text:
Arnulf of Carinthia

Arnulf of Carinthia (c. 850 – 8 December 899) was the duke of Carinthia who overthrew his uncle Emperor Charles the Fat to become the Carolingian king of East Francia from 887, the disputed king of Italy from 894 and the disputed emperor from February 22, 896, until his death at Regensburg, Bavaria.

Illegitimacy and early life
Arnulf was the illegitimate son of Carloman of Bavaria, and Liutswind, who may have been the sister of Ernst, Count of the Bavarian Nordgau Margraviate, in the area of the Upper Palatinate, or perhaps the burgrave of Passau, according to other sources. After Arnulf's birth, Carloman married, before 861, a daughter of that same Count Ernst, who died after 8 August 879. As it is mainly West-Franconian historiography that speaks of Arnulf's illegitimacy, it is quite possible that the two women are actually the same person, Liutswind, and that Carloman married Arnulf's mother, thus legitimizing his son.

Arnulf was granted the rule over the Duchy of Carinthia, a Frankish vassal state and successor of the ancient Principality of Carantania by his father, after Carloman reconciled with his own father, King Louis the German, and was made king in the Duchy of Bavaria.

Arnulf spent his childhood in Mosaburch or Mosapurc, which is widely believed to be Moosburg in Carinthia. Moosburg was a few miles away from one of the imperial residences, the Carolingian Kaiserpfalz at Karnburg, which had been the residence of the Carantanian princes. Arnulf kept his seat here, and from later events it may be inferred that the Carantanians, from an early time, treated him as their own duke. Later, after he had been crowned King of East Francia, Arnulf turned his old territory of Carinthia into the March of Carinthia, a part of the Duchy of Bavaria.

Regional ruler
After Carloman was incapacitated by a stroke in 879, Louis the Younger inherited Bavaria, Charles the Fat was given the Kingdom of Italy, and Arnulf was confirmed in Carinthia by an agreement with Carloman. However, Bavaria was more or less ruled by Arnulf during the summer and autumn of 879 while his father arranged his succession. He was also granted "Pannonia," in the words of the Annales Fuldenses, or "Carantanum," in the words of Regino of Prüm. The division of the realm was confirmed in 880 after Carloman's death.

When Engelschalk II of Pannonia in 882 rebelled against Margrave Aribo and ignited the Wilhelminer War, Arnulf supported him and accepted his and his brother's homage. This ruined Arnulf's relationship with his uncle, Emperor Charles the Fat, and put him at war with Svatopluk of Moravia. Pannonia was invaded, but Arnulf refused to give up the young Wilhelminers. Arnulf did not make peace with Svatopluk until late 885, by which time the Moravian ruler was loyal to the emperor. Some scholars see this war as destroying Arnulf's hopes of succeeding Charles the Fat.

King of East Francia
Arnulf took the leading role in the deposition of Charles the Fat. With the support of the Frankish nobles, Arnulf called a Diet at Tribur and deposed Charles in November 887, under threat of military action. Charles peacefully agreed to this involuntary retirement, but not without first chastising his nephew for his treachery and asking for a few royal villas in Swabia on which to live out his final months, which Arnulf granted him. Arnulf, having distinguished himself in the war against the Slavs, was then elected king by the nobles of East Francia (only the eastern realm, though Charles had ruled the whole of the Frankish Empire). West Francia, the Kingdom of Burgundy, and the Kingdom of Italy elected their own kings from the Carolingian family.

Like many rulers of the period, Arnulf was heavily involved in ecclesiastical disputes. In 895, at the Diet of Tribur, he presided over a dispute between the Episcopal sees of Bremen, Hamburg and Cologne over jurisdictional authority, which saw Bremen and Hamburg remain a combined see, independent of the see of Cologne.

Arnulf was more a fighter than a negotiator. In 890 he was successfully battling Slavs in Pannonia. In early/mid-891, Vikings invaded Lotharingia and crushed an East Frankish army at Maastricht. Terms such as "Vikings", "Danes", "Northmen" and "Norwegians" have been used loosely and interchangeably to describe these invaders. In September 891, Arnulf repelled the Vikings and essentially ended their attacks on that front. The Annales Fuldenses report that there were so many dead Northmen that their bodies blocked the run of the river. After this victory Arnulf built a castle on an island in the Dijle river.

Intervention in West Francia
Arnulf took advantage of the problems in West Francia after the death of Charles the Fat to secure the territory of Lotharingia, which he converted into a kingdom for his son Zwentibold. In 889 Arnulf supported the claim of Louis the Blind to the kingdom of Provence, after receiving a personal appeal from Louis' mother, Ermengard, who came to see Arnulf at Forchheim in May 889. Recognising the superiority of Arnulf's position, in 888 king Odo of France formally accepted the suzerainty of Arnulf. In 893 Arnulf switched his support from Odo to Charles the Simple after being persuaded by Fulk, Archbishop of Reims, that it was in his best interests. Arnulf then took advantage of the following fighting between Odo and Charles in 894, harrying some territories of West Francia. At one point, Charles the Simple was forced to flee to Arnulf and ask for his protection. His intervention soon forced Pope Formosus to get involved, as he was worried that a divided and war weary West Francia would be easy prey for the Vikings.

In 895 Arnulf summoned both Charles and Odo to his residence at Worms. Charles's advisers convinced him not to go, and he sent a representative in his place. Odo, on the other hand, personally attended, together with a large retinue, bearing many gifts for Arnulf. Angered by the non-appearance of Charles, he welcomed Odo at the Diet of Worms in May 895 and again supported Odo's claim to the throne of West Francia. In the same assembly he crowned his illegitimate son Zwentibold as the king of Lotharingia.

Wars with Moravia
As early as 880 Arnulf had designs on Great Moravia and had the Frankish bishop Wiching of Nitra interfere with the missionary activities of the Eastern Orthodox priest Methodius, with the aim of preventing any potential for creating a unified Moravian state. Arnulf had formal relations with the ruler of the Moravian Kingdom, Svatopluk, using them to learn the latter's military and political secrets. Later, these tactics were used to occupy the territory of the Greater Moravian state.

Arnulf failed to conquer the whole of Great Moravia in wars of 892, 893, and 899. Yet Arnulf did achieve some successes, in particular in 895, when the Duchy of Bohemia broke away from Great Moravia and became his vassal state. An accord was reached between him and Duke of Bohemia Borivoj I. Bohemia was thus freed from the dangers of Frankish invasion. In 893 or 894 Great Moravia probably lost a part of its territory — present-day western Hungary — to him. As a reward, Wiching became Arnulf's chancellor in 892. In his attempts to conquer Moravia, in 899 Arnulf reached out to Magyars who had settled in the Carpathian Basin, and with their help he imposed a measure of control over Moravia.

King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor
In Italy Guy III of Spoleto and Berengar of Friuli fought over the Iron Crown of Lombardy. Berengar had been crowned king in 887, but Guy was then crowned in 889. While Pope Stephen V supported Guy, even crowning him Roman Emperor in 891, Arnulf threw his support behind Berengar.

In 893 the new Pope Formosus, not trusting the newly crowned co-emperors Guy and his son Lambert, sent an embassy to Omuntesberch, where Arnulf was meeting with Svatopluk, to request that Arnulf come and liberate Italy, where he would be crowned emperor in Rome. Arnulf met the Primores of the Kingdom of Italy, dismissed them with gifts and promised to assist the pope. Arnulf then sent Zwentibold with a Bavarian army to join Berengar. They defeated Guy but were bought off and left in autumn.

When Pope Formosus again asked Arnulf to invade, the duke personally led an army across the Alps early in 894. In January 894 Bergamo fell, and Count Ambrose, Guy's representative in the city, was hung from a tree by the city's gates. Conquering all of the territory north of the Po River, Arnulf forced the surrender of Milan and then drove Guy out of Pavia, where he was crowned King of Italy. Arnulf went no further before Guy died suddenly in late autumn, and a fever incapacitated his troops. His march northward through the Alps was interrupted by Rudolph I of Burgundy, and it was only with great difficulty that Arnulf crossed the mountain range. In retaliation, Arnulf ordered Zwentibold to ravage Rudolph's kingdom. In the meantime, Lambert and his mother Ageltrude travelled to Rome to receive papal confirmation of his imperial succession, but when Pope Formosus, still desiring to crown Arnulf, refused, he was imprisoned in Castel Sant'Angelo.

In September 895 a new papal embassy arrived in Regensburg beseeching Arnulf's aid. In October Arnulf undertook his second campaign into Italy. He crossed the Alps quickly and again took Pavia, but then he continued slowly, garnering support among the nobility of Tuscany. Maginulf, Count of Milan, and Walfred of Friuli joined him. Eventually even Adalbert II of Tuscany abandoned Lambert. Finding Rome locked against him and held by Ageltrude, Arnulf had to take the city by force on 21 February, 896, freeing the pope. Arnulf was then greeted at the Ponte Milvio by the Roman Senate who escorted him into the Leonine City, where he was received by Pope Formosus on the steps of the Santi Apostoli.

On 22 February 896 Formosus led the king into the church of St. Peter, anointed and crowned him as emperor, and saluted him as Augustus. Arnulf then proceeded to the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, where he received the homage of the Roman people, who swore "never to hand over the city to Lambert or his mother Ageltrude". Arnulf then proceeded to exile to Bavaria two leading senators, Constantine and Stephen, who had helped Ageltrude to seize Rome.

Leaving one of his vassals, Farold, to hold Rome, two weeks later Arnulf marched on Spoleto, where Ageltrude had fled to join Lambert. However at this point, Arnulf had a stroke, forcing him to call off the campaign and return to Bavaria. Rumours of the time made Arnulf's condition to be a result of poisoning at the hand of Ageltrude.

Arnulf retained power in Italy only as long as he was personally there. On his way north, he stopped at Pavia where he crowned his illegitimate son Ratold as sub-king of Italy, after which he left Ratold in Milan in an attempt to preserve his hold on Italy. That same year Pope Formosus died, leaving Lambert once again in power, and both he and Berengar proceeded to kill any officials who had been appointed by Arnulf, forcing Ratold to flee from Milan to Bavaria. For the rest of his life Arnulf exercised very little control in Italy, and his agents in Rome did not prevent the accession of Pope Stephen VI in 896. The pope initially gave his support to Arnulf but eventually became a supporter of Lambert.

Final years
In addition to aftereffects from the stroke, Arnulf contracted morbus pediculosis (infestation of pubic lice on his eyelid), which prevented him from effectively dealing with the problems besetting his reign. Italy was lost, raiders from Moravia and Magyars were continually harassing his lands, and Lotharingia was in revolt against Zwentibold. He was also plagued by escalating violence and power struggles among the lower Frankish nobility.

On December 8, 899, Arnulf died at Ratisbon in present-day Bavaria. He is entombed in St. Emmeram's Basilica at Regensburg, which is now known as Schloss Thurn und Taxis, the palace of the Princes of Thurn und Taxis. He was succeeded as the king of East Francia by his only legitimate son from Ota, Louis the Child. After Louis' death in 911 at age 17 or 18, the East Frankish branch of the Carolingian dynasty ceased to exist. Arnulf had had the nobility recognize the rights of his illegitimate sons, Zwentibold and Ratold, as his successors. Zwentibold continued to rule Lotharingia until his murder in 900.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Arnulf of Carinthia


text:
Alexanderplatz

Alexanderplatz (, Alexander Square) is a large public square and transport hub in the central Mitte district of Berlin. The square is named after the Russian Tsar Alexander I, which also denotes the larger neighbourhood stretching from Mollstraße in the north-east to Spandauer Straße and the Rotes Rathaus in the south-west.

Alexanderplatz is reputedly the most visited area of Berlin, beating Friedrichstrasse and City West. It is a popular starting point for tourists, with many attractions including the Fernsehturm (TV tower), the Nikolai Quarter and the Rotes Rathaus ('Red City Hall') situated nearby. Alexanderplatz is still one of Berlin's major commercial areas, housing various shopping malls, department stores and other large retail locations.

Early history to the 18th century
A hospital stood at the location of present-day Alexanderplatz since the 13th century. Named Heiliger Georg (St. George), the hospital gave its name to the nearby Georgentor (George Gate) of the Berlin city wall. Outside the city walls, this area was largely undeveloped until around 1400, when the first settlers began building thatched cottages. As a gallows was located close by, the area earned the nickname the Teufels Lustgarten ('Devil's Pleasure Garden'). The George Gate became the most important of Berlin's city gates during the 16th century, being the main entry point for goods arriving along the roads to the north and north-east of the city, for example from Oderberg, Prenzlau and Bernau, and the big Hanseatic cities on the Baltic Sea.

After the Thirty Years' War, the city wall was strengthened. From 1658 to 1683, a citywide fortress was constructed to plans by the Linz master builder, Johann Gregor Memhardt. The new fortress contained 13 bastions connected by ramparts and was preceded by a moat measuring up to 50 m wide. Within the new fortress, many of the historic city wall gates were closed. For example, the southeastern Stralauer Gate was closed but the Georgian Gate remained open, making the Georgian Gate an even more important entrance to the city.

In 1681, the trade of cattle and pig fattening was banned within the city. Frederick William, the Great Elector, granted cheaper plots of land, waiving the basic interest rate, in the area in front of the Georgian Gate. Settlements grew rapidly and a weekly cattle market was established on the square in front of the Gate.

The area developed into a suburb – the Georgenvorstadt – which continued to flourish into the late 17th century. Unlike the southwestern suburbs (Friedrichstadt, Dorotheenstadt) which were strictly and geometrically planned, the suburbs in the northeast (Georgenvorstadt, Spandauervorstadt and the Stralauer Vorstadt) proliferated without plan. Despite a building ban imposed in 1691, more than 600 houses existed in the area by 1700.

At that time, the George Gate was a rectangular gatehouse with a tower. Next to the tower stood a remaining tower from the original medieval city walls. The upper floors of the gatehouse served as the city jail. A drawbridge spanned the moat and the gate was locked at nightfall by the garrison using heavy oak planks.

A highway ran through the cattle market to the northeast towards Bernau. To the right stood the George chapel, an orphanage and a hospital that was donated by the Elector Sophie Dorothea in 1672. Next to the chapel stood a dilapidated medieval plague house which was demolished in 1716. Behind it was a rifleman's field and an inn, later named the Stelzenkrug.

By the end of the 17th century, 600 to 700 families lived in this area. They included butchers, cattle herders, shepherds and dairy farmers. The George chapel was upgraded to the George church and received its own preacher.

Königs Thor Platz (1701–1805)

After his coronation in Königsberg on 6 May 1701 the Prussian King Frederick I entered Berlin through the George Gate. This led to the gate being renamed the King's Gate, and the surrounding area became known in official documents as Königs Thor Platz (King's Gate Square). The Georgenvorstadt suburb was renamed Königsvorstadt (or 'royal suburbs' short).

In 1734, the Berlin Customs Wall, which initially consisted of a ring of palisade fences, was reinforced and grew to encompass the old city and its suburbs, including Königsvorstadt. This resulted in the King's Gate losing importance as an entry point for goods into the city. The gate was finally demolished in 1746.

By the end of the 18th century, the basic structure of the royal suburbs of the Königsvorstadt had been developed. It consisted of irregular-shaped blocks of buildings running along the historic highways which once carried goods in various directions out of the gate. At this time, the area contained large factories (silk and wool), such as the Kurprinz (one of Berlin's first cloth factories, located in a former barn) and a workhouse established in 1758 for beggars and homeless people, where the inmates worked a man-powered treadmill to turn a mill.

Soon, military facilities came to dominate the area, such as the 1799–1800 military parade grounds designed by David Gilly. At this time, the residents of the Platz were mostly craftsmen, petty-bourgeois, retired soldiers and manufacturing workers. The southern part of the later Alexanderplatz was separated from traffic by trees and served as a parade ground, whereas the northern half remained a market. Beginning in the mid-18th century, the most important wool market in Germany was held in Alexanderplatz.

Between 1752 and 1755, the writer Gotthold Ephraim Lessing lived in a house on Alexanderplatz. In 1771, a new stone bridge (the Königsbrücke) was built over the moat and in 1777 a colonnade-lined row of shops (Königskolonnaden) was constructed by architect Carl von Gontard. Between 1783 and 1784, seven three-storey buildings were erected around the square by Georg Christian Unger, including the famous Gasthof zum Hirschen, where Karl Friedrich Schinkel lived as a permanent tenant and Heinrich von Kleist stayed in the days before his suicide.

Alexanderplatz (1805–1900)
On 25 October 1805 the Russian Tsar Alexander I was welcomed to the city on the parade grounds in front of the old King's Gate. To mark this occasion, on 2 November, King Frederick William III ordered the square to be renamed Alexanderplatz: "His Royal Majesty, by means of the supreme Cabinet, orders on the 2nd of this month, those in the Königs-Vorstadt Sandgasse to take the name Kaiserstrasse, and the square in front of the workhouse in the newly-conceived suburb settles with the name of Alexander-Platz, this is hereby made known to the public for news and attention.'"In the southeast of the square, the cloth factory buildings were converted into the Königstädter Theater by Carl Theodor Ottmer at a cost of 120,000 Taler. The foundation stone was laid on 31 August 1823 and the opening ceremony occurred on 4 August 1824. Sales were poor, forcing the theatre to close on 3 June 1851. Thereafter, the building was used for wool storage, then as a tenement building, and finally as an inn called Aschinger until the building's demolition in 1932.

During these years, Alexanderplatz was populated by fish wives, water carriers, sand sellers, rag-and-bone men, knife sharpeners and day laborers.

Because of its importance as a transport hub, horse-drawn buses ran every 15 minutes between Alexanderplatz and Potsdamer Platz in 1847.

During the March Revolution of 1848, large-scale street fighting occurred on the streets of Alexanderplatz, where revolutionaries used barricades to block the route from Alexanderplatz to the city. Novelist and poet Theodor Fontane, who worked in the vicinity in a nearby pharmacy, participated in the construction of barricades and later described how he used materials from the Königstädter Theater to barricade Neue Königstraße.

The Königsstadt continued to grow throughout the 19th century, with three-storey developments already existing at the beginning of the century and fourth storeys being constructed from the middle of the century. By the end of the century, most of the buildings were already five storeys high. The large factories and military facilities gave way to housing developments (mainly rental housing for the factory workers who had just moved into the city) and trading houses.

At the beginning of the 1870s, the Berlin administration had the former moat filled to build the Berlin city railway, which was opened in 1882 along with Bahnhof Alexanderplatz ('Alexanderplatz Railway Station').

In 1883–1884, the Grand Hotel, a neo-Renaissance building with 185 rooms and shops beneath was constructed. From 1886 to 1890, Hermann Blankenstein built the police headquarters, a huge brick building whose tower on the northern corner dominated the building. In 1890, a district court at Alexanderplatz was also established.

In 1886, the local authorities built a central market hall west of the rail tracks, which replaced the weekly market on the Alexanderplatz in 1896. During the end of the 19th century, the emerging private traffic and the first horse bus lines dominated the northern part of the square, the southern part (the former parade ground) remained quiet, having green space elements added by garden director Hermann Mächtig in 1889. The northwest of the square contained a second, smaller green space where, in 1895, the 7.5 m copper Berolina statue by sculptor Emil Hundrieser was erected.

Between Empire and the Nazi era (1900–1940)
At the beginning of the 20th century, Alexanderplatz experienced its heyday. In 1901, Ernst von Wolzogen founded the first German cabaret, the Überbrettl, in the former Sezessionsbühne ('Secession stage') at Alexanderstraße 40, initially under the name Bunte Brettl. It was announced as "Kabarett as upscale entertainment with artistic ambitions. Emperor-loyal and market-oriented stands the uncritical amusement in the foreground."

The merchants Hermann Tietz, Georg Wertheim and Hahn opened large department stores on Alexanderplatz: Tietz (1904–1911), Wertheim (1910–1911) and Hahn (1911). Tietz marketed itself as a department store for the Berlin people, whereas Wertheim modelled itself as a department store for the world.

In October 1905, the first section of the Tietz department store opened to the public. It was designed by architects Wilhelm Albert Cremer and Richard Wolffenstein, who had already won second prize in the competition for the construction of the Reichstag building. The Tietz department store underwent further construction phases and, in 1911, had a commercial space of 7300 m2 and the longest department store façade in the world at 250 m in length.

For the construction of the Wertheim department store, by architects Heinrich Joseph Kayser and Karl von Großheim, the Königskolonnaden were removed in 1910 and now stand in the Heinrich von Kleist Park in Schöneberg.

In October 1908, the Haus des Lehrers ('the teacher's house') was opened next to the Bunte Brettl at Alexanderstraße 41. It was designed by Hans Toebelmann and Henry Gross. The building belonged to the Berliner Lehrererverein ('teachers’ association'), who rented space on the ground floor of the building out to a pastry shop and restaurant to raise funds for the association. The building housed the teachers' library which survived two world wars, and today is integrated into the library for educational historical research. The rear of the property contained the association's administrative building, a hotel for members and an exhibition hall. Notable events that took place in the hall include the funeral services for Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg on 2 February 1919 and, on 4 December 1920, the Vereinigungsparteitag (Unification Party Congress) of the Communist Party and the USPD.

The First Ordinary Congress of the Communist Workers Party of Germany was held in the nearby Zum Prälaten restaurant, 1–4 August 1920.

Alexanderplatz's position as a main transport and traffic hub continued to fuel its development. In addition to the three U-Bahn underground lines, long-distance trains and S-Bahn trains ran along the Platz's viaduct arches. Omnibuses, horse-drawn from 1877 and, after 1898, also electric-powered trams, ran out of Alexanderplatz in all directions in a star shape. The subway station was designed by Alfred Grenander and followed the colour-coded order of subway stations, which began with green at Leipziger Platz and ran through to dark red.

In the Golden Twenties, Alexanderplatz was the epitome of the lively, pulsating cosmopolitan city of Berlin, rivalled in the city only by Potsdamer Platz. Many of the buildings and rail bridges surrounding the platz bore large billboards that illuminated the night. The Berlin cigarette company Manoli had a famous billboard at the time which contained a ring of neon tubes that constantly circled a black ball. The proverbial "Berliner Tempo" of those years was characterized as "total manoli". Writer Kurt Tucholsky wrote a poem referencing the advert, and the composer Rudolf Nelson made the legendary Revue Total manoli with the dancer Lucie Berber. The writer Alfred Döblin named his novel, Berlin Alexanderplatz, after the square, and Walter Ruttmann filmed parts of his 1927 film Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (Berlin: The Symphony of the Big City) at Alexanderplatz.

Destruction of Alexanderplatz (1940–1945)
One of Berlin's largest air-raid shelters during the Second World War was situated under Alexanderplatz. It was built between 1941 and 1943 for the Deutsche Reichsbahn by Philipp Holzmann.

The war reached Alexanderplatz in early April 1945. The Berolina statue had already been removed in 1944 and probably melted down for use in arms production. During the Battle of Berlin, Red Army artillery bombarded the area around Alexanderplatz. The battles of the last days of the war destroyed considerable parts of the historic Königsstadt, as well as many of the buildings around Alexanderplatz.

The Wehrmacht had entrenched itself within the tunnels of the underground system. Hours before fighting ended in Berlin on 2 May 1945, troops of the SS detonated explosives inside the north–south S-Bahn tunnel under the Landwehr Canal to slow the advance of the Red Army towards Berlin's city centre. The entire tunnel flooded, as well as large sections of the U-Bahn network via connecting passages at the Friedrichstraße underground station. Many of those seeking shelter in the tunnels were killed. Of the then 63.3 km of subway tunnel, around 19.8 km were flooded with more than one million cubic meters (1 GL) of water.

Demolition and reconstruction (1945–1964)
Before a planned reconstruction of the entire Alexanderplatz could take place, all the war ruins needed to be demolished and cleared away. A popular black market emerged within the ruined area, which the police raided several times a day.

One structure demolished after World War II was the 'Rote Burg', a red brick building with round arches, previously used as police and Gestapo headquarters. The huge construction project began in 1886 and was completed in 1890; it was one of Berlin's largest buildings. The 'castle' suffered extensive damage during 1944-45 and was demolished in 1957. The site on the southwest corner of Alexanderplatz remained largely unused as a carpark until the Alexa shopping centre opened in 2007.

Reconstruction planning for post-war Berlin gave priority to the dedicated space to accommodate the rapidly growing motor traffic in inner-city thoroughfares. This idea of a traffic-orientated city was already based on considerations and plans by Ludwig Hilberseimer and Le Corbusier from the 1930s.

East Germany

Alexanderplatz has been subject to redevelopment several times in its history, most recently during the 1960s, when it was turned into a pedestrian zone and enlarged as part of the German Democratic Republic's redevelopment of the city centre. It is surrounded by several notable structures including the Fernsehturm ('TV Tower').

During the Peaceful Revolution of 1989, the Alexanderplatz demonstration on 4 November 1989 was the largest demonstration in the history of the German Democratic Republic. Protests starting 15 October and peaked on 4 November with an estimated 200,000 participants who called on the government of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany to step down and demanded a free press, the opening of the borders and their right to travel. Speakers were Christa Wolf, Stefan Heym, Friedrich Schorlemmer, Heiner Müller, Lothar Bisky, Christoph Hein and Steffie Spira. The protests continued and culminated in the unexpected Fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989.

After German reunification (1989)
Ever since German reunification, Alexanderplatz has undergone a gradual process of change with many of the surrounding buildings being renovated. After the political turnaround in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall, socialist urban planning and architecture of the 1970s no longer corresponded to the current ideas of an inner-city square. Investors demanded planning security for their construction projects. After initial discussions with the public, the goal quickly arose to reinstate Alexanderplatz's tram network for better connections to surrounding city quarters. In 1993, an urban planning ideas competition for architects took place to redesign the square and its surrounding area.

In the first phase, there were 16 submissions, five of which were selected for the second phase of the competition. These five architects had to adapt their plans to detailed requirements. For example, the return of the Alex's trams was planned, with the implementation to be made in several stages.

The winner, who was determined on 17 September 1993, was the Berlin architect Hans Kollhoff. Kollhoff's plan was based on Behrens’ design, provided a horseshoe-shaped area of seven- to eight-storey buildings and 150 m high towers with 42 floors. The Alexanderhaus and the Berolinahaus – both listed buildings – would form the southwestern boundary. Second place went to the design by Daniel Libeskind and Bernd Faskel. The proposal of the architecture firm Kny & Weber, which was strongly based on the horseshoe shape of Wagner, finally won the third place. The design by Kollhoff was chosen on 7 June 1994 by the Berlin Senate as a basis for the further transformation of Alexanderplatz.

In 1993, architect Hans Kollhoff's master plan for a major redevelopment including the construction of several skyscrapers was published.

In 1995, Landesbank Berlin completed the renovation of the Alexanderhaus. In 1998, the first tram returned to Alexanderplatz, and in 1999, the town planning contracts for the implementation of Kollhoff and Timmermann's plans were signed by the landowners and the investors.

21st century

On 2 April 2000, the Senate finally fixed the development plan for Alexanderplatz. The purchase contracts between investors and the Senate Department for Urban Development were signed on 23 May 2002, thus laying the foundations for the development. The CUBIX multiplex cinema (CineStar Cubix am Alexanderplatz, styled CUBIX ), which opened in November 2000, joined the team of Berlin International Film Festival cinemas in 2007, and the festival shows films on three of its screens.

Renovation of the Centrum department store began in 2004, led by Berlin professor of architecture, Josef Paul Kleihues and his son Jan Kleihues. The building was enlarged by about 25 m and has since operated under the name Galeria Kaufhof.

Beginning with the reconstruction of the Kaufhof department store in 2004, and the biggest underground railway station of Berlin, some buildings were redesigned and new structures built on the square's south-eastern side. Sidewalks were expanded to shrink one of the avenues, a new underground garage was built, and commuter tunnels meant to keep pedestrians off the streets were removed. Between 2005 and 2006, Berolinahaus was renovated and later became a branch of the clothing chain, C&A.

In 2005, the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe began work to extend the tram line from Prenzlauer Allee to Alexanderplatz (Alex II). This route was originally to be opened in 2000 but was postponed several times. After further delays caused by the 2006 FIFA World Cup, the route opened on 30 May 2007.

In February 2006, the redesign of the walk-in plaza began. The redevelopment plans were provided by the architecture firm Gerkan, Marg and Partners and the Hamburg-based company WES-Landschaftsarchitekten. The final plans emerged from a design competition launched by the state of Berlin in 2004. However, the paving work was temporarily interrupted a few months after the start of construction by the 2006 FIFA World Cup and all excavation pits had to be provisionally asphalted over. The construction work could only be completed at the end of 2007.

The renovation of Alexanderplatz U-Bahnhof, the largest Berlin underground station, had been ongoing since the mid-1990s and was finally completed in October 2008.

The Platz was given a pavement of yellow granite, bordered by grey mosaic paving around the buildings. Wall AG modernized the 1920s-era underground toilets at a cost of 750,000 euros. The total redesign cost amounted to around 8.7 million euros.

On 12 September 2007 the Alexa shopping centre opened. It is located in the immediate vicinity of the Platz, on the site of the old Berlin police headquarters. With a 56200 m2 sales area, it is one of the largest shopping centres in Berlin.

In May 2007, the Texas property development company Hines began building a six-story commercial building named die mitte. The building was built on a plot of 3900 m2, which, according to the Kollhoff plans, closes the square to the east and thus reduces the area of the Platz. The building was opened on 25 March 2009.

At the beginning of 2007, the construction company Wöhr + Bauer created an underground garage with three levels below the Alexanderstraße, located between the hotel tower and the Elektroindustrie building, which cost 25 million euros to build and provides space for around 700 cars. The opening took place on 26 November 2010. At the same time, the Senate narrowed Alexanderstraße from almost 100 m wide to 58 m wide (100 to 58 m), thus reducing it to three lanes in each direction.

Behind the Alexanderplatz station, next to the CUBIX cinema in the immediate vicinity of the TV tower, the 30 m high residential and commercial building, Alea 101, was built between 2012 and 2014.

it was assessed that due to a lack of demand the skyscrapers planned in 1993 were unlikely to be constructed.

In January 2014, a 39-story residential tower designed by Frank Gehry was announced, but this project was put on hold in 2018. The Alexanderplatz area is the largest area for crime in Berlin. As of October 2017, Alexanderplatz was classified a kriminalitätsbelasteter Ort ("crime-contaminated location") by the Berlin Allgemeinen Sicherheits- und Ordnungsgesetz (General Safety and Planning Laws).

Today and future plans
Despite the reconstruction of the tram line crossing, it has retained its socialist character, including the much-graffitied Fountain of Friendship between Peoples, a popular venue.

Alexanderplatz is reputedly the most visited area of Berlin, beating Friedrichstrasse and City West. It is a popular starting point for tourists, with many attractions including the Fernsehturm (TV tower), the Nikolai Quarter and the Rotes Rathaus ('Red City Hall') situated nearby. Alexanderplatz is still one of Berlin's major commercial areas, housing various shopping malls, department stores and other large retail locations.

Many historic buildings are located in the vicinity of Alexanderplatz. The traditional seat of city government, the Rotes Rathaus, or 'Red City Hall', is located nearby, as was the former East German parliament building, the Palast der Republik. The Palast was demolished from 2006–2008 to make room for a full reconstruction of the Baroque Berlin Palace, or Stadtschloss, which is set to open in 2019.

Alexanderplatz is also the name of the S-Bahn and U-Bahn stations there. It is one of Berlin's largest and most important transportation hubs, being a meeting place of three subway (U-Bahn) lines, three S-Bahn lines, and many tram and bus lines, as well as regional trains.

It also accommodates the Park Inn Berlin and the World Time Clock, a continually rotating installation that shows the time throughout the globe, the House of Travel, and Hermann Henselmann's Haus des Lehrers (House of Teachers)'. Long-term plans exist for the demolition of the 125 m high former Interhotel Stadt Berlin (now the Hotel Park-Inn), with the site to be replaced by three skyscrapers. If and when this plan will be implemented is unclear, especially since the hotel tower received a new façade as recently as in 2005, and the occupancy rates of the hotel are very good. However, the plans could give way in the next few years to a suggested 35 m high new block conversion. The previous main tenant of the development, Saturn, moved into the die mitte building in March 2009. In 2014, Primark opened a branch inside the hotel building.

The majority of the planned 150 m high skyscrapers will probably never be built. The state of Berlin has announced that it will not enforce the corresponding urban development contracts against the market. Of the 13 planned skyscrapers, 10 remained as of 2008, after modifications to the plans – eight of which had construction rights. Some investors in the Alexa shopping centre announced several times since 2007 that they would sell their respective shares in the plot to an investor interested in building a high-rise building.

The first concrete plans for the construction of a high-rise were made by Hines, the investor behind die mitte. In 2009, the construction of a 150 m high tower to be built behind die mitte was announced. On 12 September 2011, a slightly modified development plan was presented, which provided for a residential tower housing 400 apartments. In early 2013, the development plan was opened to the public.

In autumn 2015, the Berlin Senate organized two forums in which interested citizens could express their opinions on the proposed changes to the Platz. Architects, city planners and Senate officials held open discussions. On that occasion, however, it was reiterated that the plans for high-rise developments were not up for debate. According to the master plan of the architect Hans Kollhoff, up to eleven huge buildings will continue to be built, which will house a mixture of shops and apartments.

Roads and public transport
During the post-war reconstruction of the 1960s, Alexanderplatz was completely pedestrianized. Since then, trams were reintroduced to the area in 1998.

Alexanderplatz station provides S-Bahn connections, access to the U2, U5 and U8 subway lines, regional train lines for DB Regio and ODEG services and, on weekends, the Harz-Berlin-Express (HBX). Several tram and bus lines also service the area.

The following main roads connect to Alexanderplatz:
 * Northwest: Karl-Liebknecht-Straße (federal highways B 2 and B 5)
 * Northeast: Alexanderstraße (B 2 and B 5)
 * Southeast: Grunerstraße / Alexanderstraße (B 1)
 * Southwest (in front of the S-Bahn station, in the pedestrian zone): Dircksenstraße

Several arterial roads lead radially from Alexanderplatz to the outskirts of Berlin. These include (clockwise from north to south-east):
 * Memhardstraße / Rosa-Luxemburg-Straße – Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz – Schönhauser Allee (to Bundesstraße 96a)
 * Karl-Liebknecht-Straße – intersection Mollstraße/Prenzlauer Tor – Prenzlauer Allee (main road 109 to the Pankow triangle at the Berliner Ring)
 * Grunerstraße / Alexanderstraße – Otto-Braun-Straße (B 2) – (intersection Mollstraße) – Greifswalder Straße (B 2 via Berliner Allee to the Barnim junction at Berliner Ring)

Karl-Marx-Allee (B 1 and B 5) – Strausberger Platz – Karl-Marx-Allee / Frankfurter Tor – Frankfurter Allee (B 1 and B 5 to Berlin-Hellersdorf junction at Berliner Ring)

Fountain of Friendship
The Fountain of Friendship (Brunnen der Völkerfreundschaft) was erected in 1970 during the redesign of Alexanderplatz and inaugurated on October 7. It was created by Walter Womacka and his group of artists. Its water basin has a diameter of 23 meters, it is 6.20 meters high and is built from embossed copper, glass, ceramics and enamel. The water spurts from the highest point and then flows down in spirals over 17 shells, which each have a diameter between one and four meters. After German reunification, it was completely renovated in a metal art workshop during the reconstruction of the Galeria Kaufhof.

Other
Apart from Hackescher Markt, Alexanderplatz is the only existing square in front of one of the medieval gates of Berlin's city wall.

title: Alexanderplatz


text:
Asian Development Bank

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is a regional development bank established on 19 December 1966, which is headquartered in 6 ADB Avenue, Mandaluyong, Metro Manila 1550, Philippines. The bank also maintains 31 field offices around the world to promote social and economic development in Asia. The bank admits the members of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP, formerly the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East or ECAFE), and non-regional developed countries. Starting with 31 members at its establishment, ADB now has 68 members.

The ADB was modeled closely on the World Bank and has a similar weighted voting system, where votes are distributed in proportion with members' capital subscriptions. ADB releases an annual report that summarizes its operations, budget, and other materials for review by the public. The ADB-Japan Scholarship Program (ADB-JSP) enrolls about 300 students annually in academic institutions located in 10 countries within the Region. After completing their study programs, scholars are expected to contribute to the economic and social development of their home countries. ADB holds the status of an official United Nations Observer.

As of 31 December 2020, Japan and the United States each holds the largest proportion of shares at 15.571%. China holds 6.429%, India holds 6.317%, and Australia holds 5.773%.

Organization
The highest policy-making body of the bank is the Board of Governors, composed of one representative from each member state. The Board of Governors, in turn, elect among themselves the twelve members of the board of directors and their deputies. Eight of the twelve members come from regional (Asia-Pacific) members while the others come from non-regional members.

The Board of Governors also elect the bank's president, who is the chairperson of the board of directors and manages ADB. The president has a term of office lasting five years, and may be re-elected. Traditionally, and because Japan is one of the largest shareholders of the bank, the president has always been Japanese.

The current president is Masatsugu Asakawa. He succeeded Takehiko Nakao on 17 January 2020, who succeeded Haruhiko Kuroda in 2013.

The headquarters of the bank is at 6 ADB Avenue, Mandaluyong, Metro Manila, Philippines, and it has 42 field offices in Asia and the Pacific and representative offices in Washington, Frankfurt, Tokyo and Sydney. The bank employs about 3,000 people, representing 60 of its 68 members.

List of presidents
(*) As from 17 January 2020, Masatsugu Asakawa was president of ADB.

1960s
As early as 1956, Japan Finance Minister Hisato Ichimada had suggested to United States Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that development projects in Southeast Asia could be supported by a new financial institution for the region. A year later, Japanese Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi announced that Japan intended to sponsor the establishment of a regional development fund with resources largely from Japan and other industrial countries. But the US did not warm to the plan and the concept was shelved. See full account in "Banking the Future of Asia and the Pacific: 50 Years of the Asian Development Bank", July 2017.

The idea came up again late in 1962 when Kaoru Ohashi, an economist from a research institute in Tokyo, visited Takeshi Watanabe, then a private financial consultant in Tokyo, and proposed a study group to form a development bank for the Asian region. The group met regularly in 1963, examining various scenarios for setting up a new institution and drew on Watanabe's experiences with the World Bank. However, the idea received a cool reception from the World Bank itself and the study group became discouraged.

In parallel, the concept was formally proposed at a trade conference organized by the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) in 1963 by a young Thai economist, Paul Sithi-Amnuai. (ESCAP, United Nations Publication March 2007, "The first parliament of Asia" pp. 65). Despite an initial mixed reaction, support for the establishment of a new bank soon grew.

An expert group was convened to study the idea, with Japan invited to contribute to the group. When Watanabe was recommended, the two streams proposing a new bank—from ECAFE and Japan—came together. Initially, the US was on the fence, not opposing the idea but not ready to commit financial support. But a new bank for Asia was soon seen to fit in with a broader program of assistance to Asia planned by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson in the wake of the escalating U.S. military support for the government of South Vietnam.

As a key player in the concept, Japan hoped that the ADB offices would be in Tokyo. However, eight other cities had also expressed an interest: Bangkok, Colombo, Kabul, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Phnom Penh, Singapore, and Tehran. To decide, the 18 prospective regional members of the new bank held three rounds of votes at a ministerial conference in Manila in November/December 1965. In the first round on 30 November, Tokyo failed to win a majority, so a second ballot was held the next day at noon. Although Japan was in the lead, it was still inconclusive, so a final vote was held after lunch. In the third poll, Tokyo gained eight votes to Manila's nine, with one abstention. Therefore, Manila was declared the host of the new development bank; the Japanese were mystified and deeply disappointed. Watanabe later wrote in his personal history of ADB: "I felt as if the child I had so carefully reared had been taken away to a distant country." (Asian Development Bank publication, "Towards a New Asia", 1977, p. 16)

On 3 December 1965, Philippine President Diosdado Macapagal lays the foundation stone of the Asian Development Bank.

As intensive work took place during 1966 to prepare for the opening of the new bank in Manila, high on the agenda was choice of president. Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Satō asked Watanabe to be a candidate. Although he initially declined, pressure came from other countries and Watanabe agreed. In the absence of any other candidates, Watanabe was elected first President of the Asian Development Bank at its Inaugural Meeting on 24 November 1966.

By the end of 1972, Japan had contributed $173.7 million (22.6% of the total) to the ordinary capital resources and $122.6 million (59.6% of the total) to the special funds. In contrast, the United States contributed only $1.25 million to the special fund.

After its creation in the 1960s, ADB focused much of its assistance on food production and rural development. At the time, Asia was one of the poorest regions in the world.

Early loans went largely to Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea and the Philippines; these countries accounted for 78.48% of the total ADB loans between 1967 and 1972. Moreover, Japan received tangible benefits, 41.67% of the total procurements between 1967 and 1976. Japan tied its special funds contributions to its preferred sectors and regions and procurements of its goods and services, as reflected in its $100 million donation for the Agricultural Special Fund in April 1968.

Watanabe served as the first ADB president to 1972.

1970s–1980s
In the 1970s, ADB's assistance to developing countries in Asia expanded into education and health, and then to infrastructure and industry. The gradual emergence of Asian economies in the latter part of the decade spurred demand for better infrastructure to support economic growth. ADB focused on improving roads and providing electricity. When the world suffered its first oil price shock, ADB shifted more of its assistance to support energy projects, especially those promoting the development of domestic energy sources in member countries.

Following considerable pressure from the Reagan Administration in the 1980s, ADB reluctantly began working with the private sector in an attempt to increase the impact of its development assistance to poor countries in Asia and the Pacific. In the wake of the second oil crisis, ADB expanded its assistance to energy projects. In 1982, ADB opened its first field office, in Bangladesh, and later in the decade, it expanded its work with non-government organizations (NGOs).

Japanese presidents Inoue Shiro (1972–76) and Yoshida Taroichi (1976–81) took the spotlight in the 1970s. Fujioka Masao, the fourth president (1981–90), adopted an assertive leadership style, launching an ambitious plan to expand the ADB into a high-impact development agency.

On 18 November 1972, the Bank inaugurated its headquarters along Roxas Boulevard in Pasay City, Philippines. On 31 May 1991, ADB moved its offices to Ortigas Center in Pasig City, with the Department of Foreign Affairs (Philippines) taking over its old Pasay premises.

1990s
In the 1990s, ADB began promoting regional cooperation by helping the countries on the Mekong River to trade and work together. The decade also saw an expansion of ADB's membership with the addition of several Central Asian countries following the end of the Cold War.

In mid-1997, ADB responded to the financial crisis that hit the region with projects designed to strengthen financial sectors and create social safety nets for the poor. During the crisis, ADB approved its largest single loan – a $4 billion emergency loan to South Korea. In 1999, ADB adopted poverty reduction as its overarching goal.

2000s
The early 2000s saw a dramatic expansion of private sector finance. While the institution had such operations since the 1980s (under pressure from the Reagan Administration) the early attempts were highly unsuccessful with low lending volumes, considerable losses and financial scandals associated with an entity named AFIC. However, beginning in 2002, the ADB undertook a dramatic expansion of private sector lending under a new team. Over the course of the next six years, the Private Sector Operations Department (PSOD) grew by a factor of 41 times the 2001 levels of new financings and earnings for the ADB. This culminated with the Board's formal recognition of these achievements in March 2008, when the board of directors formally adopted the Long Term strategic Framework (LTSF). That document formally stated that assistance to private sector development was the lead priority of the ADB and that it should constitute 50% of the bank's lending by 2020.

In 2003, the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic hit the region and ADB responded with programs to help the countries in the region work together to address infectious diseases, including avian influenza and HIV/AIDS. ADB also responded to a multitude of natural disasters in the region, committing more than $850 million for recovery in areas of India, Indonesia, Maldives, and Sri Lanka which were impacted by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. In addition, $1 billion in loans and grants was provided to the victims of the October 2005 earthquake in Pakistan.

In December 2005, China donated $20 million to the ADB for a regional poverty alleviation fund; China's first such fund set up at an international institution.

In 2009, ADB's Board of Governors agreed to triple ADB's capital base from $55 billion to $165 billion, giving it much-needed resources to respond to the global economic crisis. The 200% increase is the largest in ADB's history, and was the first since 1994.

2010s
Asia moved beyond the economic crisis and by 2010 had emerged as a new engine of global economic growth though it remained home to two-thirds of the world's poor. In addition, the increasing prosperity of many people in the region created a widening income gap that left many people behind. ADB responded to this with loans and grants that encouraged economic growth.

In early 2012, the ADB began to re-engage with Myanmar in response to reforms initiated by the government. In April 2014, ADB opened an office in Myanmar and resumed making loans and grants to the country.

In 2017, ADB combined the lending operations of its Asian Development Fund (ADF) with its ordinary capital resources (OCR). The result was to expand the OCR balance sheet to permit increasing annual lending and grants to $20 billion by 2020 – 50% more than the previous level.

In 2020, ADB gave a $2 million grant from the Asia Pacific Disaster Response Fund, to support the Armenian government in the fight against the spread of COVID-19 pandemic. In the same year, the ADB committed a $20 million loan to Electric Networks of Armenia, that will ensure electricity for the citizens during the pandemic, as well as approved $500,000 in regional technical assistance to procure personal protective equipment and other medical supplies.

Aim
The ADB defines itself as a social development organization that is dedicated to reducing poverty in Asia and the Pacific through inclusive economic growth, environmentally sustainable growth, and regional integration. This is carried out through investments – in the form of loans, grants and information sharing – in infrastructure, health care services, financial and public administration systems, helping countries prepare for the impact of climate change or better manage their natural resources, as well as other areas.

Focus areas
Eighty percent of ADB's lending is concentrated public sector lending in five operational areas.
 * Education – Most developing countries in Asia and the Pacific have earned high marks for a dramatic rise in primary education enrollment rates in the last three decades, but daunting challenges remain, threatening economic and social growth.
 * Environment, Climate Change, and Disaster Risk Management – Environmental sustainability is a prerequisite for economic growth and poverty reduction in Asia and the Pacific.
 * Finance Sector Development – The financial system is the lifeline of a country's economy. It creates prosperity that can be shared throughout society and benefit the poorest and most vulnerable people. Financial sector and capital market development, including microfinance, small and medium-sized enterprises, and regulatory reforms, is vital to decreasing poverty in Asia and the Pacific. This has been a key priority of the Private Sector Operations Department (PSOD) since 2002. One of the most active sub-sectors of finance is the PSOD's support for trade finance. Each year the PSOD finances billions of dollars in letters of credit across all of Asia and the rest of the world.
 * Infrastructure, including transport and communications, energy, water supply and sanitation, and urban development.
 * Regional Cooperation and Integration – Regional cooperation and integration (RCI) was introduced by President Kuroda when he joined the ADB in 2004. It was seen as a long-standing priority of the Japanese government as a process by which national economies become more regionally connected. It plays a critical role in accelerating economic growth, reducing poverty and economic disparity, raising productivity and employment, and strengthening institutions.
 * Private Sector Lending – This priority was introduced into the ADB's activities at the insistence of the Reagan Administration. However, that effort was never a true priority until the administration of President Tadeo Chino who in turn brought in a seasoned American banker – Robert Bestani. From then on, the Private Sector Operations Department (PSOD) grew at a very rapid pace, growing from the smallest financing unit of the ADB to the largest in terms of financing volume. As noted earlier, this culminated in the Long Term strategic Framework (LTSF) which was adopted by the Board in March 2008.

Financings
The ADB offers "hard" loans on commercial terms primarily to middle income countries in Asia and "soft" loans with lower interest rates to poorer countries in the region. Based on a new policy, both types of loans will be sourced starting January 2017 from the bank's ordinary capital resources (OCR), which functions as its general operational fund.

The ADB's Private Sector Department (PSOD) can and does offer a broader range of financings beyond commercial loans. They also have the capability to provide guarantees, equity and mezzanine finance (a combination of debt and equity).

In 2017, ADB lent $19.1 billion of which $3.2 billion went to private enterprises, as part of its "non-sovereign" operations. ADB's operations in 2017, including grants and co-financing, totaled $28.9 billion.

ADB obtains its funding by issuing bonds on the world's capital markets. It also relies on the contributions of member countries, retained earnings from lending operations, and the repayment of loans.

Private sector investments
ADB provides direct financial assistance, in the form of debt, equity and mezzanine finance to private sector companies, for projects that have clear social benefits beyond the financial rate of return. ADB's participation is usually limited but it leverages a large amount of funds from commercial sources to finance these projects by holding no more than 25% of any given transaction.

Co-financing
ADB partners with other development organizations on some projects to increase the amount of funding available. In 2014, $9.2 billion—or nearly half—of ADB's $22.9 billion in operations were financed by other organizations. According to Jason Rush, Principal Communication Specialist, the Bank communicates with many other multilateral organizations.

Funds and resources
More than 50 financing partnership facilities, trust funds, and other funds – totaling several billion each year – are administered by ADB and put toward projects that promote social and economic development in Asia and the Pacific. ADB has raised Rupees 5 billion or around Rupees 5 billion from its issuance of 5-year offshore Indian rupee (INR) linked bonds.

On 26 February 2020, ADB raises $118 million from rupee-linked bonds and supporting the development of India International Exchange in India, as it also contributes to an established yield curve which stretches from 2021 through 2030 with $1 billion of outstanding bonds.

2022 Annual Report
The 2022 Annual Report details ADB's efforts in aiding its developing member countries to overcome the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, tackle new challenges like the Russian invasion of Ukraine and a severe food crisis, while also addressing climate change with significant financial commitments, including $6.7 billion for climate initiatives and a $14 billion package for food security. The ADB committed a total of $20.5 billion in various forms of assistance, including private sector financing, and fostered regional cooperation, with a focus on gender equality, education, healthcare, and unlocking additional resources through innovative financial mechanisms. The report also notes organizational reforms for increased efficacy, the adoption of a hybrid work model following the full reopening of its headquarters.

Access to information
ADB has an information disclosure policy that presumes all information that is produced by the institution should be disclosed to the public unless there is a specific reason to keep it confidential. The policy calls for accountability and transparency in operations and the timely response to requests for information and documents. ADB does not disclose information that jeopardizes personal privacy, safety and security, certain financial and commercial information, as well as other exceptions.

Notable projects and technical assistance

 * Afghanistan: Hairatan to Mazar-e-Sharif Railway Project
 * Armenia: Water Supply and Sanitation Sector Project
 * Bhutan: Green Power Development Project
 * India: Rural Roads Sector II Investment Program; Agartala Municipal Infrastructure Development Project
 * Indonesia: Vocational Education Strengthening Project
 * Laos: Northern and Central Regions Water Supply and Sanitation Sector Project
 * Mongolia: Food and Nutrition Social Welfare Program and Project
 * Philippines: North–South Commuter Railway Project (Malolos–Clark Railway Project and South Commuter Railway Project), jointly funded with Japan International Cooperation Agency; Bataan–Cavite Interlink Bridge, jointly funded by Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
 * Solomon Islands: Pacific Private Sector Development Initiative

Criticism
Since the ADB's early days, critics have charged that the two major donors, Japan and the United States, have had extensive influence over lending, policy and staffing decisions.

Oxfam Australia has criticized the Asian Development Bank for insensitivity to local communities. "Operating at a global and international level, these banks can undermine people's human rights through projects that have detrimental outcomes for poor and marginalized communities." The bank also received criticism from the United Nations Environmental Program, stating in a report that "much of the growth has bypassed more than 70 percent of its rural population, many of whom are directly dependent on natural resources for livelihoods and incomes."

There had been criticism that ADB's large scale projects cause social and environmental damage due to lack of oversight. One of the most controversial ADB-related projects is Thailand's Mae Moh coal-fired power station. Environmental and human rights activists say ADB's environmental safeguards policy as well as policies for indigenous peoples and involuntary resettlement, while usually up to international standards on paper, are often ignored in practice, are too vague or weak to be effective, or are simply not enforced by bank officials.

The bank has been criticized over its role and relevance in the food crisis. The ADB has been accused by civil society of ignoring warnings leading up the crisis and also contributing to it by pushing loan conditions that many say unfairly pressure governments to deregulate and privatize agriculture, leading to problems such as the rice supply shortage in Southeast Asia.

Indeed, whereas the Private Sector Operations Department (PSOD) closed out that year with financings of $2.4 billion, the ADB has significantly dropped below that level in the years since and is clearly not on the path to achieving its stated goal of 50% of financings to the private sector by 2020. Critics also point out that the PSOD is the only Department that actually makes money for the ADB. Hence, with the vast majority of loans going to concessionary (sub-market) loans to the public sector, the ADB is facing considerable financial difficulty and continuous operating losses.

Countries with the largest subscribed capital and voting rights
The following table are amounts for 20 largest countries by subscribed capital and voting power at the Asian Development Bank as of December 2021.

Members

ADB has 68 members (as of 23 March 2019): 49 members from the Asian and Pacific Region, and 19 members from Other Regions. The year listed after a member's name indicates the year of their membership. When a country no longer remains a member, the Bank shall arrange for the repurchase of such country's shares by the Bank as a part of the settlement of accounts with such country in accordance with the provisions of paragraphs 3 and 4 of Article 43.

title: Asian Development Bank


text:
Talk:Asynchronous Transfer Mode

P-NNI is link state but not necessarily shortest-path
The P-NNI standard specifies the exchange of link state information, similar to what IS-IS and OSPF do. It has more levels of hierarchy, and more metrics, but the basic approach is similar.

However, it does not specify the routing algorithm, i.e., the algorithm that picks the path for a particular destination. The reason is that this is not necessary; SVC setup uses source routing, so there is no need for the switches to agree on what the chosen route will be for a given destination. Connectionless switches require agreement to avoid loops, but ATM SVC setup does not. So the standard leaves this aspect open to implementers' choice.

Obviously, it's to be expected that some algorithm similar to Dijkstra's algorithm will be used to determine the path for a particular connection, but it's not correct to say that the standard "uses the same shortest path algorithm used by OSPF..." Paul Koning 17:01, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

 * I have made corrections to clear this up. ~Kvng (talk) 13:46, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Call admission
The article says "To admit a call first a VPC has to be established. This will guarantee the correct routing from end to end." This is incorrect. In the signaling for SVC setup, the route is specified (see my comment above on P-NNI). It does not require a pre-existing VPC, for routing or for any other purpose. A call is admitted if the admission control algorithm decides to admit the call, normally because the resources the call asks for (in the signalling messages) are available.

A network implementer can certainly use a VPC as a trunk, and route a new SVC over such a trunk if the source route allows it, but there's no requirement to do so; if a network does that, it's an internal matter that is invisible to the user. Paul Koning 17:06, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

 * Mentioned text is no longer in the article. There is not even an instance of VPC' which apparently stands for virtual path connection. ~Kvng (talk) 14:29, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

also operate at OC-192 (STM64) rates
There doesn't appear to be a clear reason for the statement "ATM switches can also operate at OC-192 (STM64) rates." to be part of a paragraph dealing with ATM over IP and IP routing (not ATM switching). The relevance of this statement should either be qualified with additional information, or if it is indeed dealing with an unrelated issue, put into a seperate paragraph and elaborated upon. I have removed it for the moment. --Het 02:02, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

lowercase correct
Dgtsyb, you're confused about and confusing several completely different issues in this reasoning of yours: I.150 only uses lower case in the title which is simply ITU-T's house style for titles.

 * 1) As you can see at the ITU link, asynchronous transfer mode is also used on p.2.
 * 2) Carefully edited reference works and publications such as Britannica also use lowercase when explaining acronyms like ATM.
 * 3) Some organizations (including Wikipedia) do not capitalise common nouns in titles, but they never lowercase proper nouns in titles or in text. If something is lowercase in an ITU title, you can be sure it's definitely a common noun, and carefully edited publications like Britannica also lowercase it.
 * 4) Please do not revert again while the issue is being discussed here. --Espoo (talk) 12:53, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

 * The second page of I.150 is a list of titles. Page i, 1 and 11 (the body of the text) has it capiltalized everywhere.  It is a proper noun and it why it was moved on 24 December 2009 from Asynchronous transfer mode to Asynchronous Transfer Mode.  I would consider ATM Theory and Applications, part of the McGraw Hill Signature Series on Telecommunications, to be a carefully edited work.  The same is true of Integrated Services Digital Network,, Broadband Integrated Services Digital Network, and Public Switched Telephone Network and many other topic areas in the field of communications, a handful of which from your recent edits you appear to wish to somehow make common nouns.  For example, your move of Broadband Integrated Services Digital Network, to Broadband integrated services digital network is quite inappropriate: the only cited work in that article capitalizes ISDN, B-ISDN as well as ATM in their long forms throughout.

 * You might find it useful to think whether ATM (or any of these) are properly preceded by any or some. In telecommunications, we neither refer to any ATM nor some ATM; not any B-ISDN and not some B-ISDN.  Where it is obvious that we can say any telephone network, or some transport protocol, naturally.  Common nouns refer to a class.  ATM is not a class.  As a counter-example, consider cyclic redundancy code.  CRC is not a proper noun.  It is a class of algorithms.  CRC-32c is a proper noun.  Another example:  Stream Control Transmission Protocol is a proper noun.

 * Another example: You will see that in the articles and in I.150 on ATM, ATM is written out capitalized as Asynchronous Transfer Mode and yet asynchronous time-division switching is not. Asynchronous time-division switching is a common noun referring to the class of protocols of which ATM is a standardized, specific and particular instance.

 * You appear upset that I reverted your changes. Once ever so often an editor goes stomping though these pages changing all of the proper nouns to lower case, causing an effort to change them all back.  To avoid bother, it is common to simply revert these without much comment.  Please consider all such changes as controversial and discuss your intended changes before making them to avoid causing unnecessary work for the regular contributors to these articles.  Please also consider reducing that work load by reverting your own recent changes to these articles.  Thank you.  — Dgtsyb (talk) 14:12, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

 * 1) I.150 would not lowercase "asynchronous transfer mode" anywhere if it were a proper noun. The uppercase use on the other pages is always next to the acronym, as an explanation, and it's a widespread (bad) habit to explain acronyms of common nouns using uppercase. (Bad because it makes people believe these nouns are proper nouns.) Many if not most ITU webpages use lowercase. Even many if not most of those ITU webpages with uppercase are using it when explaining the acronym (and then the non-professional writers/editors, who are only trained as engineers, often get confused and think they should do so elsewhere too). The very fact that carefully edited publications like Britannica use lowercase proves that ATM is a common noun.
 * 2) Believe me, professional editors of encyclopedias know a lot more about grammar and spelling than engineers, and professional editors of reference works have extensive databases of citations at their disposal, on which they base their decisions. When they see, for example, that engineers use both lowercase and uppercase, professional editors use professional methods not at our disposal to decide which is more common and weight these based on whether these are well-edited "important" texts meant for the public or for internal use / colleagues / other engineers. You're right that some carefully edited technical (and legal) publications follow those professions' predilection for the baroque (18th century) practice of uppercasing Important Words even when they are common nouns, but MOS clearly says to avoid unnecessary capitalisation, in other words when other reliable sources use lowercase. Any attempts to use tests like "any" or "some" to decide whether something is a common noun amount to OR and are hopelessly amateurish. I hope you'll agree that it is quite common in English to uppercase words unnecessarily, even when they are not proper nouns. I hope you'll also agree that it is much less common for even amateur writers to erroneously lowercase proper nouns. This will perhaps help you realise how improbable is the idea that Britannica's editors with their training and huge citation database would erroneously lowercase a proper noun.
 * This has to be interpreted as an attack on the editors that revert your versions. You certainly don't show this 'professional editor' attribute, as you simply ignore the well founded reasoning that make nouns proper or common in technology. Kbrose (talk) 16:55, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
 * You are once again defending OR as better than following usage in reliable sources. If these use both uppercase and lowercase, MOS clearly states we should use lowercase, especially when general reference works like Britannica also use lowercase (not to mention most ITU and IEC webpages). Your aggressive removal of information is an attack, not my pointing out that we are not even supposed to try to be professional editors and definitely not try to be above them. (I am a professional editor BTW, but that is not why we should follow what I feel is clearly correct.)--Espoo (talk) 17:09, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

 * 1) Your comments about some editors "stomping through" and others being "regular" indicate you have not understood one of the main ideas of WP and that you have a tendency to try to own articles. One of the reasons WP is so good is because people who spend a lot of time reading and writing about a topic may be blind to major problems, including general English spelling "rules" (habits) and to usage in general reference works and even on specialist websites like IEC and ITU. Infrequent visitors, especially when they provide reliable sources, should definitely not be simply shrugged off, reverted, and driven out. It's an especially bad idea to remove well sourced info. I would not have been so upset if you'd changed my edits instead of simply reverting all of them and thereby removing the info that ITU, IEC, Wired Magazine, and Britannica use lowercase. --Espoo (talk) 15:57, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

It is quite obvious that User:Dgtsyb is not confused about these issues, as the editor just laid out explicitly and correctly the very good reasons that are used to establish proper and common noun usage not only in telecommunications, but the English language. The editor's explanations also carry weight based on his substantial and knowledgeable contributions to many of these articles. Not following these criteria is absurd and would be controversial no matter what some reference text might use. It should be noted that many publications, for example, also incorrectly don't capitalize Internet out of some principle, but we still insist on proper usage on WP. The capitalization of ATM and ISDN fully spelled out titles is very notable and in-line with all of our proper noun usage on WP. Kbrose (talk) 16:06, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

 * With your ridiculous comment "no matter what some reference text might use" you just inadvertently disqualified yourself and put your aggressive reverts into an even worse light because WP policy is very clearly that edits are to be based on reliable sources and specifically general reference sources such as Britannica and to a lesser degree on use in specialist literature and not at all on analyses by any editor, no matter how "substantial and knowledgeable" his contributions have been.
 * Your comments are simply absurd for other reasons too. There may be reasons for using uppercase, but Dgtsyb was clearly confused in using the illogical and erroneous reasoning "lower case in the title which is simply ITU-T's house style for titles." Re-read this a few times:
 * Some organizations (including ITU and Wikipedia) do not capitalise common nouns in titles, but they never lowercase proper nouns in titles (or in text). If something is lowercase in an ITU title, you can be sure it's definitely a common noun.'
 * Stop removing valuable, well-sourced information - that's clearly vandalism. If you feel strongly about having uppercase, change that but don't remove reliable sources showing widespread lowercase use by distinguished organisations and publishers. --Espoo (talk) 16:34, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

 * It is very interesting that you only consider *your* source as reliable. When the proper usage was documented with reliable sources of equal stature you dismissed them with your own interpretation and choice of citation. This documents your attempts of owning the version you like to see. Kbrose (talk) 16:40, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

 * Actually, I think that the non-introductory university level textbooks published by McGraw Hill and Prentice Hall (pillars with John Wiley in Engineering texts), are more reliable than ITU-T, ISO/IEC and Encyclopedia Britannica. Of these, the text books are, I believe, secondary sources; ITU-T and ISO/IEC, primary sources; Encyclopedia Britannica, a tertiary source: per WP:PRIMARY.  The EB entry, as a clear tertiary source cannot be used to support a position on whether the noun is common or proper as that is certainly not the topic of the EB entry.  The primary sources cannot be analyzed to determine a part of speech.  Therefore, it appears that Espoo's conclusions should be considered original research.  I do not believe that the removed mis-cited sources can be considered reliable sources for the conclusions advanced by Espoo.  — Dgtsyb (talk) 00:01, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

 * I specifically did not dismiss the single reliable source provided supporting uppercase. I simply pointed out that reference works like Britannica base their choices on a comprehensive view of usage whereas the editor of the McGraw Hill book is only one person's or a small group's personal preference. And MOS clearly says to avoid unnecessary uppercase, which is clearly the case when both are used by reliable sources. Since your view is fighting the combined windmills of Britannica, ITU, and IEC, the case is especially clear. --Espoo (talk) 16:50, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

 * Where is Britannica's extensive research on the usage documented? This sounds more like personal research to me.  ITU, except in titles which is a different matter (house style), does what other sources on topic do: namely expand it once, capitalized in the introduction and then simply use the acronym throughout the remainder of the document.  It saves both paper and ink that way.  This is what ITU-T Recommendation I.150 does, as does ATM Theory and Applications, McGraw Hill, ATM Volume III, Internetworking with ATM, Prentice Hall.  ISO/IEC does the same thing in, for example, ISO/IEC 13246:1997(E) and ISO/IEC 13247:1997(E).  So I don't think that ITU and ISO/IEC documents support your conclusion.

 * I do recall from earlier working papers on both ISDN and ATM that, before they were standardized, we used to refer to them in all lower case and after standardization in upper case. Perhaps Britannica is following this arcane usage.

 * The RFC database is a good way to ferret out common usage. In the following RFCs it is always capitalized as Asynchronous Transfer Mode: RFC 1167, RFC 1340, RFC 1391, RFC 1392, RFC 1483, RFC 1539, RFC 1573, RFC 1577, RFC 1599, RFC 1607, RFC 1679, RFC 1680, RFC 1700, RFC 1705, RFC 1709, RFC 1718, RFC 1754, RFC 1821, RFC 1983, RFC 2071, RFC 2225, RFC 2226, RFC 2233, RFC 2299, RFC 2381, RFC 2400, RFC 2502, RFC 2600, RFC 2626, RFC 2684, RFC 2761, RFC 2799, RFC 2863, RFC 2885, RFC 2955, RFC 2999, RFC 3015, RFC 3031, RFC 3035, RFC 3038, RFC 3094, RFC 3116, RFC 3133, RFC 3134, RFC 3175, RFC 3199, RFC 3215, RFC 3292, RFC 3293, RFC 3294, RFC 3295, RFC 3299, RFC 3300, RFC 3336, RFC 3337, RFC 3353, RFC 3355, RFC 3386, RFC 3441, RFC 3471, RFC 3496, RFC 3499, RFC 3525, RFC 3600, RFC 3700, RFC 3809, RFC 3815, RFC 3819, RFC 4048, RFC 4110, RFC 4221, RFC 457, RFC 4294, RFC 4297, RFC 4364, RFC 4365, RFC 4368, RFC 4381, RFC 4447, RFC 4454, RFC 4542, RFC 4553, RFC 4603, RFC 4638, RFC 4679, RFC 4710, RFC 4717, RFC 4766, RFC 4779, RFC 4782, RFC 4803, RFC 4816, RFC 4821, RFC 4840, RFC 4842, RFC 4905, RFC 4906, RFC 4949, RFC 5000, RFC 5070, RFC 5085, RFC 5254, RFC 5287, RFC 5494, and the list goes on...  Only once in one RFC that I can find is it referred to as asynchronous transfer mode: RFC 3819, and in that RFC it also appears once as Asynchronous Transfer Mode.  This list spans 20 years of common usage.  156 occurrences of Asynchronous Transfer Mode and 1 occurence of asynchronous transfer mode.

 * The ITU Q-Series breaks down this way: Asynchronous Transfer Mode, Q.1201, Q.2010, Q.2100, Q.2110, Q.2120, Q.2130, Q.2140, Q.2144, Q.2761, Q.2762, Q.2763, Q.2764, Q.2971; asynchronous transfer mode, none. I-Series: Asynchronous Transfer Mode, I.150, I.312, I.326, I.361, I.364, I.365-1, I.365-2, I.365-3, I.374, I.555, I.731, I.751; asynchronous transfer mode, I.321, I.327.  Perhaps a confusion to some is that some documents talk of the general aspects of an asynchronous transfer mode.  This is because this usage is as a common noun.  At the time we knew that an asynchronous transfer mode would eventually be standardized but it was not certain which specific proposals would be adopted.  (We didn't even known the cell size, for example).  But once the general aspects were decided and all of the specifics standardized, it became commonly referred to as the Asynchronous Transfer Mode, as in the one standardized not a concept of which only the general aspects have been determined.

 * I don't think I will give it much more effort. I am sorry, but I cannot subscribe to your theory of Britannica throughly researching common usage in this case, or in that of ISDN or B-ISDN for that matter. — Dgtsyb (talk) 21:30, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

 * A few more additions. ATM Forum documents: CS 107, CS 115, CS 125, CS 126, CS 127, CS 135, CS 140, CS 141, FBATM 139, LANE 38, LANE 112, MPOA 114, MPOA 129, NM 19, NM 27, NM 58, NM 73, NM 95, NM 103, NM 122, NM 184, PHY 43, PHY 79, PHY 86, PHY 110, PHY 128, PHY 130, PHY 133, PHY 134, PHY 138, PHY 142, PHY 143, PHY 144, PHY 162, PNNI 66, PNNI 81, RA 104, RA 105, RA 106, RA 123, RBB 99, RBB PY 101, SAA 108, SAA 109, SAA 124, SEC 100, TEST 30, TEST 42, TEST 44, TEST 51, TEST 52, TEST 67, TEST 70, TEST 90, TEST 137, TEST CSRA 111, TEST CSRA 118, TEST TM 131, TM 121, VTOA 83, VTOA 89, VTOA 113, VTOA 119, VTOA 120, VTOA 132—spelling Asynchronous Transfer Mode, all; asynchronous transfer mode, none.  A decade of usage...  — Dgtsyb (talk) 22:20, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

 * One more note: you do not seem to want to consider how the term is used by Engineers and yet the term is not commonly used outside of the field of Engineering. Outside of the field of Engineering, an ATM is a machine out of which you take all your money; inside the field of Engineering, ATM is a machine that takes all your money. ;) — Dgtsyb (talk) 22:01, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Late to the party, I'm not going to bother responding to all the points above. Suffice to say, in my experience the common usage of Asynchronous Transfer Mode is always capitalized; I see no reason why Wikipedia should be the exception. //Blaxthos ( t / c ) 22:08, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Take a look at Proper noun. Asynchronous Transfer Mode is a specific standard and can only be thought of as a proper noun and must, therefore, be capitalised. As one cannot guarantee that other authors have correctly followed syntactical requirements, one should not base their argument on common usage. One should instead base their argument on syntactical principals. From this perspective, only capitalised ATM is permissible. This approach may seem contrary to WP philosophy, however, it is the only way to resolve conflicts such as this where common usage is often grammatically incorrect.Internet/internet, as mentioned earlier, being another example. --Spuzzdawg (talk) 22:42, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

At present the title is in lower case and the lead is in Title Case. I beleive ATM is a proper noun like Integrated Services Digital Network, Frame Relay, Multiprotocol Label Switching and Ethernet and so prefer Title Case. At a minimum we need to be self-consistent. If there is no more discussion, I will request a move to change the title to match the lead. ~Kvng (talk) 14:35, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

 * I have to generally agree with the analysis by Dgtsyb. And this (I think by Kbrose) is fallacious: 'I.150 would not lowercase "asynchronous transfer mode" anywhere if it were a proper noun.'  It presumes that the author(s) of I.150 were infallible writers. The preponderance of the evidence is strongly in favor of this being a proper name (proper-noun phrase), not a common-noun phrase.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:41, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

A Terrible Mistake
Some call this protocol "A Terrible Mistake". See http://www.clock.org/~fair/opinion/atm-is-bad.html Emersion (talk) 11:17, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

 * Well, it is 20 years old (note the comment on the upcoming gigabit ethernet). But otherwise, ATM was designed for telephone companies, not for LAN or WAN use. VoIP isn't quite closing down the telephone companies yet, though.  But yes, LANe isn't a good way to run a LAN. Leave ATM to the phone companies. Gah4 (talk) 14:31, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

 * That looks like a WP:SPS. See discussion above. ~Kvng (talk) 14:29, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 16 September 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not Moved: A rough concensus not to move the article  Megan☺   Talk to the monster  18:16, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Asynchronous Transfer Mode → Asynchronous transfer mode – See discussion 10 years ago, in Talk:Asynchronous Transfer Mode about whether or not have the title with capital letters. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 09:24, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Please don't start this bizarre talk again. It was the consensus of the technically knowledgeable editors that this is a proper noun, supported by the vast majority of topic literature, including dozens of IETF RFCs. In addition, WP uppercases all specific protocol names. kbrose (talk) 12:36, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose – proper name, just been corrected --Zac67 (talk) 16:57, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose. This is a proper name and thus should be capitalised. J I P  | Talk 17:47, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Neutral – at the last RM discussion at Talk:Asynchronous_Transfer_Mode/Archive_2 there wasn't much input, but it was left at lowercase where Tony1 had put it earlier. I supported the removal of the parenthetical and didn't look into the case much.  I agree it's a named protocol, so probably caps are OK. Dicklyon (talk) 23:02, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

 * And see earlier discussion above this, if this comes up again. A great deal of evidence has been presented for this being a proper name, and basically nothing for the opposite other than it was spelled wrong in a handful of old RfCs.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:45, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

title: Talk:Asynchronous Transfer Mode


text:
Aswan

Aswan (, also ;   أسوان ; Ⲥⲟⲩⲁⲛ  ) is a city in Southern Egypt, and is the capital of the Aswan Governorate.

Aswan is a busy market and tourist centre located just north of the Aswan Dam on the east bank of the Nile at the first cataract. The modern city has expanded and includes the formerly separate community on the island of Elephantine.

Aswan includes five monuments within the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Nubian Monuments from Abu Simbel to Philae; these are the Old and Middle Kingdom tombs of Qubbet el-Hawa, the town of Elephantine, the stone quarries and Unfinished Obelisk, the Monastery of St. Simeon and the Fatimid Cemetery. The city's Nubian Museum is an important archaeological center, containing finds from the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia before the Aswan Dam flooded all of Lower Nubia.

The city is part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in the category of craft and folk art. Aswan joined the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities in 2017.

Other spellings and variations
Aswan was formerly spelled Assuan or Assouan. Names in other languages include (أسوان; Ancient Egyptian: ; Ⲥⲟⲩⲁⲛ; Συήνη; proposed Biblical Hebrew: סְוֵנֵה Sǝwēnê). The Nubians also call the city Dib which means "fortress, palace" and is derived from the Old Nubian name ⲇⲡ̅ⲡⲓ.

History
Aswan is the ancient city of Swenett, later known as Syene, which in antiquity was the frontier town of Ancient Egypt facing the south. Swenett is supposed to have derived its name from an Egyptian goddess with the same name. This goddess later was identified as Eileithyia by the Greeks and Lucina by the Romans during their occupation of Ancient Egypt because of the similar association of their goddesses with childbirth, and of which the import is "the opener". The ancient name of the city also is said to be derived from the Egyptian symbol for "trade", or "market".

Because the Ancient Egyptians oriented themselves toward the origin of the life-giving waters of the Nile in the south, and as Swenett was the southernmost town in the country, Egypt always was conceived to "open" or begin at Swenett. The city stood upon a peninsula on the right (east) bank of the Nile, immediately below (and north of) the first cataract of the flowing waters, which extended to it from Philae. Navigation to the delta was possible from this location without encountering a barrier.

The stone quarries of ancient Egypt located here were celebrated for their stone, and especially for the granitic rock called syenite. They furnished the colossal statues, obelisks, and monolithic shrines that are found throughout Egypt, including the pyramids; and the traces of the quarrymen who worked in these 3,000 years ago are still visible in the native rock. They lie on either bank of the Nile, and a road, 6.5 km in length, was cut beside them from Syene to Philae.

Swenett was equally important as a military station and for its position on a trade route. Under every dynasty it was a garrison town; and here tolls and customs were levied on all boats passing southwards and northwards. Around 330, the legion stationed here received a bishop from Alexandria; this later became the Coptic Diocese of Syene. The city is mentioned by numerous ancient writers, including Herodotus, Strabo, Stephanus of Byzantium, Ptolemy, Pliny the Elder, Vitruvius, and it appears on the Antonine Itinerary. It may also be mentioned in the Book of Ezekiel and the Book of Isaiah.

The Nile is nearly 650 m wide above Aswan. From this frontier town to the northern extremity of Egypt, the river flows for more than 1200 km without bar or cataract. The voyage from Aswan to Alexandria usually took 21 to 28 days in favorable weather.

Archaeological findings
In April 2018, the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities announced the discovery of the head of the bust of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius at the Temple of Kom Ombo during work to protect the site from groundwater.

In September 2018, the Egyptian Antiquities Minister Khaled el-Enany announced that a sandstone sphinx statue had been discovered at the temple of Kom Ombo. The statue, measuring approximately 28 cm in width and 38 cm) in height, probably dates to the Ptolemaic Dynasty.

Archaeologists discovered 35 mummified remains of Egyptians in a tomb in Aswan in 2019. Italian archaeologist Patrizia Piacentini and El-Enany both reported that the tomb, where the remains of ancient men, women and children were found, dates back to the Greco-Roman period between 332 BC and 395 AD. While the findings assumed belonging to a mother and a child were well preserved, others had suffered major destruction. Other than the mummies, artifacts including painted funerary masks, vases of bitumen used in mummification, pottery and wooden figurines were revealed. Thanks to the hieroglyphs on the tomb, it was detected that the tomb belongs to a tradesman named Tjit.

Piacentini commented "It's a very important discovery because we have added something to the history of Aswan that was missing. We knew about tombs and necropoli dating back to the second and third millennium, but we didn't know where the people who lived in the last part of the Pharaonic era were. Aswan, on the southern border of Egypt, was also a very important trading city".

Stan Hendrick, John Coleman Darnell and Maria Gatto in 2012 excavated petroglyphic engravings from Nag el-Hamdulab in Aswan which featured representations of a boat procession, solar symbolism and the earliest depiction of the White Crown with an estimated dating range between 3200BC and 3100BC.

In February 2021, archaeologists from the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities announced significant discoveries at an archaeological site called Shiha Fort in Aswan, namely a Ptolemaic period temple, a Roman fort, an early Coptic church and an inscription in hieratic script. According to Mostafa Waziri, the crumbling temple was decorated with palm leaf carvings and an incomplete sandstone panel that described a Roman emperor. Researcher Abdel Badie states more generally that the church contained ovens used to bake pottery, four rooms, a long hall, stairs, and stone tiles.

Geography
Northern Tropic boundary

The latitude of the city that would become Aswan – located at 24° 5′ 23″ – was an object of great interest to the ancient geographers and mathematicians. They believed that it was seated immediately under the tropic, and that on the day of the summer solstice, a vertically positioned staff cast no shadow. They noted that the sun's disc was reflected in a deep well (or pit) at noon. This statement is only approximately correct; at the summer solstice, the shadow was only $1/undefined$ of the staff, and so could scarcely be discerned, and the northern limb of the Sun's disc would be nearly vertical. More than 2200 years ago, Greek polymath Eratosthenes used this information to calculate Earth's circumference.

Climate
Aswan has a hot desert climate (Köppen climate classification BWh) like the rest of Egypt. Aswan and Luxor have the hottest summer days of any city in Egypt. Aswan is one of the hottest, sunniest and driest cities in the world. Average high temperatures are consistently above 40 °C during summer (June, July, August and also September) while average low temperatures remain above 25 °C. Average high temperatures remain above 23 °C during the coldest month of the year while average low temperatures remain above 8 °C. Summers are very prolonged and extremely hot with blazing sunshine although desert heat is dry. Winters are brief and pleasantly mild, though nights may be cool at times.

The climate of Aswan is extremely dry year-round, with less than 1 mm of average annual precipitation. The desert city is one of the driest ones in the world, and rainfall does not occur every year; in early 2001, the last rain in Aswan had been seven years earlier. When heavy precipitation does occur, as in a November 2021 rain and hail storm, flash flooding can drive scorpions from their lairs to deadly effects. Aswan is one of the least humid cities on the planet, with an average relative humidity of only 26%, with a maximum mean of 42% during winter and a minimum mean of 16% during summer.

The weather of Aswan is extremely clear, bright and sunny year-round in all seasons, with low seasonal variation and almost 4,000 hours of annual sunshine – very close to the maximum theoretical sunshine duration. Aswan is one of the sunniest places on Earth.

The highest record temperature was 51 °C on July 4, 1918, and the lowest record temperature was −2.4 °C on January 6, 1989.

Education
In 2012, the Aswan University was inaugurated, which is headquartered in the city. Aswan is also home to the Aswan Higher Institute of Social Work, which was established in 1975.

Transport
The city is crossed by the Cape to Cairo Road, which connects it to Luxor and Cairo to the north, and Abu Simbel and Wadi Halfa to the south. Also important is the Aswan-Berenice highway, which connects with the ports of the Red Sea.

Aswan is linked to Cairo by the Cape to Cairo Railway, which also connects it with Wadi Halfa. The railway is incomplete towards the south.

Other key transport infrastructures are the Port of Aswan, the largest river port in the region, and Aswan International Airport.

Twin towns/Sister cities
Aswan is twinned with:

 * Sonoma, California, United States

title: Aswan