Becoming more entrepreneurial in their government approaches is a concept aimed at supporting today’s cities in dealing with complex challenges. However, to date, knowledge about how cities can apply such approaches still remains a puzzle. This article presents the case study of the Neubad Lucerne initiative in order to contribute to the generation of a comprehensive picture and of instructive knowledge for city municipalities on their way toward an entrepreneurial city. It asks particularly how city governments and municipalities can stimulate grassroots initiatives toward an entrepreneurial city in a play way instead of a managerial way. The focus is therefore on playful rather than managerial city government processes that stimulate the emergence and activities of grassroots initiatives, the role and organizing mechanisms of networks that develop, and the role of temporary spaces in enabling activity and the construction of social identity.

Our built environment consists of spaces, buildings, and cities that are subject to ever-changing social, economic, ecological and cultural demands. The demand for high quality living space is becoming ever more significant for densifying urban areas. When lifestyles, modes of working and recreational activities intertwine, new concepts on all scales must follow. Consideration of resilience of all kinds is becoming an important part of planning. It requires typologies with resilient characteristics, which can also take on new tasks perhaps not yet known of today. This paper recognises such a typology in the hybrid. Hybrids possess a variety of characteristics and benchmark parameters. A code inherent in them renders them capable of reacting to various situations and differing requirements. Depending on its constitution and purpose, the hybrid code affects a variety of architecturally relevant, environmental levels, namely district, neighbourhood, building, unit, components, infrastructure and processes. “Hybridisation” describes the process of the deliberate application of this code on all levels (“design and injection”), albeit also its decoding, i.e. activation of processes of change. In this way “new genetic alliances” are created, in which differing hybrids interact. By offering advanced adaptability through HYBRIDisation, buildings become resilient to change and allow for diverse modification and development throughout their lifespan, resulting in improved learning ability. This paper explores strategies of HYBRIDisation and the consequences for the interlinked levels to enable hybrid and resilient levels of environment.

The built environment is under pressure. Climate change, migration and social inequalities challenge previous urban planning concepts and will change our cities. The task is to transform the sustainable city of the future into a climate-friendly and socially just living space. Solving these challenges requires an integrated quality discourse with all actors based on tangible structural-spatial situations. In the BBSR research project “Qualities of Urban Zones”, contributions for an early in-depth quality discourse were developed based on the new building zone category “urban zones”. Urban zones are regarded as a future-oriented concept for sustainable densified districts and a diverse, ever-changing mix of uses. This paper presents the specific context and main findings as “theses of urban quality” as well as potential applications for MU. The authors propose guidelines to improve process quality and illustrate exemplary tangible structural-spatial as well as process-related “design elements”. A toolbox with instructions and templates to design and implement scenario-based workshops supports an integrated quality discourse in urban development.