there are also certain perspectives from which these cases can be analyzed in a very similar manner. Specifically, each of them seems to have an own way of understanding the city as a resource along the lines developed in Chap. 5. This is why I will structure each of the sub-chapters below in a similar way: I will first present the individual case in question with a focus on its strategic specifics and on the ways in which it develops an own innovation-related approach to the city, and also an own understanding of the urban sphere. I will then present in a very concise manner the way in which each institution understands and “uses” the city as a resource. This will not take place in an uncritical manner, in the sense that all strategies would be treated as successfully urban and resource-oriented. Rather, I will ask whether the resource-oriented strategy in question really manages to exploit the city as resource in the most encompassing possible way. In at least one case (Igreja Universal), the result will be that this is by no means the case.