It consists of eight Wohnkomplex (translation: residential complexes, abbreviation WK) with large apartment buildings of the dwelling series WBS 70.

On Lützner Straße, west of the village of Schönau, there was a barracks built in the time of the Reichswehr and then used first by the Wehrmacht and then by the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany.

[3] After 1991, when the last Soviet soldiers left, a residential, commercial and recreational area, the Schönauer Viertel, with single-family houses and a shopping centre developed on the site of the former barracks.

On 1 June 1976, Mayor Karl-Heinz Müller laid the foundation stone for the large housing estate on the northern edge of WK 1.

By the end of the 1980s, eight industrial prefabricated housing estates had been built in the localities of Kleinzschocher, Schönau (partly demolished due to construction), Lausen and Großmiltitz.

In 1995, the PEP shopping centre was opened, in 1996 the Allee-Center and next to it an eight-screen multiplex cinema, today's Cineplexx Leipzig.

In 2010, a new venue for the children's and youth theatre Theatrium on the Alte Salzstraße in Grünau-Ost was built for 1.2 million euros.

The city responded in 1999 with a "reasonable pact" with the most important real estate companies in Grünau, including the city-owned Leipziger Wohnungs- und Baugesellschaft (LWB) and half a dozen cooperatives.

In the dismantling phase from 2000 to 2015, almost all of the PH 16 high-rise buildings were demolished, including numerous large blocks of flats, with a total of 8,000 apartments.

The LWB began in December 2000 with the dismantling of the high-rise building (PH 16) at Garskestraße 5, which had been built in 1982 as a hotel for construction workers and had not been used since 1997.

Since around 2014, Grünau has benefited in part from the migration gains following the strong increase in the overall population in the city of Leipzig.

Afterwards, «the demolition was essential to maintain the attractiveness of Grünau, to create new qualities and to pave the way for the necessary differentiation of the housing supply».