By Eric Horgos

It has been a few days since the most recent Steering Committee meeting on June 22, but something that keynote speaker Bruce Katz said at the Steering Committee Dinner back on March 9th has continued to resonate with me. When asked in the casual Q&A session what successful metropolitan regions he had in mind for our four-state community to model itself on, Mr. Katz mentioned the southwestern German city of Stuttgart. How right Mr. Katz is. 

  The mountainous region of southwestern Germany, around Stuttgart, is known as Swabia (Schwaben – in German), which is totally encompassed by the bureaucratically drawn borders of the State (Land – in German) of Baden-Wurttemberg. It is similar to our four-state community in that is possesses a tricky highland topography; unlike our highland region, Stuttgart’s hinterlands are not blessed with natural resources and were mostly bypassed by historic trade routes of earlier eras. These disadvantages, in addition to intense competition from much larger urban centers, usually conspire to make the realization of grand urban ambitions nearly impossible. Not this time!

What transformed a small provincial center into one of the world’s most storied workshop cities was a proud and willful “culture of tinkerers working in a city rife with workshops created the world’s first electric coffee machine, electric hand drill, and nylon stocking” (Strambach 2001, p.59). The city continues to maintain its stride even now due to what an observer maintains is the locals’ virtues of “industriousness, reliability, and a feeling for quality.” Two legendary tinkerers named Gottlieb and Carl – more famously known as Daimler and Benz - collaborated to create an automobile works that went on to become the pride of the city, so much to the point as to have their logo, the three-pointed star, crowning the Hauptbahnhof (the city’s train station). Not that the city’s other “tinkerers” are unheralded and anonymous names- Ferdinand Porsche and Robert Bosch, each respectively, went on to be a wildly successful automaker and an electrical parts manufacturer. 

 
Back to the iconic symbol of Daimler-Benz for it speaks to the high value that the company and the city places on the natural environment as each three points of the star stand for earth, sky, and water. This harmonious relationship with its environment is the most notable aspect of the Stuttgart cityscape. Open spaces have been protected from encroachment by development so that half of the land within the city continues to thrive as a forest, field, meadow, or vineyard. In the old factory district located northeast of the city center (both districts have been linked by a vast central park for decades) the Neckar riverfront is shown to be bracketed by pedestrian pathways, as seen from an aerial photo…dated from 1973! This deeply rooted appreciation for the relationship between the natural topography of the Swabian highlands and Stuttgart’s man-made constructions is something that our Central Appalachian highlands should aspire to emulate.

Stuttgart is indeed a polycentric metropolitan region of 2.6 million people, with five outlying medium sized cities, and it is not without challenges in dealing with urban sprawl and shifts away from traditional, industrial areas. The thrust of the newer residential, commercial, and industrial development is to the more open areas west of the city to take advantage of its proximity to both the airport (with its opportunity for passenger travel and cargo shipping) and the junction of two autobahns, A-8 and A-81, to the southwest of the city’s core. In lieu of just walking away from the old industrial district in the Neckar River valley, the old factory was re-fashioned into a museum sponsored by a carmaker with a devoted base of customers and aficionados.
Bruce Katz could not have been more correct in stating that “Germany’s can-do city”, a highly regarded generator of high-value goods and services essential to sustaining a prosperous economy, is what our four-state community should seek to emulate. Stuttgart’s economic muscle is, of course, to be envied and respected by our citizens (who put jobs and economy as our most important issue for the Power of 32). The harmonious relationship between Stuttgart’s man-made environment and the natural beauty of the Swabian highlands should also be cultivated in our four-state community.