162 Critical Planning Summer 2006 Critical Planning Summer 2009 ...

concept of a “renaissance of rail stations” in western
Europe (specifically Germany) was promoted in the
1997 volume Renaissance der Bahnhöfe. This volume
was published as a companion to the German biennial
building exhibition with the same name, but
none of the contributions were based upon original
empirical research. Bartkowiak (2004) looked at a
handful of different rail station area redevelopment
projects in Germany, but the related case studies
were brief, overly descriptive, and covered projects
that have since been abandoned. 6 Meanwhile,
Wucherpfennig (2005) used a discourse-analytical
“new cultural geography” perspective to critique
the rail station restructuring concepts promoted
by Deutsche Bahn (German Rail) since the 1990s.
There are also some selected case studies of rail station
areas as part of larger studies of redevelopment
mega-projects (e.g., Simons 2003; Fainstein 2001).
Other singular case studies are limited to certain
specific aspects of the rail station redevelopment. 7
All of this contrasts with a much larger literature
on waterfront and harbor redevelopment, however,
where coverage through both in-depth individual
case studies and internationally comparative research
is much more prominent. (For a good overview see
Schubert 2002; for other recent German contributions
also see Schubert and Polinna 2007; Pütz and
Rehner 2007; and the case studies in Dziomba 2008).
Harborfront redevelopments have received more attention
from urban theory scholars because they have
been more prominently redeveloped as prime tourist
and creative spaces that include residential uses.
Rail Station Redevelopment Mega-Projects in
Berlin, London, and New York
Qualitative, case-oriented approaches produce findings
derived from real-world settings where the “phenomenon
of interest unfolds naturally” (Patton 2001,
39; see also Ragin 1987). Researchers have to navigate
a delicate balance between the need for a consistent
research design and the need to remain sensitive to
the particularities of each case. Issues of convergence
and divergence, and locally and nationally divergent
paths must be expected and explicitly acknowledged
(Flyvbjerg 2006; Pierre 2005; John 2005; Denters
and Mossberger 2006; Kantor and Savitch 2005).
The three cases below represent one specific type
of rail station area redevelopment, namely highprofile
comprehensive mega-projects involving
major inner-city rail stations in major metropolises.
All three cases are really multi-part mega-projects
consisting of a transport infrastructure component
and one or more urban redevelopment components.
The related planning processes are naturally
extremely complex, involving many public, publicprivate,
and civil society actors with both converging
and diverging interests. Specifically, all three
cases exhibit the following common characteristics:
• The stations are located in major, leading
European and North American urban
regions (“world/globalizing cities”)
with a multi-nodal, polycentric structure.
• The rail stations are central terminals located
in central urban locations in or immediately
adjacent to the inner city or downtown area.
• The actual stations were/are to be completely
or substantially rebuilt and the
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