Hans Stimmann, born in 1941, shaped Berlin's architectural and urban development fortunes like no other during three legislative periods and 15 years in office from 1991 to 2006. To this day, the former Senate Building Director and State Secretary for Urban Development is able to influence public debate. This is mainly due to his memorable speeches and committed journalism. With "Stimmanns Stadtlektüren - Texte, Vorträge und Interviews: 2012 bis 2022" (Stimmann's Urban Readings - Texts, Lectures and Interviews: 2012 to 2022), a collection of his articles in various media is published on his 81st birthday. They are urban explorations, critiques, observations, but also polemics from Berlin, Lübeck or Kaliningrad. The analyses of urban planning and architectural development before and after the turn of the millennium are not an end in themselves, however, but are always combined with a sometimes combative critique of the failures of politics or administration of yesterday and today. In doing so, he does not shy away from finding his earlier "being right at all costs" questionable or at least worthy of reconsideration today. However, Stimmann sticks to his basic urban ideas, which he came up with as a "child of the International Building Exhibition" (Stimmann). These include the model of the European city with its preferred stone façades and the principled rejection of utopian ideas of reinventing the city. He vehemently advocates the historic city centres because they are places of remembrance and cultural power, and pleads for urban development consisting of individual plots of land that give each city citizen a home and a place.