Storytelling

Abstract

Since the 1980s, the concept of storytelling has moved beyond the literary and cultural arena into other dimensions of public life. It has become a subject of interest in fields of research and application beyond the Humanities, among them Design, Management, Marketing, Economics, Geography and Urban Planning. Starting from an outline of the so-called 'story turn' in these disciplines as well as from a short reference to the 'spatial turn' in the Humanities and Social Sciences that makes for much potential for interdisciplinary cooperation, this contribution outlines the potential and challenges of storytelling as a tool and as a practice for the metropolitan context and metropolitan research.Highlighting the role of stories and storytelling for spaces, specifically urban spaces, it focuses on the importance of storytelling in relation to the constitution of space and the creation of a locally specific spatial identity. Context-wise, it looks at the work that has been done in the area of Urban Planning in relation to storytelling, both in research and in practice. This also means that, outside of the more general approximation to the topic, storytelling here will be defined mostly in relation to functional storytelling in the public arena, leaving out other dimensions usually subsumed under the same term, such as storytelling in the family context, the religious or ritual contexts, and so on. In its analytical part, the paper addresses examples from the United States and from Germany before concluding with questions and recommended literature for further consultation. Framework and ContextsIn the past three decades, several disciplines, including the Social Sciences as well as Architecture and Urban Planning, have gone through a conceptual and methodical shift that is sometimes referred to as the 'discursive turn' or 'story turn.' As these descriptors suggest, the shift points to an openness toward ideas from the Humanities, which traditionally work with concepts and ideas such as discourse, narrative, story and im-