BERLINAN URBAN EXPERIMENT?

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AN ALTERNATIVE TO THEGLOBAL CITY?

tepping out from underneaththe glass arches of Berlin’sbrand new main railway sta-tion, the Hauptbahnhof, one isgreeted by a plethora ofgrandiose architectural gesturesset against the backdrop of avast expanse of undeveloped

ground. One’s gaze may come to rest on theFederal Chancellery, designed by AxelSchultes, or on the ‘Band des Bundes’, the‘Federal Belt’ of newly constructed govern-ment buildings; one may take in NormanFoster’s Reichstag cupola or the completelyredeveloped Potsdamer Platz and recall that, amere fifteen years ago, none of these struc-tures existed. What is even more striking fromthis vantage point is that the city, as people’sliving space, does not seem to intersect withthe Berlin that is the new representative centreof Germany. City dwellers and citizens evi-dently inhabit two decidedly distinct spheres.Unlike many other European cities, Berlin hasno clearly defined city centre complete withmarket square, city hall and cathedral. Suchcentral space simply does not exist here. Morethan ever, Berlin is a conglomeration of paral-lel worlds, a hotchpotch of stages on whichlong-established residents, newcomers andtourists make their respective entrances.

The Berlin Wall saved the Western part ofthe city from the fate that, after the War, hadtypically befallen so many other West Germancities with their emptying town centres andfraying edges, their populations slowlyspilling over into the surrounding country-side.Yet there was a price to pay for this inBerlin, namely the destruction of a coherenturban structure. The bombings of World WarII and the subsequent partition had carved upBerlin’s infrastructure, its canalisation, its net-work of roads and its railway system.Vastareas of derelict land soon became a hallmarkof this fragmented city.

When the Berlin Wall fell and Berlinbecame, albeit by a narrow parliamentarymajority, the capital of the newly unifiedGermany, expectations ran high and grandvisions abounded. Surely, the city would soonbe home to six million people, and all mannerof fanciful plans were drawn up for this newmetropolis: Berlin was to become the power-house of the new Republic, the focal point foran entire ‘Generation Berlin’, the ‘hub’ thatwould connect East and West, a veritable ‘lab-oratory of unification’. Such promises weredirectly rooted in the rhetoric and practices ofthe Cold War, when, thanks to huge subsidiesprovided by the two respective German states,West Berlin had been established as a‘Window on Freedom’, while East Berlin stoodproud as the ‘capital of the first Workers andPeasants’ State on German soil’. On either sideof the Wall, Berliners themselves tended toview such labels – which bore precious littlerelation to the realities of their everyday lives– with a healthy amount of scepticism. Whileothers were certainly welcome to entertainillusions of grandeur, Berliners’ first loyaltieslay with their neighbourhoods and their lov-ingly tended urban allotments.

Since the early 1990s, Berlin has, above all,been a huge building site, and architectureoften had to grapple with paradoxical expec-tations: on the one hand, the ‘PlanwerkInnenstadt’, a decidedly anti-modern re-urbanisation and city-centre revitalisationdirective, decreed that the ‘historical city’should be recovered; on the other hand,politicians and residents alike expected the

architectural fraternity to create a metropolisof the future. As a result, a lot of sound yetmiddling designs, but few masterpieces, wererealised. Bold and innovative architecturalstatements are indeed very few and farbetween in this city. Today’s general sense ofdisappointment with this state of affairs hasless to do with the buildings themselves thanwith the hopes and expectations of the 1990s.People had once more been prepared to puttheir faith in the redemptive power of goodarchitecture, only to discover yet again thatredemption is the one thing architecture can-not offer. Most importantly, however, the newgovernment buildings or the redevelopedPotsdamer Platz failed to project an imagethat Berliners could recognise. The cityremained as fragmented as ever.

In the midst of this unparalleled buildingactivity, and while ever more grand expecta-tions were projected onto Berlin, the city’seconomy collapsed: the Eastern part of thecity as well as its Brandenburg hinterlandwere labouring under the consequences ofdeindustrialisation, while the Western part of the city grappled with the effects of the end of subsidisation. Since 1994, populationfigures have been steadily declining, andtoday, an entire suburban belt is economicallydependent on Berlin. Meanwhile, in the cityitself, more than 100,000 apartments standempty. For years, both commercial and resi-dential properties have been in plentiful sup-ply and remarkably cheap to get hold of.Compared to Paris, Warsaw or London, thisseems an anomaly.

Maladministration and wastefulness haveleft the city1 crippled with debt and effectivelybankrupt since 2002. The state of Berlin haswithdrawn from all major building projects,which are now exclusively in Federal hands.The attempts at regenerating the city’s urbaninfrastructure have been largely successfuland, for the most part, the effects of war andpartition have been overcome, but there is apainful lack of resources when it comes tomaintaining the city’s libraries, schools, the-atres and universities. Berlin is a poor, eco-nomically weak city that is terrifically cheap to live in.

Contrary to initial expectations, no newurban élite has emerged post unification. Abourgeoisie, in whatever shape or form, thatwould set the tone, function as a socialbarometer, speak out on behalf of the widerpublic and take the lead on issues of commonconcern, simply does not exist in Berlin.Berlin is a city of ordinary people, students,newcomers fleeing the provincial backwatersof their childhoods, and a fast living and mer-curial bohemian crowd made up of artists,intellectuals, journalists, freelancers and plaindrifters. This latter set shapes the mood andlifestyle that dominates Berlin’s inner city dis-tricts. Most of these people lead rather precar-ious and uncertain lives, but they have cer-tainly made Berlin the only German city inwhich a carefully chosen witticism, a surpris-ing gesture or an ingenious performancecount for more than status and income.Indeed, money plays an astonishingly minorrole in the social life of the city. And Berlinerslike to take things slowly – a fact that surpriseseven Swiss visitors to the city.

This bohemian scene has found a perfectform of expression in the ‘intermediate utili-sation’ of disused buildings. There are manysuch empty structures all over Berlin, andsquatters are swift to move in and put them to creative use – dissolving traditional bound-

aries between art and entertainment, aestheticambition and nightlife fun. The first suchproject was the ‘Tacheles’ on OranienburgerStraße, and eventually even the ‘Palace of theRepublic’, the former cultural-centre-cum-seat of the East German parliament, (now inthe process of being demolished) was turnedinto a temporary arts venue. Three old arm-chairs and a hastily cobbled together installa-tion usually suffice to transform the fleetingmoment into a memorable one. This cultureof the transitory, a legacy of our love affairwith everything crumbling, seems uniquelysuited to the character of the city, and Berlinowes much of its attractiveness for tourists toprecisely this idiosyncrasy. It has put Berlinfirmly on the map in the European imagina-tion and proves that, here at least, everythingis possible and anything goes, no matter howlimited your resources. A spirit of freedom isindeed key to people’s life in this city.

Berlin’s economic plight, its poverty, itslack of an effective élite, its fragmentation andabundance of disused spaces, the weakness ofits administration and the continuing East-West divide – all these are the very conditionsof Berlin’s intellectual as well as real life char-acter. Three factors will determine the city’sfate over the coming years: immigration fromEastern Europe, a brain drain among theyoung, and the continuing lack of a city centrein the good old European sense of the word.

For most of its history, Berlin has been arather dismal one horse town. It became thecapital of Germany because it had been thecapital of Prussia. Since the dissolution ofPrussia, it has become apparent that the city isbarely able to survive by its own efforts, sur-rounded as it is by an impoverished regionthat is gradually being abandoned by itsinhabitants. The political task of counteringthis state of affairs with strong and effectiveinstitutions is currently tackled only hesitant-ly and without much energy or conviction.

What Berlin teaches architects and urbanplanners is, above all, humility. The buildingand planning frenzy of the 1990s showed thatarchitecture cannot be expected to counteractthe provisional and temporary nature of thiscity, nor relieve its social frailty. What it cando, however, is continue to create stages andproject images. Good metropolitan architec-ture has much in common with good stagedesign – a fact more apparent in Berlin thananywhere else in the world.

Jens Bisky, journalist, Süddeutsche Zeitung

Translated from German by Alexa Alfer

1 Like, for example, Bavaria or Hesse, Berlin is a federalstate in its own right.

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BERLIN: A PROFILE

ermany is currently rediscov-ering the city. The themes ofcrises and decay, which havelong dominated discussions onthe city, are being supersededby a new passion for the city.For some decades, Germancities have been losing popula-

tion and jobs. This problem affected cities inEast Germany the hardest after unification, asthe loss of jobs, the decline in population andthe moving away of young people with quali-fications meant that they were faced with dra-matic levels of negative growth. However,from the beginning of the 21st century, therehave been clear signs pointing to a change inurban development trends.

Some profound economic changesoccurred in cities, further accelerated by theenormous effects of globalisation and digiti-sation. The change from an industrial to aservice-led economy, based on science andculture, particularly in the large West Germanurban regions of Munich, Frankfurt, Cologneand Hamburg, meant the development of anew urban dynamic. We can now see a re-urbanisation in terms of employment as wellas population, and even in East German citiessuch as Leipzig, Dresden and Berlin the popu-lation is once more increasing.

The urban system in Germany, as in manyother countries, shows that globalisation anddigitisation do not lead to a disintegration of the city, as predicted by many experts, butto a re-evaluation of the city and the develop-ment of a new form of urban centrality,which, in Germany, takes the form of aprocess of urbanisation.

While in most other countries, dominantglobal cities have emerged, Germany hasnone, but instead has a multi-polar urban

system. As presented very convincingly bySaskia Sassen in various publications, the newtype of global city takes on a strategic role.The control, integration and managementfunctions of the commodity chains that arespread throughout the world are concentrat-ed in the global cities. At the same time, theglobal city is a central location for productionand a transnational market place for highquality, knowledge-based services.

How can we explain the absence of aGerman city high up in the hierarchy ofglobal cities, even though Germany has heldthe position of ‘export champion’ for manyyears and has been exceptional with regard to the integration of its economy into theworld market?

In answer to this question, the peculiaritiesand interruptions in German history areoften referred to. Germany only gained onecommon capital city when the Prussian dem-ocratic empire was founded in 1871. Berlinbecame the seat of government and devel-oped into Germany’s dominant economicand cultural city but never achieved the cen-trality of London or Paris. After the historicdisasters of the Nazi regime and the SecondWorld War, Berlin’s central role was totallydestroyed by the break-up of the GermanReich and the splitting of Germany into fouroccupation zones. Many companies movedtheir headquarters from Berlin to WestGermany. Following a resolution by theAmerican occupation government, the newBank Deutscher Länder (Bank of GermanStates), which was the predecessor of theDeutsche Bundesbank, was founded inFrankfurt after the closure of the Reichsbankin Berlin. As a consequence, the DeutscheBank and the Dresdner Bank moved theirheadquarters to Frankfurt. At the same time,

the American occupation government decid-ed to develop Frankfurt airport to be the cen-tral base of the US Airforce in Germany.Frankfurt’s function as a gateway and aninternational financial centre was a directresult of these decisions. Similar historicaldecisions led to the specialisation of othercities: Munich became Germany’s high-techmetropolis; Hamburg, its news and mediacentre; and, with the creation of the GermanFederal Republic in 1949, the seat of govern-ment was moved to Bonn. Although the roleof political capital was given back to Berlinafter unification, it is unlikely that Berlin willever regain its former central economic role.

This historical sketch implicitly classifiesGermany’s urban network as a special case inthe hierarchy of the global urban system. CanGermany really be considered to be a specialcase that shows deficits?

An alternative explanation can be found inthe discussion on ‘Varieties of Capitalism’(Hall/Soskice). If it is true that modern capi-talism is not a homogeneous entity, but thatdifferent models of capitalism have developedunder different historical conditions, then it isnot unlikely that these different models alsohave correspondingly different patterns ofurbanisation. The ‘belated’ industrial nationof Germany had already developed an alter-native to the liberal production system at theend of the 19th century, which can be charac-terised as a form of regulated, corporate mar-ket economy. This model of ‘Rheinian Capit-alism’ combined with strong federal struc-tures, formed the basis for the economic andsocial system of West Germany. It is very likelythat Germany has not only created an alterna-tive model of production, but also an alterna-tive and effective model of urbanisation.

Characteristic of this model of urbanisa-tion is both the polycentrality of the urbansystem with its distinct complementary divi-sion of labour between individuals cities, andthe phenomenon of regional ‘manufacturingservice districts’.

Whereas globalisation in the 1980s and1990s led to a strong global dispersion ofindustrial functions in Anglo-Saxon coun-tries, the urban regions in Germany still have

a strongly interactive dynamic of developingknowledge-intensive industries. Further-more, the German urban system is connectedto the European and global networks of cities.The individual cities can only develop theircapacity and innovativeness in their spe-cialisms with the help of very effective net-works and cooperation.

As Saskia Sassen rightly points out, a globalcity is by definition part of a network. Thisapplies even more strongly to the urban sys-tem in Germany, whose multi-tiered net-works are of a regional, national, Europeanand global nature. Thus the German urbansystem could prove to be a valid future alter-native to the highly centralised model of theglobal city.

Dieter Läpple is Professor of Regional & UrbanEconomics at HafenCity University Hamburg

Translation from German by Anne Rigby

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