“City of the Future” planned for Berlin’s former Tegel airport site
With empty terminals and plane-less runways, the skeleton of Berlin’s ex-Tegel international airport stands motionless, as if frozen in time. State-funded developers are building what they advertise as the “City of the Future” on a now-vacant 1,236 acres, where a bustling airport used to serve up to 24 million passengers annually until its closing in 2020.
The ambitious $8 billion development features affordable housing and accessible green space, as well as a scientific research center dubbed “Urban Tech Hub” — all in an environmentally sustainable community. It is a futuristic vision, but one that is plagued by the past.
Tegel Airport is a holdover from the Cold War division of Berlin. Designed in 1948 during the Soviet blockade of Berlin and opened in 1974, Tegel symbolized the freedom to travel enjoyed by West Berliners, as opposed to their travel-restricted East German brethren.
Even after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, it remained the city’s main airport, supplemented by Schönefeld Airport, which formerly served East Berlin. Located in Berlin’s northwest, less than ten miles from the city center, Tegel was more convenient for most Berliners — even those in the east — than the new Berlin Brandenburg airport outside the city limits.
“People have an emotional relationship to Tegel. They say it was the best airport we can imagine. They want it back as an airport,” said Sara Sperling, a 37-year-old publicist for the new project. A native Berliner, Sperling fondly remembers her first flight alone as a six-year-old, to visit her grandmother in Munich. “That was another time. Now we have to focus on the future.”
In a new information center on the airport grounds, publicists recently showed visitors a three-dimensional model of their new project. In the background, a large-screen video opened with an airplane taking off from one of the Tegel runways, a symbolic flight into the future.
It is an ambitious long-term project intended to be rolled out in four construction phases with completion not expected until 2040. But the developers are facing obstacles that could push the timeline even later.
Unexploded ammunition litters the site, which was a training grounds for the Prussian army dating back to the 18th century and then an air force base during World War II. Bomb squads have so far removed 60 tons of explosives, some buried deep underground. The laborious process of detonating and removing the explosives is expected to delay infrastructure development by at least two years.
The land also houses Ukrainian refugees, whose temporary stay — after the Russian invasion in February 2022 — has been extended. Living in large tents outside Tegel’s old Terminal C, the refugees are expected to be relocated by 2024, but their presence has further stalled land clearance and construction.
“Of course, we were happy to help them,” said Sperling. “But now we have to admit that the longer they’re here, the longer our project is postponed.”
Like other large redevelopment projects in Berlin, this one was complicated by the city’s tumultuous history and polarized politics.
After the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, there was a state initiative to develop a new airport for the unified city. What eventually became the Berlin Brandenburg “Willy Brandt” airport was plagued by budget miscalculations and its construction took a comically long 14 years. By the time it finally opened in 2020, it was already too small to accommodate all the intended traffic to Berlin. Even today, there are relatively few direct international flights to Berlin compared to Frankfurt, a city one-fifth its size.
“The planning was off. It took so long to open,” said Markus Ziener, a journalism educator, who has lived in Berlin for 11 years. “The airport was the laughing stock of Germany.”
Many people thought that Berlin, which in 1999 replaced Bonn as the capital of unified Germany, needed a second airport. It is by far the country’s largest city with 3.6 million residents. The 2006 construction permit for Brandenburg, however, was granted under the condition that Berlin’s Tegel and Tempelhof airports would shut down, filtering air traffic into a single airport.
Berliners fought back for Tegel. In 2017, a non-binding referendum was held about Tegel’s future: a solid majority of 56.1 percent voted in favor of keeping the airport open. But the Berlin Senate — with the ultimate jurisdiction — ignored the results on the grounds that the permit would make it too complicated legally to keep Tegel operating.
The opening of Brandenburg airport in October 2020 marked the final blow for Tegel and the beloved airport was decommissioned in November 2020. The breakout of COVID-19 distracted locals, smoothing the transition to the project, Berlin TXL, which was officially approved in 2021.
“Then the pandemic came,” said Pia Laube, assistant to the new project’s chief executive. “The hurt of the airport was less salient because people weren’t going anywhere.”
But many Berliners keenly feel the loss of Tegel. The 18-mile trek from the city center to the new Brandenburg airport is expensive and time consuming for residents, who appreciated Tegel’s location. Direct access to one’s terminal made for a convenient experience, thanks to the airport’s iconic and uniquely hexagonal structure
“Everyone misses Tegel,’’ said Daniel Benjamin, head of the American Academy in Berlin, and a long-time resident. “It was so easy to drive up, jump out of your car, and get on a plane. Tegel was your lifeline.”
But the airport’s layout was designed to serve the interest of automobiles— symbols of past and present pollution. And the ability to drive up to the gate made it hard to secure against potential terrorist attacks. Moreover, the original design was intended to accommodate only 2.5 million passengers each year.
By the end, Tegel had started to crumble under the weight of excessive travelers.
“It was way too overloaded,” said Anke Sterneborg, an art critic who has lived in Berlin since 1984. “It was just cracking on every possible end. It probably wasn’t safe to keep it open.”
The TXL project is experimental in its city-like ambitions, but readapting decommissioned airports is already a Berlin trademark. The old Tempelhof airport, whose closure in 2008 was also a side effect of German reunification, was transformed and reopened as a community park, garden, and nature reserve in 2010. The renamed Tempelhofer Feld is now a haven for skateboarders, bicyclists and picnickers who appreciate the vast expanse of greenery in a crowded city.
Seeking to springboard off of Tempelhof’s popularity, the TXL developers have allocated 467 acres of open green space for urban gardening and recreation, as well as an ecological preserve to protect the area’s foxes, badgers, sheep and 90 breeding lark pairs. “It will be kept similar to Tempelhof, which was such a hit,” said Laube, executive assistant to the CEO. “The entire project is completely open, public space for everyone in Berlin.”
The developers are also appealing to Berliners’ demand for more housing. In keeping with the project’s nonprofit status, the 5,000 proposed units are intended to be affordable. “None of the land will be sold,” Laube said of the residential development. To offset rising prices in nearby neighborhoods, the apartments will be operated by housing associations and private collectives that guarantee reasonable rent, not luxury condos.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, tour guide Maren Krause led a dozen visitors on a tour of the construction site. “High pricing will not happen here,” said Krause, lauding the project’s social dimension.
She said the neighborhood will act as an urban ‘sponge,’ meant to react and adapt to changing climate, whether it’s intense rain or severe droughts. Sponge architecture, a highly technological process that will be researched and conducted by university students, uses rain-catching roofs to save water and reuse it in the summer, while solar panels will capture heat from the sun and supply it in the winter. The idea, said Laube, is “to keep every last raindrop in the district itself.”
Trying to win over skeptical Berliners, developers have launched a public relation offensive. They hold regular workshops with nearby residents. For the larger public, there are twice weekly free tours.
Tour guide Krause led visitors through security and handed them green neon vests so they could wander safely through the construction site. She showed them the terminal, which will house a university’s research center and a future e-bike hub. In the distance she pointed to cattle grazing in a field — a nod to the developer’s promise to create a green, bucolic setting.
As for the airport building’s architectural integrity, Krause reassured visitors that the iconic hexagonal design is a protected historical monument that must be respected.
“The outer buildings will stay the same, but the insides might change,” Krause said. “It’s showing what’s always been here and will be in the future republic.”
Despite all their best efforts, winning over cynical Berliners will remain a struggle. The projected 2040 completion date remains too far in the future for many people to get excited about the project’s potential.
“It is not something for today,’’ said Martin Neeb, a 54-year-old activist with the environmental group, Last Generation. Neeb suggested that Berlin focus on more immediate needs, like improving public transportation. “What things can we do today and now?”
Nele Jodumsen, a 24-year-old Berliner, expressed doubts that developers will truly act in the public interest. “When making decisions, the people deciding this are not people like us. It’s people with power,” she said. “We rarely have a seat in the conversation. I’m just wondering if it will turn into another business.”
And there remain, years into the community development project, hard-line Tegel lovers who still want to reopen the old airport.
“We still get these campaigns where people say ‘bring back our airport,’’ said publicist Sara Sperling. But she says it’s always a challenge to build a coalition of support in a city with so many different interest groups — business travelers, environmentalists, low-income residents. “This is a place that is supposed to provide solutions for many of Berliners’ problems, from finding a flat to climate change.
“We are worshipping the inherited airport. It’s part of our duty. But it’s time for something new,” she said. “It is our job to convince people.”
Isabella Genovese is a UC Santa Barbara student majoring in Global Studies and Environmental Studies and minoring in Professional Writing. She is reporting from Berlin this summer as part of ieiMedia’s Berlin Beyond Borders editorial team.
