The politics of green in Leinefelde’s housing environment

OpenAlex İngilizce

Far from being neutral, green space emerges as a dynamic medium, reshaped and reinterpreted through ideological discourses and changing urban strategies. This article focuses on Leinefelde, a small town in former East Germany, where green spaces within a social housing environment provide a framework for examining how these transformations are articulated spatially through the relationship between housing, landscape, and everyday practices. The study adopts an interpretive approach grounded in historical analysis, integrating architectural critique with planning discourse. Thus, it draws on GDR-era primary sources, particularly the architectural journal Deutsche Architektur, to trace spatial and functional changes over time. This study is structured into two phases, separated by the Wende, and traces how the socialist collective landscape of the housing estate was transformed after reunification. Within a state-led restructuring process shaped by welfare-state policies, this transformation produced a fragmented system of green spaces, resulting from 1990s master planning and 2000s housing-scale interventions within the Plattenbau fabric. Through the lens of green space, the study reveals that this fragmentation extends beyond urban planning, taking shape through the spatial logic of the housing environment, where green space becomes an integral component of dwelling structures and a key medium for negotiating public–private relations.