Workshop Poetry to Power: “Wohnungsbauturbo”
Political case: Frankfurt’s municipal guidelines for applying the “Wohnungsbauturbo,” decided by the Stadtverordnetenversammlung on 5 March 2026.
Frankfurt uses the federal instrument to accelerate housing, but only under local conditions: no use in inner-city green spaces, industrial/commercial zones, flood-risk/sensitive areas, and not for single-family houses or micro-apartments; the city also creates a regular “Bauturbo-Konferenz” and annual reporting.
In this Poetry to Power workshop, we take a concrete political decision made by the city of Frankfurt—the guidelines for the so-called Wohnungsbauturbo—as our starting point. This decision addresses a real and urgent problem: the shortage of housing. It proposes to accelerate planning and approval procedures, but only under specific conditions, excluding certain areas and forms of construction in order to preserve ecological and social standards.
We begin by reconstructing this decision as precisely as possible. We ask: What is the problem? How is it defined? What exactly is being accelerated, and under which constraints? In doing so, we treat the decision not as an opinion, but as an object—something that has been constructed through language, categories, and institutional processes.
Next, we map the different actors involved: planners, developers, tenants, politicians, environmental advocates. Each position reveals a different perspective on acceleration—what it enables, what it threatens, and what must be protected.
From there, we turn to the language of the decision itself. We extract its key terms—such as acceleration, procedure, exception, protection—and transform them into verbs. This step is crucial, because it shifts our attention from static concepts to actions: to hasten, to preserve, to suspend, to sequence. We begin to see that a political decision is not only a statement, but a set of operations.
At this point, we introduce a poem by Lyn Hejinian. The poem does not describe the political situation. Instead, it performs something different: it interrupts, hesitates, repeats, and questions the relationship between knowledge and action. It suggests that not every act is preceded by knowledge, and that uncertainty is not a weakness, but a condition of experience.
We then bring these two domains together. Participants rewrite the political decision using the operations of the poem. Sentences begin with interruptions—“But isn’t…”, “Or was that…”, “I don’t mean… and yet I do mean…”. In this way, the language of certainty is destabilized. The decision is no longer simply a solution; it becomes a field of tensions, perceptions, and unresolved questions.
On the second day, we return to the actual political process. We reconstruct the sequence from problem to decision, and identify the moment where intervention is still possible—after the problem has been defined, but before the decision is finalized.
At this point, we stage what we call a Poetic Hearing. Each participant speaks twice: once in the language of political argument, and once in the language of poetic interruption. The same position is expressed in two fundamentally different ways. This makes visible what is normally excluded from political discourse: hesitation, partial knowledge, vulnerability.
Finally, we translate the decision into a score—a sequence of operations that can be read, spoken, or performed. This score does not replace the decision. It accompanies it. It introduces a structured pause within the process: a moment in which we ask not only what we know, but also what we do not know, who cannot speak, and what might be lost through acceleration.
The aim of the workshop is not to slow down politics indefinitely, nor to replace it with poetry. The aim is to show that responsible decision-making requires a moment of interruption—a moment in which the conditions of the decision become visible before it is executed.
In this sense, political acceleration becomes democratic only when it contains within itself the possibility of reflection.
Poetry to Power Workshop
Case: Frankfurter Leitlinien zum Wohnungsbauturbo
Poetic Reference: Lyn Hejinian
How can a political decision about acceleration be opened before it becomes closed administration?
DAY 1 — Understanding the Decision
1. Political Objectification
Reconstruct the decision:
- Problem: housing shortage
- Operation: acceleration of procedures
- Limits: no green spaces, no outer zones, no micro-apartments
- Mechanisms: conference + reporting
Output: “What the decision does”
2. Stakeholder Mapping
Assign roles:
- Planner
- Developer
- Tenant
- Climate advocate
- Resident
- Politician
Each answers:
- What do I gain?
- What do I fear?
- What must not disappear?
3. Deconstruct Political Language
Transform nouns into verbs:
- acceleration → to hasten
- housing → to shelter
- climate → to preserve
- procedure → to sequence
- exception → to suspend
Output: operational vocabulary
4. Introduce the Poem
Key operations:
- interruption
- uncertainty
- partial perception
- not-knowing
- repetition
Poetic logic: “Action may begin before knowing.”
5. First Poetic Operation
Rewrite the decision using interruptions:
- “But isn’t housing intermittent…”
- “I don’t mean speed…”
- “And yet I do mean…”
- “There are acts not preceded by knowledge…”
Output: polyphonic text
DAY 2 — Turning Poetry into Procedure
1. Process Mapping
Reconstruct the political process:
- Problem
- Administrative framing
- Proposal
- Committee
- Decision
- Implementation
2. Poetic Hearing
Round 1: Rational argument
Round 2: Poetic speech
Output: two-layer protocol
3. Decision as Score
Output: poetic score
4. Spatial Exercise
Participants move using verbs:
- hasten
- stop
- preserve
- repeat
5. Procedural Proposal
Add a “Poetic Interruption” step:
- What is known?
- What is not known?
- Who cannot speak?
- What may be erased?
Output: procedural clause
Final Output
Poetic operation: interrupt
→ Democratic form: accelerated action with built-in reflection