Students: Dong Guy Kim, Libei Zhao
Location: Group work in Basel
Date: January, 2007
Type: Research project, student work, infrastructure

The S-Bahn Basel is the next ‚grand project‘ that the city of Basel will be undertaking. Going back to studies and research that Studio Basel and its students have been undertaking in the past, it is one example where this work of the Studio Basel has had direct implications on the city administration and its strategic planning. Now, this planning is moving into a crucial phase with a decision on the precise route of the SBahn becoming immanent and acute. But, Basel is about to take a wrong path, threatening to change and alter the city‘s development forever.
With Basel threatening to chose a route which circumvents the center of the city, the ‚Stadtmitte‘ is at the verge of being cut off from further development, degenerating into a fossilized historical city part, inaccessible to large parts of the MetroBasel population. Wider implications would be a further outward move of central facilities such as shopping, culture, recreation and education, creating a pseudo-Dutch condition of ‚Randstadt‘ and further straining traffic and commuting. Central to this decision is the question of what functions the city center can fulfill today and how we can steer the development of new urban hubs in the north of Basel.
Building up on the existing work on the S-Bahn of Studio-Basel, the two focus points – Teilstück Zentrum with a stop on Marktplatz/Schifflände and Teilstück Nord with a stop in Klein-Hüningen/Hafen-area – should be developed further. The work should on both sites take the typical MetroBasel city-figures of urban pairs or urban triplets as their starting point, the urban pair of Kleinbasel/Großbasel in the case of the Teilstück Zentrum, and the urban triplet of Klein-Hüningen/Huningue/Weil-am-Rhein in the case of the Teilstück Nord.