Not far from today’s ECB, on the site of the former freight station east, the developer Max Baum acquired, back in 2003, a roughly 40,000 square metre site between Ferdinand-Happ-Straße on the south side and the railway tracks on the north.

The Feldstrasse residential development lies half way between the main station and the east station in Offenbach city centre. The narrow plot, once an extension of the railway embankment with retaining walls bordering the street, first had to be made usable as building land by removing material and reconsolidating the ground.

Bremen is home to one of the largest urban development projects currently ongoing in Europe: Überseestadt, in the west of this Hanseatic city. Begun in 2000, a 300-hectare site – a former industrial port area – is being transformed in stages into a mixed-use urban district with commercial and service businesses, leisure and cultural facilities and housing.

On a plot on the edge of Calenberger Neustadt, close to the city centre, a total of 135 subsidized, cooperative and freehold apartments and a children's day nursery were built by Stefan Forster and his team. The new building takes its cue from the typical 19th-century block-edge development common in the vicinity, the design of each façade adapted slightly in response to the different situations.

Between the new and the old world: Güterplatz in Frankfurt links the district of Gallus and the area around the main station with the new Europa district and the trade fair centre. On the one side small-scale perimeter-block development and a multicultural urban mix, on the other hypermodern residential and office towers next to the Skyline Plaza shopping centre.

Der Lameygarten ist eine aus dem 19. Jahrhundert stammende Parkanlage, die im Innenbereich des länglichen Straßenblocks R7 im Zentrum von Mannheim liegt. An der unbebaut gebliebenen Südwestecke des Parks führt der siebengeschossige Neubau den Blockrand entlang der Straße fort und markiert den Eingang zur Grünanlage.

This residential development is situated on Sonnemannstraße, immediately opposite the main entrance to the European Central Bank headquarters. It consists of a group of four city buildings: two existing late 19th-century buildings flanked by a new construction either side.

Situation … Demand for affordable housing in cities and urban areas is growing; at the same time building land is an ever scarcer resource. Meeting that demand and reducing land use are twin challenges for local-authority planners. How can they create much needed affordable housing and at the same time make better use of limited space?

The housing development on Mörfelder Landstraße sits on a narrow plot between the road and the rail tracks, not far from the two stations Südbahnhof and Lokalbahnhof. It replaces a petrol station, a car-repair workshop and a single-storey car park in an urban location on what was classified as a brownfield site.

For 60 years “Benjamin Franklin Village” was the biggest housing complex of the US armed forces in Germany. Following the withdrawal of the US military in 2011 the City of Mannheim had the opportunity of turning this area, enclosed and separate for many decades, into a lively urban district.

Von-Bernus-Park is a quiet, almost hidden spot in the western part of the district of Bockenheim in Frankfurt. From the 1970s onwards, next to the main entrance on Schloßstraße (which means castle street), there was an unremarkable flat-roofed building, occupied by various cafés and bars over the years. This building was sold shortly after 2010 to project developers Ardi Goldman and Ronny Weiner.

The Wohnungsgenossenschaft Düsseldorf-Ost is one of the largest and longest-standing cooperative housing associations in Düsseldorf. When in 2012 it decided to demolish one of its 1920s apartment blocks, on Unterrather Straße, it had clear goals.

This residential and office building is to be completed in the coming years at the southern entrance to Kronsberg Süd, a new district that has its origins in the development plans laid down for EXPO 2000. The plot, triangular in shape with one blunted tip, is bordered on the south by a public square and to the north by a communal courtyard for the residents.

In 2010 the City of Hannover developed the “City 2020+” concept for unused sites in the inner city. One of these sites is Klagesmarkt, which before restructuring was used for years as a car park and for a weekly market.

Stefan Forster is constructing 171 apartments on a disused industrial and commercial site in the city-centre district of Vahrenwald-List. The design takes up the perimeter block structure, connecting to the existing development on the south side.