Hoyerswerda
The Shrinking City

The city of Hoyerswerda in north-eastern Saxony, and especially the ten enormous residential complexes (WK I–X) of the Neustadt ('New Town') district, were once the paragon of socialist urban construction in the GDR. In Socialist Germany, the industrially built, prefabricated residential blocks were considered the epitome of modernity, functionality, and progress. 
Today, the name Hoyerswerda has become a synonym for radical social and urban change in Germany, owing to the fact that Hoyerswerda-Neustadt, once a project based on a new way of living and driven by socialist utopias, became a portent of the modern era after German reunification. With the utopia been shattered, it feels empty and haunted. Throughout Germany, Hoyerswerda-Neustadt is regarded as particularly unsightly and also xenophobic, since it was here that a neo-Nazi mob repeatedly attacked refugees in 1991.

Statistically, Hoyerswerda is the fastest shrinking German city. Since the decline of mining in the former GDR, represented primarily by “VEB Gaskombinat Schwarze Pumpe” – then the world’s largest lignite plant – the number of inhabitants of Hoyerswerda-Neustadt, which once accommodated the plant’s workers, has decreased to 21,000. Further statistical parameters also point to the decline: an extremely high rate of unemployment, a very low birthrate and an ageing population. The former GDR city that used to have the largest number of children is now in the process of dying out.

However, urban planners are attempting to halt this process of decline and to implement changes. Instead of responding to the increasing abandonment of property by demolishing entire residential blocks, they are now attempting to adapt to the changes through partial demolition and restructuring. This is part of the “Stadtumbau Ost” scheme, an urban redevelopment programme designed to tackle the special problems of shrinking cities in Eastern Germany. Some urban researchers have even come to view Hoyerswerda as a pioneering model for the successful restructuring of a declining city, as a field for experimentation with innovative solutions. Hoyerswerda could indeed represent a paradigm shift for a profession that previously always focused on expansion.

Others take a less euphoric view of the development, being of the opinion that political and urban development plans merely gloss over the deficiencies and reshape the empty spaces left by the extensive depopulation, and that it is far from being a thriving environment. From a global perspective, all too often urban development is dominated by a tendency towards increasing urbanization and the development of megacities. The example of Hoyerswerda brings to mind that wide regions of Europe and the United States have to cope with converse problems. In relation to this, the long-term photographic study Hoyerswerda – The Shrinking City provides a portrait of the post-socialist urban landscape as a symbol for the radical social transformations of the beginning of the twenty-first century.

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER:
Stefan Boness is a photojournalist based in Berlin and Manchester. His photos have received several awards including a World Press Photo Award and a Fuji Euro Press Photographer of the Year in Germany Award. His work is being published in quality magazines and newspapers throughout the world.
In his long-term documentary projects in the tradition of conceptual ‘Landscape-Photography’ Stefan Boness captures the reality of a designated place in the present in the context of its underlying historical dimensions.
His book-project entitled Flanders Fields is a photographic search on the battlefields of World War I in the region around Ypres in Belgium. In Asmara – The Frozen City he uncovers the legacy of Italian colonial avant-garde architecture in the capital of Eritrea in the Horn of Africa. His most recent project The Re-Making of Manchester has as its focus urban development in present-day Manchester. Once the birthplace of the industrial revolution Manchester today is characterised by tremendous changes in its urban landscape that might make it a symbol for successful post-industrial regeneration.