Berlin by Moscow Urban Forum

4–66,2

400

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3,3–148,5

Berlin

1900

1950

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3.46 M L N P E O P L E . 13470 H A

1950

600

400

200

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1900

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2000

2,5–134,7

3,95–134,7

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1900

1950

34,1

PAR

2,5–134,7

2000

800

38 ĐşĐź 2

Administrative City Border City Center Area Territory marked on tourist city maps Urbanized Area of the City

2,5

Berliphery Theo Deutinger

European Archipelago “Approaching Eutropolis, the European Archipelago of metropolitan areas, formerly known as Blue Banana, from the east, thus coming from China or Japan,” according to Roger Brunet, “the first large outpost one encounters is Moscow. If one leaves Moscow behind and travels onwards, the second, though much smaller, island is Berlin, just a few hundred kilometers offshore the large landmass of Eutropolis.” When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, French geographer Roger Brunet, coined the heavily urbanized zone running form northwest England to Milan the "Blue Banana." Within this large urban field the “Center of Europe” could be traced around the cities Brussels, Strasbourg, Luxembourg and Frankfurt; cites that accommodate the European Union’s most important institutions. Berlin is left out of this economic and political stronghold. Berlin is, and always has been, positioned on the periphery of Europe. When Berlin was re-instated as the capital of a reunified Germany, a political and economic outreach of the Blue Banana to the East was expected, yet this never happened. The city was just too far away. Consequently, Berlin had to establish its own centre of gravity, its own economic and political axis. Since 2006, the Hauptbahnhof has helped connect the city to international rail networks and the impending Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER) is tasked to position Berlin as global hub. New branding initiatives like Silicon Allee should attract IT companies to settle in the capital. In other words: Berlin is under construction. Even in the glory days of Berlin, when it was one of the top three European cities together with Paris and London, Karl Scheffler described Berlin as a “colonial and pioneer city” in his book “Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal“ (1910), underlining its peripheral position within the European context. Today Berlin is still a “pioneer city” and lives from the exclusivity of its geographical position, from its position as cultural mediator; too far East to be truly German, but too far west to be really Slavic. There is nothing but Berlin. In this respect the position of Berlin can be considered very similar to Moscow. What Berlin and Moscow don’t have to fight for is isolation, often underrated in our current times of worshiping the global hub. If we accept what the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk says, the island known as Berlin must be a true product of modernity: “Modernists are island-composing and island-building intelligentsias who,

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so to speak, act on a topological set of human rights: herein gets the right to isolate (and insulate) combined with the co-original right to connect…” Berlin and Moscow are fortunate. They need only call on their right to connect, which ideally results in a state of ‘connected isolation’. However this enables Berlin and Moscow to combine the advantages of a closed system with that of an open system. In this state of co-isolation, one can enjoy the luxury of living on an island, while at the same time being connected to the rest of the world. Instead of appreciating its excellent position between two worlds, however, Berlin also tries to become part of the European archipelago. The reality is clear: the harder it tries to connect, the more it seems to drift away. Paradoxically, Berlin has never been further away from political Europe since becoming the country’s capital; a fate that might be its greatest asset. Berlin has to strive forever to become an integral part of the European network of cities; it must stay sharp and alive for fear of any more distance. Berlin may need to be a metropolis to survive.

Metropolis On April 13, 1990, the German newspaper “Die Zeit” stated that Berlin would become a “magnet-city and a political-economical-cultural supernova,” It was assumed the city’s population would grow within a few years from 3.4 million at the time of reunification to 6 million. This did not materialize and the current number of inhabitants is more or less the same as it was at the time of reunification. Yet something has changed. Somewhere between 1990 (the year Berlin became the capital of unified Germany) and today, the city turned into a metropolis. We can probably identify this to have occurred in 1999 when the Federal Diet and the Federal Government moved from Bonn to Berlin; a logical decision since Bonn was only the provisional seat of West Germany’s government after WWII. It had never been granted the label ‘capital’. Yet we have to ask: on what reason is this status of metropolis based? Certainly it is not Berlin’s rank as business location, since it places 47 out of 50 German cities, according to German think tank INSM. Nor can it be because of its international infrastructure, since Berlin ranks only 4th as a railway hub and 3rd as an aviation hub (Tegel + Schönefeld) within Germany. And not even as a cultural city, as although Berlin ranks first within Germany, it is placed 4th by HWWI/ Berenberg. Clearly it is a “metropolis in the making,” a wannabe metropolis and yet it would be no exaggeration to sya that it wants this status badly. Berlin’s impatience for this status has led to the premise of ‘no results but processes,’ which while unnoticed, has turned into a method that sometimes generates absurd results. In the Berlin Brandenburg airport project, the ‘no results but process’ approach has led to the constant delay of its completion,

subsequently to national, if not international embarrassment. Yet Berlin’s ‘rankings’ suggest otherwise; its prospects are promising. In 1871 Berlin was elevated to the status of Imperial Capital of the German Reich and gained instant political and later, economical significance. This fundamentally changed the appearance and the culture of the city. The city grew and doubled to 1.8 million in the following 24 years; two-thirds of the new inhabitants having immigrated. At the beginning of the 20th century, Berlin was considered a rising star in the European firmament, short-lived however; after serving as a pivotal city for two World Wars, Berlin was condemned to 44 years of isolation and became a political island.

Political Island The division of Berlin into East and West parts diminished any potential global status it had, while at the same time leading to an increase of cultural diversity and exceptionality. The longer the separation lasted, the more both ‘cities’ of Berlin turned into peripheral settlements in the international context. Surrounded by the Berlin Wall, embedded within East Germany, West Berlin functioned as an island, supplied via four road and railway transit routes, and three permissible air corridors connecting the city to its political, cultural and economic mainland, West Germany. For East Berlin it was not the Wall but the planned economy and powerful urban planning directives of the GDR, which prevented the city from expanding into its hinterland. The wall around the socio-capitalistic West Berlin, and the strict urban planning in East Berlin proved to be isolators of similar strength. Upon reunification, the urban form of the two Berlins appeared to fit perfectly together. However once these isolators were removed by being joined, the transition between the city of Berlin and its surrounding periphery appeared sudden and drastic. Whatever ideologies were in play, it was agreed that suburbanization lay in waiting as a result of looming capitalist development and needed to be avoided at all cost. It was felt that new isolators needed to be introduced to protect the insularity of Berlin. Initially the government of the city-state Berlin and the state of Brandenburg proposed the idea of merging the two states into one entity in 1991. This administrative fusion of a new metropolis with its periphery into a single state would have provided the planners with the administrative and theoretical power of planning city and hinterland alike. While a slight majority of Berlin’s inhabitants voted for the merger, the people of Brandenburg clearly were against it, revealed in a referendum held in 1996. Important time was lost but in 1998. the city-state of Berlin formed, together with the surrounding state Brandenburg, the “capital region Berlin-Brandenburg” in order to establish a regional development plan (LEP) based on the doctrine of “decentralized concentration.” This plan aimed to prevent the capital region from outgrowing urban structures and to protect the surrounding nature and landscape of Brandenburg. “Decentralized concentration”, a key concept in German’s spatial planning, refers to the concentration of population, workplaces and infrastructure in cities of different sizes that are spread relatively evenly throughout the country. Unfortunately “decentralized concentration” remains a largely descriptive concept. Nobody would really argue with the need to act regionally yet the intersection of two federal structures (state of Berlin and state of Brandenburg) with strong local governments has so far prevented the development of effective regional governance structures.

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Unnoticed, the strategy of “decentralized concentration” is, however, bearing its fruits, though not in the expected way. Not only was the periphery of Brandenburg strengthened, the archipelago Berlin simply added some islands to its system and activated them according to its needs. Well-connected small towns like Oranienburg, Eberswalde and Potsdam (for the more affluent people) turned into affiliates of Berlin. The spaces between these islands remained absolutely untouched by these developments. In fact, the area between these islands is emptying out, leading to the closure of schools and the dismantling of the infrastructure. These trends are reinforcing the isolating qualities of the periphery. It is cruel but, to re-appropriate Rem Koolhaas, the "highly charged nothingness" of Brandenburg proves a better isolator than any spatial plan could imagine. It is not Berlin that isolates itself, it is its periphery that creates the distance to the mainland. Thanks to this strong periphery, Berlin can call itself a metropolis. With the new LEP in 2007, the concept of “Decentralized Concentration” was thrown overboard and replaced by the model of “Strengthening Strengths,” an even weaker and hollower sounding slogan. The awareness to stay away from administrative expansion and the attempt to organize the entity as a “capital region” should be acknowledged yet the recommendations and planning instruments appear too theoretical and the administrative power too weak to be effective. The issues covered by the LEP were however pertinent: European spatial planning, energy and climate, BER airport and spatial analyses. Lack of administrative vigor and a bureaucratic abstraction of space are valid at times of strong governmental planning departments with a rather weak private sector. In a reversed reality with large scale and strong private sectors, and a weak, poor, public body abstract and generalized models are soon ruptured by legal and financial loopholes.

Pleasure Island There is no project that branded the city of Berlin more than the Berlin Wall. Though the Wall removed every possibility for the city to grow into a truly European capital throughout the German economic boom in the 1960s, it gave back everything and more after its removal. Berlin will however, remain the city that once was divided by a wall for a very long time. The Wall not only changed the city but its inhabitants as well. Berlin’s eccentric position led inevitably to eccentric people. During the Cold War, this eccentric position was reinforced in West Berlin since it functioned as an important sign of determination and a showcase of strength. For the east, West Berlin was nothing but an easy target to trigger reaction, as Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union explained: "Berlin is the testicle of the West. When I want the West to scream, I squeeze on Berlin." There is no clearer explanation for the peripheral and insular

position at the time. The life of the ‘islanders’ was extreme and fatalistic, not suited to everybody. By offering special conditions, Berlin could keep its population stable; a necessity to demonstrate its livability and vitality. In the Cold War the city functioned as a lookout tower, a western outpost in the east. For the youth of West Germany, Berlin turned into a sort of Pleasure Island. Everybody who applied for citizenship was granted it, along with exemption from the Federal Republic's compulsory military service. Hence Berlin turned into a kind of gated community of like-minded people who won, with one signature, up to 18 months of ‘life.’ Berlin, as playground, was not restricted to youth; adults also had their fair share of fun. The separated Berlins functioned as a provocative playing field for ideologists. West Berlin’s ‘game’ kicked-off with the Axel Springer high-rise building, placed exactly at a spot and built exactly high enough to evoke a fierce reaction from ‘the other side.’ As expected (or hoped for), the building caused a reaction, which came in the form of a residential complex at the Leipziger Strasse, which was to function as a second wall to the west. Like the two hemispheres of the brain, one worked for the other. The western half acted only to make the eastern part react and vice versa. Over 40 years of psychological mind play produced a unique architectural and urban legacy in both Berlins. Paradoxically, the city is doing its best to forcefully erase this uniqueness. Exceptional, iconic legacies from the past are demolished e.g. Palast der Republik is replaced by generic copies like a City Palace (Stadtschloss), or voids like the Potsdamer Platz are filled with developer architecture and turned into one of the dullest places in Berlin. Yet exactly this seems to be the 'Berlin style'. As Philipp Oswalt explains, “It is the paradox of Berlin that exactly the lack of distinguished historic buildings, makes the city appear as place loaded with history.” Thus, there is nothing to fear. As long as Berlin is destroying its past, it will remain the peripheral and isolated Berlin we know it to be. Probably it is also this reckless handling of its most urban substance that reinforces Berlin’s constant inner peripheralization. It is astonishing that the number one reason one moves to this metropolis housing over three million inhabitants, is its village-like atmosphere.

Islands within the Island — The Green Archipelago To call Berlin an island is oversimplified, in fact it is an archipelago. In the year 1709, the Prussian capital Berlin was born out of a merger of the cities Berlin, Cölln, Friedrichswerder, Dorotheenstadt and Friedrichstadt. Thus the city was in its very outline already fragmented. Although the physical structure of these initial cities has been eradicated through Berlin’s unique ability to continually destroy its architectural past, its very spirit seem to have survived. In the mind of Berliners, the city does not consist of districts but of “Kiezes.” The word originated in the time of the eastward expansion of German settlers in the Middle Age into Slavonic territories, when in many places both communities existed side by side. The word is of Slavonic origin ('chyza' meaning hut, or house) and referred to a Slavonic settlement near a German town. The persistency of the kiez throughout time and throughout the different models of governance proves the strongly ingrained polycentricism of the city. Berlin is not only periphery; the

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periphery is in Berlin — Berlin is not an island but the island is within Berlin. Berlin is an archipelago in which every kiez is a city or even a home and the periphery is the area between one’s kiez and the next one. The reason for this fragmented structure, according to O. M. Ungers, is that while Berlin has never followed one idea alone, it has been formed on divergent ideas. Theses and antitheses coincide here like breathing in and breathing out.” A rule that does not result in “a unitary image but a living collage, a union of fragments” as Ungers explains in his study “City within a City”. This particular perception of the urban structure makes Berlin appear “rather a continent than a city”. Berliners seem to have found a magic formula how to increase and inflate space by atomizing the city. The fragmentation of the city by the allied forces and the disconnection from the hinterland was not felt as strong in Berlin as it would have been felt in any other city on the planet. Berlin, a city that always has been fragmented and always populated by foreigners is not hooked on the place but understands itself as an accumulation of drifting islands. During West Berlin’s insular existence, the art of ‘increasing’ space was developed further into a method for survival. As Manhattan applied the method of surface enlargement via vertical volumes, which could each house a city itself, so Berlin inflated space horizontally via the kiezes. The biggest irritant in both models is the question of hierarchy between the elements. Berlin’s strong kiez structure and the lack of a clear center is frustrating at times when one need to meet friends and relatives that live in other kiezes. Where does one meet in a city without a center? This total absence of a center is the absolute proof of an urban field — a Green Archipelago. Of course this archipelago is far from being planned. When it comes down to urban planning, Berlin is set on auto-pilot. Unnoticed and unwillingly, Berlin followed the “City within a City – Green Archipelago” concept developed by a team led by O.M. Ungers at a design seminar in 1977. Since its reunification, Berlin has followed “parallel actions of reconstruction and destruction” which led, according to Rem Koolhaas, to an “archipelago of ‘architectural’ islands floating in a post-architectural landscape of erasure, where what used to be city is replaced by highly charged nothingness. The kind of coherence that the metropolis can achieve is not that of a homogeneous, planned composition. It can be, at the most, a system of fragments, a system of multiple realities.” Nothingness is the medium in which the archipelago of Berlin is thriving and nothingness is what is surrounding it. Berlin is the antipode of the ideal city. Berlin is everything but ideal and everything that is real. If there would be a concept for a real city, it would be and is the history of Berlin. Paradoxically, the absolute real as well as the absolute ideal city are islands; Berliphery. Two cities that feel the loneliness, eccentricity yet exclusivity, of the existence at the two opposite ends of a Gaussian curve.