The Context of Housing and Urban Planning

Berlin is constantly growing. According to estimates, the city’s population (3.53 mil-lion in 2013) will increase by about 7.2 % (250,000 people) by 2030. The rising population leads directly to the question of where newcomers should live in the future. Today, there is a shortfall of about 428,000 affordable homes for Berlin’s recipients of social assistance. While currently rents are rising everywhere in Ger-many, the situation in Berlin, where average rents of 7 €/m² are still much lower than in Munich (9.99 €/m²), Stuttgart (7.42 €/m²) or Cologne (7.36 €/m²), is critical because the city has been traditionally a “paradise for tenants”. No other major city in Germany has had such a generous amount of “cheap space” at its disposal—not only as a place for everyone to live but also as a place to realize new ideas of urban living through innovative projects. On the one hand, this kind of decadent charm and aura of decay made Berlin a “Mecca for the creative class” (Slobodian and Sterling 2013, p. 2). On the other hand, bohemians and hipsters—the harbingers of gentrification—were followed by “investors and real-estate interests” (Allon 2013, p. 299). Consequently, housing, ignored as a policy field for a decade, has moved to the top of the political agenda and with it a range of unresolved conflicts. The complexity of the issue concerns its interconnected dimensions of equality (housing

as a social right), social cohesion (which depends on mixed neighbourhoods) and general priorities of urban planning (based on citizens’ involvement or the prospect of profits).

Old and New Challenges in Urban Planning

In 2001, the Berlin Senate decided to downsize their social housing programmes to zero and embarked on a rigid austerity policy. Practically, the follow-up funding for social housing from the federal state of Berlin, substituting West Germany’s subsidies after 1989, was abolished and housing stocks were privatized en masse.

From 1990 till 2010, the number of state-owned dwellings shrank dramatically from 480,000 to 270,000 and with it the Berlin Senate’s impact on the local housing market (Holm 2011).

Officially, this critical juncture (the end of federal subsidies and privatization of dwellings) was legitimized by the view that “Berlin has no housing problem but a poverty problem”, as one interviewee put it. In 1999 the Berlin Senate reacted to early signs of urban decay and two-tier neighbourhoods by implementing “neigh-bourhood management” (NM) areas, an approach to “soft urban renewal” and so-cial cohesion belonging to the federal programme “soso-cial city”. In a sense, NM, rebuked by critics as a helpless attempt to compensate the previous social housing policy, ought to have been a remedy for the presumed losers from neoliberal urban development processes: the long-term unemployed, poor and/or poorly educated people, the elderly and migrants. By concentrating more on qualitative (e.g. social and economic conditions of neighbourhoods) than on quantitative problems (e.g.

more social housing), NM has marked a paradigm shift in urban development poli-cies (OECD 2003).

Nonetheless, in terms of traditional housing policies, the 2000s were, retrospec-tively, almost “wasted years” during which cost containment outweighed any at-tempts to regulate rents or expand the capacity of social housing. This had explo-sive social consequences, for instance, the displacement of long-term residents from inner-city districts (a process that started in 2011), which have hit Berlin politics catching it quite unprepared. Suddenly, the official line of reasoning, downplay-ing the existence of any problems by referrdownplay-ing to the (relatively low) average level of rents and housing vacancies in outskirts of the city, conflicted harshly with the public perception: The loss of neighbours and friends forced to move into cheaper flats. In the face of these displacement processes, Mayor Wowereit’s motto “there is no right to live in the city centre” (quote from 2011) seemed rather cynical, and the need for a new, post-austerity housing policy was clear for all to see. But how was it possible to reinvent social housing in a city that was simply “broke” and that has only 270,000 flats (Holm 2011) at its disposal? This shifts the perspective to a more fundamental question: How should public space be handled?

Space for Innovations

While questions of city planning remain an issue for professionals, a more public and more general debate on a revised property policy for Berlin has recently started.

Calls for a structural policy change, claiming a balanced set of criteria for the ten-dering of urban property, which has been solely based on profit maximization in

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the past, came from actors outside the established political arena. Ad hoc groups of tenants who risked losing their homes and a citizen initiative called “Rethinking the City” have evoked fresh discussion on the old question “who owns the city”. As a first success, Berlin’s senator of finance announced a pilot project, providing for the sale of up to 14 state-owned properties for a fair market value to non-profit housing companies. However, many more far-reaching goals, such as more participation by citizens in the development of public property and a moratorium on all current property sales, are requested by the initiative. “It’s impossible to change Berlin’s property policy all at once; we therefore need a moratorium that allows public rea-soning”, says a speaker of the initiative.

The issue of ownerships concerns not only housing but also non-profit projects, promising “social dividends” instead of easy money, as in urban gardening. In this respect, Prinzessinnengärten in Kreuzberg are a glowing example of creative urban renewal. The project, which uses urban waste land on a temporary basis (meaning that the project may end abruptly if the city council decides to sell the area to an investor), has generated multidimensional returns for the district such as providing a green oasis, educating urbanites on the basics of gardening and bringing very different people together. “This is what it takes to maintain the Kiez”, states Rob-ert Shaw, co-founder of the Prinzessinnengärten, who claims planning security for the project. Franz Schulz, district mayor of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg (from 2006 to 2013), supports the idea of changing public property policies. “Urban property has to be sold with regard to investors’ concepts for neighbourhood development and requires dialogue with the citizens concerned in advance”, says Schulz. The mayor refers to pioneering projects in his district such as the art and creative quarter Südliche Friedrichstadt. There tendering for vacant lots is based on the quality of the investors’ concept of urban renewal in the first place and is linked to a struc-tured consultation procedure involving residents, applicants and decision makers.

The actual amount of the respective bid plays a role as well but only accounts for 40 % of the final decision. Obviously, such innovative procedures of participatory tendering cannot stop large-scale gentrification processes; nevertheless, they have an immense symbolic value by setting a counterpoint to the ongoing reshaping of

“previously marginal spaces like Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg” (Allon 2013, p. 299) into “centres of wealth generation, middle-class employment, and valuable real es-tate” (Allon 2013).

Another attempt at more sustainable urban development in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg tries to bridge concerns of saving space and diversifying the local econ-omy. For instance, a so-called owner salon has been invented—a regular occasion where small-business owners in distinctive neighbourhoods gather informally un-der the patronage of the unit for business promotion. The goal of such meetings is to sensitize owners, who normally have little “real” contact with the district and its residents, for social and economic concerns in the neighbourhood, in particular the loss of diversity in the local settlement structure (which characterized the “Ber-lin mixture” in the past) due to the process of gentrification. “Nowadays, letting a building to rich tenants and investment firms is much more lucrative than letting it to local businesses”, states Martina Nowak, head of the district’s unit for busi-ness promotion. Consequently, the district’s colourful collection of residents, retail

shops and service providers risks disappearing, which in turn may affect homeown-ers’ long-term returns on investment. “Nobody, moves to Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg because of its uniformity; it’s the district’s vivid mixture that inspires newcomers”, adds Ms. Nowak whose unit is searching for empty plots and vacant premises that might be interesting for start-ups and creative businesses. Since the existing poten-tial has been largely exhausted, local owners’ commitment to co-design the future of the district is of the utmost importance. In this respect, Planet Modular is a local role model: The alliance of small- and medium-size companies from the hobby and crafts sector has revitalized the local economy by building a huge “creative store”

at the Moritzplatz in Kreuzberg. Furthermore, Planet Modulor is part of a creative network that aims to integrate economic, social and cultural projects into the urban environment.