Osdorf: Klein Flottbek

The subarea known as Klein Flottbek gives this part of Osdorf a more precise local identity. It is best understood through the immediate combination of housing, everyday routes, nearby open space and the way local streets connect with the rest of the district. Treating Klein Flottbek separately helps expose small-scale differences in urban form and daily life that are easily lost when Osdorf is described only as one large area. The Osdorfer Born, built mainly in the 1960s and 1970s, introduces a completely different scale of apartment blocks, towers, schools and broad communal green spaces. The ELBE shopping centre is a major retail destination for the wider west, and local centres provide everyday services within the larger estates. Osdorf’s special quality is not a single uniform image but the proximity of very different Hamburgs: village streets, prosperous low-rise housing, large social estates, metropolitan shopping and open landscape all meet within a relatively compact area.