Whiny comments about dying city centers, broken windows at the market in Lüdenscheidt, closed department stores all over the country, are easy to find again. In Berlin, the Senate is letting the approval of various high-rise buildings be squeezed out of it, and in return, as if it were the Champions League, is celebrating the temporary reprieve of the closure of four ailing department stores. The end of German cities, indeed of European urban civilization, seems to have come.

I am unable to understand it like this. The chain-store retail trade, with its comprehensive lack of imagination and monotony, has turned city centers into hostages of international super-chains that have neither paid attention to the well-being of their customers nor concerned themselves with the quality of the cities. Indeed, once varied rows of shops have often mutated public spaces into clusters of inconsiderate highwaymen and looters, who have little interest in contributing to the common good, and declare that purchasing power and footfall frequency are the only criteria for deciding on a location. As international corporations, they were in a position to pay little in taxes, to burden society with their own enormous ecological costs, and to produce and sell T-shirts in an environmentally harmful and antisocial manner. As a result, they were able to pay extremely high rents and so displace more distinct shops and service providers from central locations. Rents, that are completely excessive for their A1 locations, and that have created a commercial property bubble, need to be urgently corrected. There are values on the books that can no longer be justified by their current economic benefits. Presumably a wave of insolvencies will be difficult to avoid.

This development is already visible today in the withdrawal of department stores and retail chains, as well as the vacant shops, restaurants and commercial space in many shopping streets.

If hotels do not accommodate congress visitors and tourists, and large parts of the retail trade go online to monopolistic structures from the USA, and employees continue to work from home, then many restauranteurs and traders will have less turnover. Also cultural institutions such as museums, galleries and theaters may have fewer visitors. And local authorities will suffer additional revenue losses.

That is why it is about using the change and shaping it.

City centers are not only trading centers for chain stores, but must also, as lively neighborhoods, reflect the diversity of human needs.

Dying city centers are not an issue of today. The problem was already the subject of much discussion in the seventies and eighties.

But the inner cities are more resilient and robust than they appear. They have been built up over centuries, have survived crises and wars, have been rebuilt and repaired, blossomed, torn down and rebuilt again. Europe is home to many of the most beautiful cities in the world. They have historically restored city centers and a multitude of heritage protected listed buildings and squares that can offer grandiose spaces for the vibrancy and diversity of a society.

Therefore it is a matter of resisting and opposing the negative developments with creativity and energy.

It is a matter of rebuilding the over-motorized cities in such a way that they are once again made for people.

For this, active, long-term, forward-looking urban development planning is required. With ideas that make the cities better and invite loving roots to be grown.

That is why I also see the crisis as an opportunity. Where space becomes vacant, new and better uses can be created.

The Berlin of the 1990s stands for this. Free space attracts creative people and creates the opportunity for a new start.

The resilient cities that are better able to master the challenges are the mixed cities where trade, manufacturing, work, housing, education, games and leisure all come together.

In Copenhagen at Israel's Plads, it becomes clear how this can be implemented. A market hall with lots of vegetable and fruit stands from the region behind me, I look at a public space that is a mixture of soccer cage, basketball court, skater park, sandbox, paddling pool and beach promenade. Creative gastronomy at ground level and a mixture of living and working above. Wonderful. A masterpiece.

Another place is called Superkiln and it winds its way through its cumbersome surroundings between fire walls with ship swings, boxing ring, bicycle race track and basketball court. It gives one of Copenhagen's most socially fragile districts, Nørrebro, a social center.

The new quarter at the former Nordhavn has a bathing area in the former port basin and a playground on top of the parking garage with the most beautiful view of the whole city. The German Embassy has moved there into a former cement silo. This is what urban redevelopment can look like.

The Museum of Architecture has put a playground directly in its center, with a slide, oversized and undersized houses in the scales 2:1 - 1:10, an overturned house and a hammock. The field hockey field and the wave slide are docked on from the outside.

Such playful places are rarely found in German cities. Even in new developments, mostly dreary, serious minimalism dominates. Humor, joie de vivre and scope for play for young and old: Nothing.

But these places are becoming increasingly important if society is not to disintegrate into groups that are foreign to each other. People need positive community experiences, for which they also want to come together. The city centers are the places where this can happen particularly well. This is where social success and failure are decided.

Like in front of the Philharmonie in Berlin. A fine pavement, thin trees and park benches in a line are not enough. No playground far and wide. A few skaters crawl along the curb. Paved areas alone do not bring people together and do not achieve their purpose. They are empty spaces, perhaps just representative areas that have been bought at too high a price.

With new concepts, the city centers can be made better.

In Siegen, students now populate the center after the university campus was moved from outside into the middle of the town.

The functional city with separate areas for living, working, trade, education and leisure was a mistake.

The commercial city must be rebuilt into a multifunctional city for people, with housing, commerce, production, crafts, services, leisure, playgrounds and sports grounds, culture and education all close together. Today there are simply too few apartments and also too few places to work in the city centers that are appropriate to the present time.

City building councillors and mayors should not just respond to applications, but, with their citizens, rethink their city. And plan long term.

Münster and Freiburg are excellent examples of this. But cities like Hanover, Bonn or Karlsruhe also have the same potential. Also Bielefeld and many, many others.

Those cities that pursue a plan, give themselves a structure and get good people into the administration, they will get ahead.

Advisory boards for the vibrant city or a board of trustees that present examples of best practice and facilitate knowledge transfer, can bring urbanity to the periphery. Creative gastronomy, good craftsmen, manufactories, lively associations are the pride of a community and bring people together well.

In democracies and cities, continuous learning processes are the prerequisite for lasting success.

Today, most city centers are potential areas for better solutions.