Gentrification and the Creative City: Lessons Learned from Berlin Urban Planning Policy
By Shahinaz Geneid
In 2008, Berlin released the “Be Berlin” campaign in a bid to rebrand the German capital as a sanctuary for creative practitioners. The campaign, aiming to boost the city’s international image, was expected to spur economic growth and revitalize the local job market. Despite its promised benefits, some locals were initially skeptical of the campaign’s neoliberal economic policy that would ultimately lead to the gentrification and displacement of some of the city’s most vibrant working-class and immigrant communities.
In Kreuzberg, for instance, Berlin’s Turkish gastarbeiter (guest workers), student activists, artists, and squatters have been known for organizing mass protests against gentrification, earning the district its reputation for grassroots political mobilization. The protest questioning communal rights to claiming space have sparked similar actions across major cities all over the world, with the most recent in New York over the presence of a new Amazon headquarters. It also launched a debate over the costs of economic development.
Before delving deeper, we need to address the following questions: what is gentrification, how does it start, and what does neoliberal economics have to do with it?
Political economist Bob Jessop offers a relatively simple definition of neoliberalism, which entails major economic deregulation in favor of less public intervention and increased private ownership and control of goods (1).
While bringing about immense short-term economic gains, deregulation is costly, particularly to the most economically vulnerable fraction of the population. Neoliberalism has direct effects on urban governance and subsequently, on gentrification as a practice (2). This is because neoliberalism, in so far as it eliminates the perception of public goods being the “rights” of residents that must therefore be subsidized by the state, engages in a process of privatization that underlies such phenomena as gentrification.
Neoliberalism advocates against stringent government controls of the market. In its push for a completely free market, neoliberalism subjects commodities to price fluctuations and promotes a capitalist system wherein access to goods depends on one’s level of wealth. In this system, for instance, housing can only be accessed by those who have accumulated enough capital. Because of this, gentrification persists as rents rise at market rates and the urban working-class is unable to keep up. When this occurs, whole neighborhoods and districts experience massive displacement as wealthier residents who can afford the new, inflated market housing prices move in, pushing the former population out in the process.
In cases such as that of Kreuzberg, the reality of displacement can lead to massive civil unrest, protests, and violence as residents fight for their right to remain a part of the urban fabric and inhabit urban space.
But has Berlin learned its lesson from this conflict and unrest? Can a city capitalize on its reputation as a vibrant, creative hub while also avoiding the displacement of the very communities who gave it this reputation in the first place?
The district of Wedding may provide the answer. On the surface, Wedding seems primed for gentrification to begin. It is a historically working-class area with a large population of migrants and has recently begun to develop a high concentration of artistic spaces. This shifting reputation from poor migrant community to artistic hub has brought along with it rising property values (3)(4)(5).
Based off of mapping of the city by Berlin Art Grid, it has the sixth highest concentration of artistic spaces in the city, behind other gentrified or gentrifying districts such as Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain, and Neukölln. Other maps by the Berliner Morgenpost add to the story of the district, identifying it as an area with a high migrant population of 61.6% “New Berliners” as of 2014. Examining this area in more detail on the Morgenpost maps, the Soldiner Straße area specifically has experienced a 66% increase in rent prices since 2009, to an average of 8.20 Euros per m2. A more recent map claims that this increase is even greater, 88% percent since 2009, an average of 9.41 Euros per m2. Even more alarming is that the prices to buy condominiums in the same area has risen 145%, to an average of 1,909 Euros per square meter. In terms of fitting the narrative of gentrification, while Wedding doesn’t compare to some districts in Mitte that showed a 300% increase in condominium prices and 90–100% increases in rent prices, its rising property costs in an area with both high concentrations of artistic spaces and migrant communities place it as being a district of interest where gentrification is likely to occur if unchecked.
Even theorists have identified it as a potential next hot-spot of gentrification. Siemer and Matthews-Hunter identified Wedding as the “most obvious candidate for future gentrification processes” in their study of the spatial patterns of gentrification in Berlin. They base this off of the area’s traditionally “working-class” nature, its “relatively poor population” and “relatively high vacancy rate” of properties, as well as the “artistic and cultural scene” that “has established itself in the area, where the inexpensive apartments and commercial spaces have attracted a large group of so-called pioneer artists and students (6).” But in spite of its position as a rising cultural hub in the city, certain municipal policies have actually prevented the district from becoming highly gentrified in comparison to other Berlin districts and it maintains a remarkable level of socioeconomic diversity as a result (7). This has been helped along by two key approaches by the city government — social housing development and neighborhood management offices — which have allowed for socioeconomic diversity to somewhat coexist amongst the rapid development of the district in comparison to what has historically occurred in other districts.
The Senate Department for Urban Development and the Environment’s strategic planning materials for the area specifically addresses this issue of housing prices. The Berlin Strategy 2030 recognizes Wedding’s rapid development of creative industries, but emphasizes the need to maintain “affordable urban living.” As such, public housing, or housing that is owned and subsidized by the state in order to maintain affordable rent levels, has been a priority in Wedding, which has become a leader in the idea that local governments can develop quality housing at affordable rates. Additionally, the 2030 strategy emphasizes the need to maintain “cohesion between different populations” as the area economically develops through its creative industries, citing neighborhood management offices as the key to this process of social integration and cohesion. Neighborhood management offices receive funding from the municipal government in order to organize initiatives determined by residents to alleviate socioeconomic problems.
Examples can range from community centers that provide extracurricular activities for youth in crime-ridden areas to daycare centers for working-class parents who struggle to afford childcare to urban gardens in food-insecure areas. The existence of such offices and the power they place directly into the hands of residents addresses another aspect of gentrification — the reality of unaffordable supermarkets, recreation centers, and more coming to be in once-affordable areas — rather than simply the aspect of gentrification that specifically has to do with housing prices.
While these efforts seem to show some promise of maintaining socioeconomic diversity in the rapidly developing district, whether the effect will last is unknown, and the struggle against gentrification continues. Rent control legislation has come into effect across the city in recent years, and activists are now advocating for the city of Berlin to hold a referendum within the next year to vote on the possibility of buying out big landlords who frequently skirt these regulations, and bringing large amounts of currently privately-owned housing under state ownership. Activists in cities such as New York are fighting to prevent large companies from moving in and driving up rent prices, while others such as Seattle and San Francisco are feeling the pressure of having chosen to do the opposite, causing a rise in homelessness in both cities where public housing, as in most of the United States, is extremely lacking. The question of what is gained and what is lost in the rush to become an economically competitive megacity, and what policies can prevent the costs from falling to the common person, is one that will continue to be asked and fought over as cities continue to grow. But Berlin’s history of failed and successful approaches to combating gentrification shows that public housing and neighborhood management offices can help, and if these and other anti-gentrification measures ultimately prove successful, the city could serve as a model for others to follow.
References
1. Jessop, Bob. “Liberalism, Neoliberalism, and Urban Governance: A State-Theoretical Perspective.” Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography 34, no. 3 (December 16, 2002): 452–72.
2. Wyly, Elvin and Daniel Hammel. “Neoliberal Housing Policy and the Gentrification of the American Urban.” Environment and Planning A 36, no. 1 (January 2004).
3. Borén, Thomas, and Craig Young. “Artists as Planners?: Identifying Five Conceptual Spaces for Interactive Urban Development.” The Impact of Artists on Contemporary Urban Development in Europe, April 05, 2017, 299–314.
4. Cameron, Stuart, and Jon Coaffee. “Art, Gentrification, and Regeneration — From Artist as Pioneer to Public Arts.” International Journal of Housing Policy 5, no. 1 (August 21, 2006): 39–58.
5. Döring, Christian, and Klaus Ulbricht. “Gentrification Hotspots and Displacement in Berlin.” Gentrification and Resistance, December 08, 2017, 9–35.
6. Siemer, Julia, and Keir Matthews-Hunter. “The Spatial Pattern of Gentrification in Berlin.” Prairie Perspectives: Geographical Essays 19, no. 1 (July 02, 2018): 49–57.
7. Barwick, Christine. “Social Mix Revisited: Within and Across-Neighborhood Ties Between Ethnic Minorities of Differing Socioeconomic Backgrounds.” Urban Geography 39, no. 6 (May 12, 2017): 916–934.
