The river that changed its mind
By Marta Lindqvist in Munich · Photographs by Jonas Weber · September 29, 2026
For most of the twentieth century, the engineers who managed the river treated it like a badly behaved employee. They straightened it, lined it with stone and told it where to go. The river complied, mostly, until the spring of 2005, when it did not.1
What followed was one of the most expensive apologies in the history of European infrastructure. Over eleven years and €35 million, the city removed eight kilometres of embankment and let the water choose its own bed. Gravel bars appeared within weeks. So did people.
"We thought we were building a flood defence," says Walter Binder, who led the project for the regional water authority. "It turned out we were building the most popular park in the city."2
The ecological numbers are striking. Grayling, a fish that had nearly disappeared from this stretch, now spawn on the new gravel. Kingfishers nest in the undercut banks. Water temperatures in summer have dropped by almost a degree, because the shallows are shaded by willows that nobody planted.3
The economic numbers are more complicated. Flats within 300 metres of the restored banks now sell for 22 percent more than comparable homes a kilometre away, and the people who used to fish here from the old concrete steps are, increasingly, not the people who live here.