Sun, shit, compost and air: the dissolution of the antagonism between city and countryside based on the concepts of waste management cycles of Leberecht Migge

At the beginning of the twentieth century, German landscape architect Leberecht Migge (1881–1935) was one of the first to view the home garden as a core element of urban planning, based on a large-scale urban recycling system that utilised natural biological processes of decomposition and transformation. This paper focuses on placing Migge's concept in the specific context of Germany at the end of the First World War and tracing the development of Migge's urban planning model, which led to the — largely undiscussed — concept proposed in Eine Weltstadt kolonisiert! Berlin versorgt sich selbst! Eine Million Berliner siedeln aus! [A Cosmopolitan City Colonises! Berlin Supplies Itself! One Million Berliners Resettle!] (1932). Furthermore, the paper emphasises the relevance of Migge's concepts in the present day, as they replace the traditional dualisms of city and countryside, human culture and nature, human history and natural history with the idea of the city as green infrastructure.