Poor, Sexy Berlin

The failure of urban planning.

Dave Copeland from the December 2004 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

"The idea was to turn this into a lively space," says Christian Tuschhoff, a Berlin resident since 1985 and a visiting political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta. "But Berliners have not moved there, and all the flats are empty. They don't find this an attractive magnet." Planners, he concludes, "created something artificially."

Berlin isn't the only city to learn these urban planning lessons the hard way. Granted, New York still has its Times Square, but it's more a destination for tourists--much as Potsdamer Platz is becoming--than a place where people want to live. And it's next to impossible to single out any one residential or neighborhood business district that defines any other major urban area, whether in Tokyo, Los Angeles, London, or Moscow. Contemporary urban growth patterns have turned many cities into collections of places, which combine to create an overall urban identity. Surely it's no accident that the Berlin districts that are doing best are also those that have been thus far ignored by city planners.

In Mitte, a district in the east that has been left relatively untouched, trendy restaurants jostle for space with student-dominated bars, while back streets offer small caf�s and one-of-a-kind apartments. With five major thoroughfares crashing into each other at a central square, it is an urban planner's nightmare--gritty, chaotic, and full of businesses ranging from coffee shops to Thai restaurants. The major difference between it and Potsdamer Platz: It's crowded with a healthy mix of tourists and locals, as well as small, one-of-a-kind shops and restaurants.

"Berliners think of themselves as a member of a district, not as a member of Berlin," Tuschhoff says. "Berliners will not go to Potsdamer Platz unless they have to. They will shop and live and confine their daily lives to the districts, and that prohibits the city life of a true metropolitan area from developing." Berliners--particularly those who were in the east before the wall fell--talk about the strong sense of neighborhood pride, neighbors helping educate each other's children, weathering food shortages, and, on occasion, plotting an escape to the west.

Had government officials embraced a more organic approach, Berlin might eventually have developed a city center of its own. (The area around the historic Brandenburg Gate, made famous in news images from December 1989, would have been a likely candidate--if millions of euros' worth of subsidized building projects hadn't made it so sterile.) It's difficult to predict what Berlin would look like today and whether it would actually be faring better, in light of the larger national problems brought on by Germany's crumbling welfare state. But the government projects certainly didn't help. Like the Vietnamese woman who scoffed at the feng shui of Potsdamer Platz, many Berliners resent not just the high unemployment rates but the places created by the government--and the debt the building boom brought.

Government-subsidized building has left Berlin's 20-billion-euro ($25.4 billion) budget a mess. The city is a startling 50 billion euros ($62.7 billion) in debt, and its GDP has been flat since reunification.

Berlin's three state-supported universities have been told to cut budgets by 30 percent, amounting to 75 million euros ($94 million) every year until 2009, prompting widespread student strikes. In January signs painted on sheets hung from academic buildings throughout the city with slogans like "Don't play education's death song" and "Save the teachers of Berlin."

At the same time, owners of Berlin's 150 theaters, who also receive hefty state subsidies, fear they may have to close. Several of the city's famed museums are closed for renovations, which may stretch into the next decade because of a lack of steady funding. Budget problems may also delay completion of an expanded central train station in Berlin, which officials had wanted to open by 2006, when Germany hosts soccer's World Cup.

"Poor, but sexy." That's how Klaus Wowereit, Berlin's mayor, described the city to a group of British businessmen last December. To support the "sexy" part, Wowereit pointed to Sony, Universal, MTV, and several young clothing designers, all located in Berlin.

"The city is making all these cuts, particularly in its cultural institutions, but the cultural institutions are what represent Berlin's symbolic greatness," Judson says. "The contrast of the city's hopes and its symbolic value against economic reality is pretty major."

The top-down, five-year city planning agenda has failed to overcome the culture that Berlin built up during the first 750 years of its explosive history. Berlin is still sexy, and its districts are still vibrant. And its planners, alas, are still misguided.�