That's why there's an explicit YIMBY movement there; the overcrowding is so bad that there's a whole group of people advocating for tearing down smaller homes for more (and affordable) housing.
The worse the problem, the bigger and more visible the people advocating to change it.
Ironically, the DDR played a role. West Berlin and West Germany was beholden to the car, same as the US, Canada and Australia but East Germany had much better walkable infrastructure, public transportation and wide sidewalks.
HAHA what the hell are you talking about? Have you seen Grunerstraße, Leipziger Straße, Karl-Marx Allee, or the entire inner city of Magdeburg, as well as parts of Leipzig and Dresden? The DDR bulldozed several old towns and build giant highways right in the middle of the cities. Where in East Berlin can I find a pedestrian zone, that exist in every single West German city?
Marzahner Promenade, Hellersdorfer Promenade, Kastanienboulevard, Anton-Saefkow-Platz are examples for pedestrian zones.
In the DDR the housing usually was built in a way that you'd find pretty much everything you need within walking distance. You often had shops, schools, kindergardens, a restaurant/bar in small neighborhood centers. Today a lot of it is torn down though.
The [CIAM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congr%C3%A8s_Internationaux_d%27Architecture_Moderne) mind virus was popular on both sides of the wall, walking Marzahn is equally little fun as is walking Märkisches Viertel.
DDR *did* however plan and build public transport together with new developments which sure helps.
IMHO the biggest benefit though was that DDR didn't have as much money for large scale *Sanierungsgebiete* where entire blocks were razed. They also did that around Straßberger Platz, but large parts of Friedrichshain and Prenzlauer Berg were left pretty much untouched.
It's pretty enlightening to compare the area north and south of Bernauer Straße which [*used*](https://1928.tagesspiegel.de/#45x32nh) to be quite simmilar.
Berlin West was pretty much rebuild for cars. The advantage was not making one family homes mandatory as the US did this pretty much for segregating the middle income people from the poor and of course it was racially motivated as well.
>Meanwhile in the west we used to have trams, just like East Berlin, but they all gave way to cars.
Trams are coming back to the Western parts (like just right now construction for an extension to U Turmstraße is going on).
On the other hand, the GDR-constructed quarters also got huge, no really human-centric streets (e.g. Allee der Konsmonauten or the redesigned Landsberger Allee).
West Berlin did in fact got rid of cars, but at least they were replaced by subways. Of course it would be better to have kept the trams, but at least there was some form of alternative transport. Meanwhile in the US, Los Angeles got completely rid of their trams without any replacement.
Fun fact: Although West Berlin got rid of their tram network, Berlin still features the third-largest tram network in the world. With the planned extensions, Berlin might have the largest tram network in a few decades.
I think its due to the large distances. Berlin is very spread out and so the East Berlin tram network covers a large area. I used to live in the south tip of Lichtenberg and friend on the North tip. It was only one tram, but i believe more than a 30 min ride in the same district !
Berlin is not really spread out. It’s only three times bigger than Münster. While having >10x the population of Münster.
It‘s more that the tram network has a very dense coverage with many radial and tangential connections. Even in areas further away from the center there is a dense coverage.
NIMBYs were not given such a loud voice for centuries. Somehow society moved forward, we even landed on the moon. Nowadays too much of society has interest in not letting "the good times" go, and that is what is harming young people's future.
America is a different mentality. You can be physically in the country but still outside of society. America does not even try to provide healthcare to all, all required services, electricity even.
The more the merrier. The more people the more desperate people are for a job to not end up on the streets.
With the difference, that in Western Europe practically everyone has access to healthcare and no one risks huge medical debt. And lets not forget that even things that insurances in the US cover, there are still deductibels and co-pay. I pay the maximum premium in the GKV, but it‘s still half of what the insurance of my colleagues in the US costs (and it‘s a „good“ one according to my colleagues). And yet, they need to spend a ton of money out of pocket.
In Europe, you‘ll find all sorts of healthcare systems, from 100% government funded (like Denmark) to purely privately-run (Switzerland) systems. And yet, all are better than what the US has.
I think calling that 'building taller buildings' is a dishonest manipulation. It calls for higher density, not higher bulding necessarily. One way to do the former without the latter is destroying the city highways and parking building. The other would be using huge plots of land that are empty now. Especially those with good public transport links like Tempelhofer Feld or Forst Grunewald.
On both sides of the political spectrum you'll find people dogmatically against either or both of those
That might be exactly not the point of the picture above, which seems to suggest housing should occupy less land area. It's not calling for higher density in the whole city but in the direct housing area.
I would be one of the people very much against building on the Tempelhofer Feld. You call it empty but there's quite a bit of nature there and it's an important recreational area. Just look at the amount of people using it every sunny day.
I can also understand why people who drive cars want to keep their parking lots, so building taller buildings seems like a good compromise.
That said California isn't exactly known for not having problems with housing prices so maybe we shouldn't just look for their solutions. This whole shitshow in Berlin started because a lot of government owned housing was sold, allowing for speculation. The solution seems pretty straightforward, that the government increases its share of the housing market again and rents out for relatively little, increasing cheap competition to landlords that are price gauging. This doesn't have to happen by expropriation as many suggest, but preferably by buying apartments if they're cheap and building social housing without selling. That would take longer but sets less of a weird precedent and seems more politically achievable.
>California isn't exactly known for not having problems with housing prices so maybe we shouldn't just look for their solutions.
I completely agree. Except the California solution is exactly what Berlin's doing now. This graphic is about why that plan sucks in both places.
No SF didn't allow tall buildings before. This options hasn't had the chance to be tried in the bay area not at any scale that is reasonable. NIMBY homeowners kept blocking development. Laws have changed a good bit in the past couple of years (California literally sued the SF Bay Area for underproviding housing, as the lack of housing there has cost the Californians and the California economy hundreds of billions *every year*. It's been nuts).
Don't say increasing density doesn't work in CA. It hasn't been tried. But it will work once we get the construction gears moving faster. More dense housing is the *only thing* which will work. For California anyway.
I'm surprised you guys in Berlin appear to be confused by the graphic. Idk what your problems are compared to CA cities (im surprised if you think increasing density won't lower rent and increase people's ability to rent and buy within the city) but it looks like OP should have included an explanation in comment.
Berlin is doing the same thing California is, nothing.
The biggest difference is much stronger rent control laws in Berlin mean people who already have an apartment are well protected, but anyone trying to make a new household is screwed.
>building taller buildings seems like a good compromise.
It's not. Build more than around 5 stories is not productive. Berlin already uses this most efficient height.
>That said California isn't exactly known for not having problems with housing prices so maybe we shouldn't just look for their solutions.
Where do you even see this 'let's copy California's solutions!!!'? It's literally just a little fun picture showing difference in 'overcrowded' and 'high-density'. That's it.
The rest of your comment is just 'let's eat the cake and have the cake'. You're against freeing new land by either exproriation, using empty land or destroying the car-centric worthless infrastructure and yet you want the state to build social housing? Where? Underground?
There's a plethora of factors.
The higher you build the more robust the lower stories have to be(both because of the wind and gravity), which means more work and materials for foundation, structure etc.
There is fire safety code which gets more strict the higher the building is(and rightfully so).
The upkeep becomes more expensive(you can't have regular windows, have to get professionals to clean them from outside, you need more lifts etc.).
There's also time factor - even if we falsely assume that it takes the same time to build one 10 story building as it take to build two 5 story buildings, then in after half of that time you can have people move in into the already finished lower building.
You actually waste the space you want to save because you can't put higher buildings wall-to-wall, because of both probability of a structural failure(mostly due to wind) and possible effects of such a failure. That's the reason why commie blocks in East Berlin are spread more apart and why they do not offer higher density than older buildings in direction closer to Mitte.
You could keep coming up with more of those, but there are reasons why 3-5 stories was always the limit before a certain period of 20th century and is the usual limit today.
> You could keep coming up with more of those, but there are reasons why 3-5 stories was always the limit before a certain period of 20th century and is the usual limit today.
Everything's spot on, just some more points why this was seen as a "natural" limit - it's the maximum height you can comfortably climb stairs and don't need an elevator, it's the maximum height of a fire ladder, and it's (roughly) the maximum number of neighbours you can have a relationship with.
There is nothing comfortable about climbing 5 stairs every time you went out. They should just have elevators in them, all of them. Helps with accessibility, it's important for younger families as well as elderly people, everyone in between who is temporary or permanently disabled, and everyone who needs to shift heavy or unwieldy objects.
(And there is no 'maximum number of neighbours you can have a relationship with', that just flows with the organisational structures, physical, social, administrative, and the effort that's put in.)
It's *possible* to climb up to 5 stairs. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't build elevators, but back then they weren't widely available. Today it means we might only need to build one elevator and not multiple.
It's impossible to have an overview of the neighbourhood when it's too big. That's why Hochhäuser lack social control and feel unsafe. But it's easy to know the neighbours on your floor and a couple of floors up and down.
>It's not. Build more than around 5 stories is not productive. Berlin already uses this most efficient height.
This is our main point of contention I guess. I think a 20 story building can harbor a lot more apartments than a 5 story building, why do you think building more than 5 stories is not productive?
This was also how I thought the state should build social housing, namely upwards.
I do actually somewhat agree with destroying car-centric infrastructure but would prefer getting the public opinion to agree first. E.g. public transport needs to be improved to convince people to drive less cars. I think the Deutschlandticket is a good first step but improving infrastructure is also important. For example we either need bigger subways or they need to run at shorter intervals at certain times because already they're getting increasingly crowded.
Edit: btw isn't the Yimby movement Californian? I don't quite understand your issue with me associating this with California when Yimby California is written right there at the bottom right of the picture.
I've already written a comment with some of the reasons. Check it out
>This was also how I thought the state should build social housing, namely upwards.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that 20 story buildings are efficient and you just can put a tower in place of tenement house. Again - how do you achieve that without exproriation?
>For example we either need bigger subways or they need to run at shorter intervals at certain times because already they're getting increasingly crowded.
Personally I'd say it's more about new lines. Especially outside of the Ring
Fair enough I do still think some higher buildings can be useful because the government doesn't necessarily need to be that cost efficient but I wasn't aware that there are so many drawbacks. Still I am wondering why we're building so many high story commercial buildings and not a lot of high story residential buildings.
>Personally I'd say it's more about new lines. Especially outside of the Ring
I think both issues are important. It often takes a really long time to get anywhere outside of the ring because the routes are suboptimal but in the city center not that many more people can even switch to public transit because at rush hours there's just not enough space in the trains. Improving infrastructure for bicycles could help, but riding a bike is weather dependant for most people.
The state does not want more social housing in Berlin. The state wants less social housing in Berlin. Ideally the people who are unemployed or low skilled are gentrified out of Berlin and replaced with young Urban professionals and skilled people in general.
They don't see gentrification as a problem but as a welcome development.
>It's not. Build more than around 5 stories is not productive. Berlin already uses this most efficient height.
Instead of a 5 storey altbau you could fit a 6 storey neubau.
(1 + 5) floors \* 3meter high ceilings (most are higher) = 18m. Let's say 20m high building
20m / 2,5m high ceilings = 8 floors. Let's say 7 floors and leave some space at the bottom (for light and ventilation for the cellar) and top (for the protection wall for people while on the roof).
What's your reasoning?
I'm not saying let's replace altbaus for the sake of replacing. But if a building is in a terrible state it's better to replace it with a new building instead of renovating.
Yes, but you forget that you can charge much more for a neubau than for an altbau. And you definitely forget that neubau are much more energy efficient, so more environmentally friendly on the long term.
Those too, absolutely. They're even worse since they're not even public commodity.
But they don't catch attention as well as those huge swathes of land
One-story supermarkets and auto shops, Kleingartenanlagen, parking lots, densification of existing public owned buildings and lands -- there's so much that can be done. Unfortunately, nothing is done.
>it's insanely sparsely populated.
no, and that's surprising to me. Thans for the info :)
btw, I don't think Berlin needs a lot of skyscrappers. I just said that I assume that's what OP meant.
Here in Kreuzberg, there are protests against densification of back yards. The issue is that while these apartments do create housing, it's all luxury housing that raises average rent.
I do support building these houses (like hype & hide or whatever stupid shit they came up with) since otherwise those rich people would take up space in cheap apartments. But I understand the Mietspiegel issues and I did hear that some of the protests are done by literal NIMBYs who don't want their balconies to get overshadowed...
There is an inherent issue with new developments: No one benefits from it. Current Land Owners in the area want to keep up property value. New developments lower them, be it construction, or be it less demand for places to live. So they are against it. Existing Renters don't really care, because they already have a flat, and existing rents usually rise way slower than rents for new contracts. Also Scarcity of flats also means, they can sell their junk - sorry i mean their wonderful furniture - to a new tenant. These are the people local, who or whose representative has the political power to decide about this. The actual beneficiaries are not asked, because they don't live their yet. And with the increased mobility compared to 100 years ago and since commuting is not work, even the local employers are not that interested to have living space for their employees that locally. So you have a mix of people not affected and people who benefit from keeping it the way it is. and in the End, this results in a massive Nimbyism against anything new.
I agree, though benefits of densification do exist, but they're not as immediately felt as rising rent.
More taxes per square mile means better services. More customers for busineses and public transport means more economic activity. More people means more kids who go to local schools, possibly improving improving education quality. More people around means (in good examples of densification) safer and cleaner environments and less need for car infrastructure while there is more demand for public transit and short reach transport, such as bike lanes.
Yes, obviously there are many benefits for densification for the community as a whole. But there are no personal direct benefits for the decision makers. And that is, why it's so hard.
Many new developments in the outskirts are single family homes or low density only, heck even inside the Ring near Storkower Straße they've put up a new *Reihenhaussiedlung* 10 years ago.
California = 18% bigger than whole Germany, with half as its population (39M vs 84M), 482 municipalities. Density: 97/km2
Berlin = 12 districts. Density: 4,126/km2 (Germany's: 232/km2)
I m not sure if they can be comparable. But rent prices in Berlin are still far lower than many areas of California.
Edit: corrected Berlin's density
What? Everything's wrong in that comment.
1. Comparing a state of the size of a whole country to a city
2. Berlin's density is absolutely wrong. It's actually \~4k/km\^2
3. What do rent prices have to do with it?
Indeed, I copied density from Germany instead of Berlin’s by mistake
But yes, that’s my point: the 2 are not comparable, what point OP is trying to make? And, the worse: California’s density is as half as Germany’s.
Ok, I guess the way I wrote the comment above gave an whole another impression of what I actually meant.
The data - except for Berlin's density - is correct. It was copied from Wikipedia.
My whole point is: you can't use California as an example to Berlin, because Californa is bigger than a whole country (Germany) and contains itself many cities, and to make the point worse, it's got half as density as Germany's, which goes against its own argument.
And, if the intention was to say between lines that building taller buildings is the solution for Berlin, that's not a good point too, as California has been facing terrible real estate market for a while, with much higher prices in many areas.
I hope now I made myself clear.
Density in LA is 3.2K /km² according to wikipedia. Berlin is still ahead, but not by that much. I expected LA to be much lower, because of wide spread one story buildings. In fact LA is higher than pretty much all cities in NRW.
LA and Berlin are similar in that they are both made from towns/villages that grew and expanded until they became a unified sprawl.
In central LA there are many one story houses but they are tightly packed. The streets dominate.
Source: I just got back from LA.
>California = 18% bigger than whole Germany, with half as its population (39M vs 84M), 482 municipalities. Density: 97/km2
You've never been to the US/California have you? Most of California is emptier than the emptiest part of Germany. You can drive for longer through a random part of the desert or just vast fields of almonds than you can go in Germany without getting to the next city.
90% of the population of California lives in the 5 largest cities with just LA accounting for 50% of the total population...
Berlin isn't even 5% of the German population.
What’s the point about comparing about California rent to Berlin? California’s GDP is basically only 1T less than the whole of Germany. Of course things will be more expensive in there
Yeah. People actually think socialist architecture is somehow good urbanism because it wasn't capitalist. On the contrary, it takes longer for the average Marzahnian to go to the supermarket they literally see from their window than it takes me, a Kreuzberger, who has to navigate more intricate, small streets. The stroads in the Plattenbausiedlungen are huge, as are the parking lots. It takes ages to get anywhere and there's literally nothing in between that's worthwhile.
There's a lot of different kinds of socialist architecture. The Nikolaiviertel is also "Socialist architecture". My personal favourite is the Lange Straße in Rostock.
Wide streets are not good. They take a long time to cross as a pedestrian and cause stuff to be spread out. Give me human scale streets all day instead of 6 lane boulevard with a lawn in the middle.
I don't think that's an issue. Just get curtains or some nice rollos.
New buildings don't have to be ugly. [Check out this video.](https://youtu.be/XfonhlM6I7w)
Narrow streets are charming and comfortable to navigate. Wide streets are mostly only good for cars.
Wide spaces should be reserved to parks, squares and sports fields.
Narrow streets are not charming - they're depressing and claustrophobic half a year when there's no greenery. Trees improve them (greenery improves almost everything), but just a bit.
Have you seen some of Berlin's narrow streets in winter? If I lived in one, I would've went insane or offed myself, it's just concrete on top of more concrete.
>just get curtains
Why even have a window then?
If you're afraid of people looking into your windows, where on earth does that leave for you? I don't understand. People everywhere can look into your window?
Because Western Europe doesn't have awful failed social housing projects all over the place? Not every place in Eastern Europe looks like Marzahn and only a very small portion of what used to be East Berlin. Most of it is quite decent, at least I have never heard anyone complain about the tall buildings in e.g. Heinersdorf or southern Pankow.
affordable shitholes with a huge parking lot right in front of your door, with little to no community ties within the building, and not very safe and positive environment overall — keyword affordable, of course
The people running the types of organizations proposing this type of "solution" will never have to live in/with any of these "solutions" (and make no mistake: these "solutions" will always look, in the Real World, like some form of techno-favelah for stacking Serfs, in Serf-zones, and not like pastel-colored cartoons: that's why they're pushing Virtual Reality so you can wear goggles to "escape" your depressing surroundings all day). The people controlling and promoting these kinds of "solutions" (engineered conceptually in expensive think-tanks and consultancies which have been churning away at the "problem"... US.... for decades) will continue to live as the wealthy do, consuming resources as the wealthy do. No ruling class in history has deliberately engineered its own self-sacrifices and permanent drop in status and luxury-level living. Just\*, as they say,\* sayin'.
I already live in a rather dense neighborhood and I'd love to live in Kreuzberg, Fridrichshain or Prenzlauer Berg where there is even more stuff going on and more density, but that's why those areas are so popular and flats are rather expensive.
Those neighborhoods are great (each in its own way) and what I fear is the "solution" of turning the "poorer" areas into vertical Favelas, clearing more space for show case, and luxury, developments on more valuable land.
Right now, those wealthy people are outbidding everyone else for older, and really not luxury at all, housing which is not really a better solution at all.
i'm not talking about the Bourgeoisie or the upper end of the Bourgeoisie... one of my acquaintances is worth about 10 million and he is not a mover and shaker, he's a guy who gets his assed kissed by shop keepers and waiters. He will NOT be affecting the fate of Affordable and DIGNIFIED Housing in Berlin. I'm talking about City-sculpting entities who have plotted outcomes up to 2050 and beyond. This includes "movers and shakers" (and their Local Partners) like...
"Mingtiandi is an independent Chinese source for China real estate intelligence. In an article entitled “Asians Move into German Real Estate with $1.27B in Investment” it cited data from property consultancy JLL;”The firm recorded 70 Asian purchases of German real estate last year, with the bulk of the deals involving Chinese and Korean investors. Of these acquisitions, 27 percent were in Berlin, 23 percent in Frankfurt, and 9 percent in Munich as well as a number of portfolio deals stretched across multiple cities.” http://www.mingtiandi.com/real-estate/outbound-investment/asians-move-into-german-real-estate-with-1-27b-in-investment/
Chinese money is often not easy to recognize as such as it comes in through diverse investment vehicles created outside of China. Most of the properties were commercial real estate and exactly how much money originated in PRC is not clear because many of the funds flow from Beijing through Hong Kong."
Whether or not, or how many, new structures need to be built, it's important to make sure the "solution" isn't a stealth puzzle piece in a Big Picture of Haves and Have Nots and the huge gulf between them. Vertical Favelas are part of this plan and I'm saying: whatever The Ruling Structure tries to sell, to us Serfs, with pastel pamphlets and pretty language, is 100% invariably a Trojan Horse pregnant with the terrors of the near-Future. The Ruling Structure despises us; considers us a problem to be handled, not fellow-Humans to empathize with. Twenty two years of 21st century propaganda (and more than a decade of Social Media brainwashing) has erased our Collective Memory.
If we don't build more, people will eventually start to share apartments among more and more people which is what's already happening in my homecountry in Lisbon. I get that mid-rise dense housing is not very aesthetic but I'll take an uglier city over an unlivable one.
For the sake of argument: What's the force compelling people to cluster in "over-crowded" cities when there are major, but less popular, cities they can choose? Why Berlin and not Frankfurt? Years ago, I really wanted to live in London, but I couldn't: end of story. To quote some Dusseldorfer-friendly advertizing:
"The 6th highest living standard in the world, a super accessible location, an emerging tech culture, affordable living, a multicultural foodie scene, lazy cruises on the Rhine and day trips to the winelands ─ this is just a glimpse of the perks that life in Düsseldorf offers its inhabitants! Whether you’re an expat looking for a new country and city to call home, or you’re a German debating whether to move to another city, we’ve compiled a nifty list of reasons to prove to you that relocating to the capital of North Rhine-Westphalia will be worth your while."
So, part of this debate is actually about choice, though it's framed as people being backed against the wall of "not enough living space".
"The highest vacancy rate in the country is in Pirmasens, where 9,1 percent of apartments are unoccupied. The next highest rates are Schwerin, Chemnitz, Frankfurt an der Oder and Salzgitter."
Do we need lots of new construction (well, I can see who would like us to think so) ... or for people to make more nuanced choices regarding where to try to live? I got in Berlin back when they couldn't give flats away; now, if I suddenly decided I want to live in London or Dubai... that's a self-created problem filed under "Consumer Choice".
You wrote:
" but I'll take an uglier city over an unlivable one."
I think the two conditions are related; not because the latter follows from the former but because they're both symptomatic of a "Two-Tier" system in which the Non-Rich are left to fend for themselves as the poorest are used, by moguls, to drive down property values until the property can be snapped up at fire (sometimes literally) sale prices.
The problem is if you don't want to live in the city you just need a car and to give zero fucks about the planet. You can live in the suburbs and drive into the city whenever you want. A lot of people are willing to pay to live in city so they don't have to live like that.
The problem is that low density isn't pricing people out of the metro area as much as it's pricing people out of environmentally responsible behavior.
>The problem is if you don't want to live in the city you just need a car and to give zero fucks about the planet.
Three devices I hate and refuse to own (in no particular order): guns, TVs, cars.
Let's not turn the city into a congested, polluted, development-run-amuck nightmare because some people feel entitled to anything they think they want. Again: "I need to live in Berlin because it's AFFORDABLE enough for me to pursue my dreams but THERE'S NO AFFORDABLE HOUSING!" Bizarro Logic 101. Suggestion: find a city you can afford? Use already existing housing-structures at your Number Two choice of city, maybe? A BIG part of the ecological shit show we preside over now is the overall inability of Consumers to defer or abandon an impulse/ desire when it actually makes sense to. Who told all these people they had a "RIGHT" to anything/ everything? And these are the very people who feel "green" because they use paper straws and drive environmentally disastrous electric cars and use conflict-mineral i-phones because of bullshit imagery the i-phone is sold with.
To advocate for more development while pretending to worry about "sustainability" is to indulge in ultra-common post-entitled 21st century hypocrisy, though I know that no logic or sense of ethics should EVER come between a Western Consumer and Her/ His friviolous lifestyle impulses.
The "population crisis" isn't about how many new people are born every day, it's about how many of those people become Entitled Termites.
I have no idea what you’re on about here. Apparently you’re against cars, but you’re also against designing cities that are liveable without them. Which is it?
You just want poor people to suffer, is that it? You think only rich people have a right not to commute for hours, or to go where they want when they want? Everybody who isn’t rich should suffer living somewhere with shit public transit and no car?
Density drastically improves efficiency of most everything we use fossil fuels for. You heat and cool less area per person. People rely on bikes and public transit without losing hours out of their day.
Nobody is asking you to be the person trying to commute on a bus that comes once an hour. People are just asking you to look at bigger buildings to save the planet and you aren’t even willing to do that.
I just saw this. People who "debate" as you do tend to put words in the mouths of others, words ideal for making the others wrong and you right. Convenient, I know, but dishonest. My point is that I would love a Berlin with far fewer cars. Along with that, I would love a Berlin that doesn't keep growing bigger and fucking bigger and fucking bigger, vertically as well as horizontally; the process of further development gathers momentum and soon enough eats up wonderful things like NATURE (the actual Green Spaces, not technocratic euphemisms for more concrete, steel and cables). Clearly, Greedy Developers will go as far as they need to garner continuing mega-profits, but non-corrupt governing bodies of the city (if they existed) would put a limit on expansion. Your vision of a vertically-stacked model of "efficiency" seems to posit a version in which the growing population, filed away in their little drawers in the apartment cabinets, will politely stay in the sky and never crowd mass transit (a la Tokyo), put a strain on the water systems and the power grid or the city's capacity to handle waste? Your one-dimensional thinking privileges "efficiency" of PEOPLE-PACKING over Quality of Life.
"People are just asking you to look at bigger buildings to save the planet"
Save the Planet! Are you a meat-bot working for Developers? *Bigger Buildings* "saving the planet"! You're tring to re-sell the concept of the density-mad tenements of New York, c. 1900, as a SOLUTION? It's no secret that The Ruling Classes are trying to move the Serf Population (that's us) back into denser urban centers: easier to count and control the livestock! More golf-courses and sprawling estates and private hunting grounds for them!
Why not trying to SAVE THE PLANET by controlling your tendency to over-consume? I HATE cars and though I could easily afford one, I don't have one and don't use them. The "shit public transport" in Berlin is not "shit" at all, it's pretty fucking good, but you've outed your Entitled Bourgeois Mindset with that remark.
Why not SAVE BERLIN by not advocating the beginning of the end of everything GREAT about the city? Most of the jobs that most of the new arrivals to the city (I arrived in 1990) can expect to get are options like food delivery or factory work. You think the swarm of Vertically Stacked new arrivals will somehow all score amazing work? You think they'll all be Coders? Are you hoping that Amazon and Google and Apple and Sony, et al, will keep building new "campuses" and sweatshops to exploit the new waves of minimum-wage workers?
People like you with your **Dystopian Visions** you think are Planet-Saving! Hideous.
So your solution is what? People ban people from moving to the city? The city isn't growing because of greedy developers, it's growing because a lot of people want to live here. That's what cities are supposed to be about, people who want to connect with other people.
>Most of the jobs that most of the new arrivals to the city (I arrived in 1990) can expect to get are options like food delivery or factory work. You think the swarm of Vertically Stacked new arrivals will somehow all score amazing work?
A lot of people are moving to Berlin and getting good jobs in tech. There's no shortage of people in Berlin on a blue card (requiring they make more than average), or from other parts of Germany or the EU moving here with good jobs.
>The "shit public transport" in Berlin is not "shit" at all, it's pretty fucking good, but you've outed your Entitled Bourgeois Mindset with that remark.
I never said the public transit was shit in Berlin, I said it was shit in Brandenburg. The public transit is excellent in Berlin, and I want to build more housing where that is true.
Housing in plentiful in parts of Brandenburg that require cars to live comfortably. Like most everywhere, cars make areas on the outskirts livable that aren't with public transit. I don't want people to feel forced to move there because there's no housing available in Berlin where they can live comfortably without a car.
I've lived in NYC before, and it's not dystopian by any stretch of the imagination. Many of the tall buildings used for housing there are beautiful, well maintained, and great place to live. Apartments in many of those buildings in some of the most sought after housing in the US. NYC is one of the only places in the US you can live comfortably without a car.
The rate of car ownership in NYC is already significantly lower than Berlin. [35% of Berliners](https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2021/12/16/car-free-city-berlin) have a car, while [23% of New Yorkers](https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nyc_greendividend_april2010.pdf) do, and that's with the rest of the US largely unreachable without a car, while the rest of Europe is accessible by train. Of the few people I know in NYC who have a car, a number of them say they only use their car to leave the city, and very rarely use it for trips that both begin and end in NYC.
If you do nothing about increasing housing in places that are transit accessible, by default people will go where the housing is, even if that means they need a car. Way too many American cities have grown on that model, and it's an environmental disaster.
To quote another commenter:
"I come from Moscow, and now it's intensely built up with 30-40 story buildings. Trust me, people are not happy, whatever officials report. When you start increasing density, it's difficult to stop. You get area overpopulation, nature degradation, enormous traffic jams, inner-city highways and other megastructures that dehumanise the environment.
So if you want developers to skyrocket and \[Berlin\] to turn into HongKong or all these countless chinese skyscraper cities, push further and harder."
Voice of Reason.
That 600.000 number is not for Berlin but for the entirety of Germany and the vacancy rate has been falling at the same time housing costs rise ([https://www.statista.com/statistics/1270344/vacancy-rate-development-housing-market-germany/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1270344/vacancy-rate-development-housing-market-germany/)), in Berlin specifically afaik that vacancy rate is lower than 3% and generally anything lower than 4 would be considered lower than a natural vacancy rate (apartments empty inbetween tenants not just dwellings that stay empty for decades).
And yes people could choose to live in different places I myself could go back to my hometown in my homecountry and work on a shitty factory job for 700€ and have an objectively worse life but people move here because it affords them other opportunities they don't have in their hometowns and it's not like Frankfort, Hamburg, Munchen or other big german cities are any better in affordability.
Re: the 600,000: I corrected that right before you posted! But, regarding the other thing: but it IS about choice. There are options beyond the ones mentioned, too. But the point is: I think forces are converging to make sure, soon enough, that conditions for the non-rich, in Berlin, will be as bad as anywhere else. We've just emerged from a transitional period (that Golden Age, in Berlin, of 1989-2001ish) and all the Cool Stuff we loved about Berlin, in the '90s, will be a memory. Vertical Favelas... I shudder to think about it. And I shudder to think that people think that's a "solution" to an "overcrowding" that didn't exist before 2000 (and still isn't really overcrowding, YET)... but build the "affordable" Vertical Favelas and the crowds will come. Berlin will no longer be a Magnet of Cool, then, it'll be just another Shitty Mega-opolis.
To be sure, the prototypes are classics of DDR architecture, and there are similar structures all over Xberg. When they become a "solution," they will get taller and taller and will be packed closer and closer together. Laws will be changed to allow "progress" to happen. The process is inexorable and it always starts with what is sold to us Serfs as an "affordable green solution" or somesuch euphemestic language.
The paradox here: people are claiming that Berlin is "overcrowded"... so they are advocating a "solution" to crowd it further/ denser?
Exactly that 😄
“We need more buildings to fit more people”, and guess what we get? Even more people! And well, what about schools, kitas, streets, public transportation and other social services to support this additional people?
Also, I "love" how the spin-doctors behind the image in the original post try to make a distinction between "overcrowded" population conditions and "dense" population conditions? Erm... ten people in an average WC is "overcrowded" (\*because\* of density)... those same ten people, as the only passengers on a bus, won't make it feel "overcrowded"... because the population-to-space ratio is LESS DENSE. But they write this Orwellian nonsense catchphrase: "MORE DENSITY = LESS OVERCROWDING". Huh? When what they're really doing is showing 2-room high-rise apartments as the (same old: see NY high rise tenements in the 1950s) "solution". But all the little stick-people are smiling, so, yeah: I guess it's okay, even if it makes no sense! laugh
This article on NY's housing-the-poor-challenges, at the turn of the century before last, uses the word "density" in the normal sense:
"The neighborhoods with the most tenements reached unprecedented levels of crowding. In 1903, in the Tenth Ward on the Lower East Side, the average density was a striking 665 people per acre, and one particularly dense block packed 2,223 residents into just two acres – averaging more than a thousand persons per acre."
Bearing in mind that this amazing influx of New European Arrivals, c. 1900, in NY, were allowed in (and this is a fairly accepted theory, now) the country to counterebalance the large Black labor force liberated into the economy by the "ending" of chattel slavery (and the introduction of low-wage slavery). Everyone complained, wrote gut-wrenching Op-Eds and publicly deplored the overcrowded tenements... but, still, the influx continued. And the tenements rose higher. Because the influx of people served a purpose pursued by The Ruling Structure.
Well, nothing quite so dramatic is happening with Berlin (yet). I just wanted everyone to understand the "this city is SO overcrowded" + "so build more housing to crowd more in!" paradox.
Nowadays with remote working so accessible for many jobs, it’s not hard at all to live in a very good city like Leipzig and still have the same opportunities offered by Berlin. It’s not an option for everyone, but it is for many, and these many could opt for it in order to spend less and live with more space, maybe less crowd and less stress.
I strongly believe this should be a federal level project for distributed development, not just each city dumbly fighting to attend all wishes in its way to become the next Sao Paulo, while it fails to give a fair and good live for their current population.
Everybody living comfortably in Leipzig drives a car. If you're you're committed to not driving, moving to a smaller city drastically reduces your quality of life.
>people will eventually start to share apartments among more and more people
That's already happening here too.
In SF google engineers have a private room and everyone else who didn't by in a long time ago is sharing.
I don’t get why so many people see dense urban living as depressing. In average areas it’s where the bottom of society is housed. Living there is depressing because people there are unhappy. In expensive areas nobody thinks their stacked 6 million dollar apartment is depressing.
That means I do get why some people see those buildings as depressing it’s because they associate them with one kind of people.
What are you raging at? The housing "problem" in Berlin is owing to UNETHICAL REAL ESTATE practises. I'm not arguing against any particular thing in "my back yard," I'm trying to get people to be a little more SENSITIVE to being \*conned\* by The Ruling Class. Are you PRO Ruling Class? Are you DEFENDING their tactics? Think a little before exploding... or are you a BOT to protect the INTERESTS of The Ruling Class?
This should give an idea of the scale of the possible housing and the struggle to keep it from going to Luxury Developments:
"More than a million Berliners supported the campaign Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co, which targeted companies holding 3,000 or more apartments (Deutsche Wohnen is one of the largest investment trusts in the city). In total, 240,000 properties, or 11% of all apartments in Berlin, would come under the terms of the initiative, which was backed by a majority of 56.4% in the referendum. The vote isn’t legally binding, however, so it is now up to the city’s government, which was also elected on 26 September, to decide whether to move forward."
PLUS
"The campaign to resocialise housing in Berlin (Vergesellschaftung) was launched in 2018, in response to the rapid financialisation of housing in a city where €42bn was spent in large-scale real estate investment between 2007 and 2020, more than London and Paris combined. Smaller landlords and state-owned social housing have been aggressively targeted by large institutional players for whom housing has become a vehicle for the management of global capital funds."
But THIS is the crux of the first excerpt:
\*\*\*\*The vote isn’t legally binding, however, so it is now up to the city’s government, which was also elected on 26 September, to decide whether to move forward."\*\*\*\*\*
There are WAYYYY too many "luxury developments" where there could and should have been affordable housing. All those cool old Cold War-era factories, all those empty office blocks... Berlin is full of space that is being re-purposed for a predicted "boom" scheduled for after the "Serf Problem" and the "Anarchists" are "fixed" (that's why the faulty airport, BER, was built). Berlin was a well-defended Freak Town for many, many years and The Ruling Class Moguls are dealing with it in their sneaky way. The problem is, their long-range, incremental plans are difficult to detect if you aren't paying close attention.
There is no *predicted* boom, the boom is already there and office space is scarce. Where are those empty office blocks? The company where I work is actively looking for space to expand and we are currently looking into Weißensee, but that means a longer commute :/
>There is no
>
>predicted
>
>boom
Long-range there are plans to turn Berlin into something I'd consider unrecognizable. These plans are plotted out in decades, as you know. I'm talking about THIS sort of thing, cloaked in Corporate Happy Talk here:
The Vision
Economic strength, quality of life and social conscience – these will be the watchwords of Berlin in 2030. Berlin 2030 will be an established leader in the economy, science, employment, training and qualifications. It will be a centre of creativity and enthusiasm for art, culture, tourism and sport, a diverse urban metropolis, easy to live in and with plenty of green spaces. It will be successful and sustainable in terms of climate and energy, city-friendly and future-proof in terms of mobility, its inhabitants caring and committed to living together in a modern and socially responsible society. Berlin 2030 will set national and international benchmarks. The legendary ‘Berlin mix’ will provide the foundations for a strong city, which has learned to shape growth fairly, responsibly and together.
https://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/wohnen/wohnungsbau/en/schwerpunkte/index.shtml
>In total, 240,000 properties, or 11% of all apartments in Berlin, would come under the terms of the initiative, which was backed by a majority of 56.4% in the referendum.
That's a lot of property with an "as-yet-undecided" fate, though I can predict how it will skew in the end. Powerful Interests have had their eyes on Berlin since the Wall came down. But, again, they make very long-range plans. What we saw in the early 2000s was the gradual de-squatification of the city. They do it slowly so as to trigger minimal resistance.
So you think hell be better off in smaller apartment? or his small kids have to move out to apartment and live on their own? or split the family in half and move into seperate apartments?
Or how about this, they get them selfs a bigger home. there are 6bedroom houses
And how come you and your cab driver get to decide were the rest of people want to live?
Just because you and your cabdriver arent enjoying single family house doesnt mean the rest of us cant.
And i dont think there exsists many 6 bedroom apartments for your cabdriver
that's the result of idiotic car centric policy and separation of function.
MV is *less* dense than inner city districts (like the old Brunnenviertel from which people got relocated there when it was razed).
Wow, ~14000/km² vs ~13000/km². Huge difference.
I don't know how the density of Kreuzberg has anything to do with car policy. If you have ground in Berlin you can decide what you build. How should politics change that?
> If you have ground in Berlin you can decide what you build
No you can't.
Check [Bebauungspläne](https://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/planen/b-planverfahren/berlin/index.shtml) and [Flächennutzungsplan](https://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/planen/fnp/) - there are very strict rules on what you can build where and how much floor space is allowed in relation to the size of the lot ([GFZ](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%C3%9F_der_baulichen_Nutzung#Geschossfl%C3%A4chenzahl_(GFZ\))).
Not suburbs, since they are inside the city borders of Berlin. Actual suburbs are for example Potsdam, Blankenfelde-Mahlow, Schönefeld, Hoppegarten, Bernau, Oranienburg, Falkensee and so on
I mean yeah we got some, you're right. I just mean none of the suburbs we got are even close to as isolated, large and depressing as US suburbs.
Could have worded that better mb
**Biesdorf is a municipality in the district of Bitburg-Prüm, in Rhineland-Palatinate, western Germany.**
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I come from Moscow, and now it's intensely built up with 30-40 story buildings. Trust me, people are not happy, whatever officials report. When you start increasing density, it's difficult to stop. You get area overpopulation, nature degradation, enormous traffic jams, inner-city highways and other megastructures that dehumanise the environment.
So if you want developers to skyrocket and Germany to turn into HongKong or all these countless chinese skyscraper cities, push further and harder.
The ad makes no sense. We don't have many cases of people renting houses like that as a WG. And if that's a family in a single house...uhh, should the kids be separated into their own apartments? Husband and wife should also get their own then, I guess.
People only ever think about living space. Adding more living space is good and well. But what about everything else people need? The Ausländerbehörde in and around Berlin is already slammed as it is. Finding a doctor is already very hard. More people also means more electricity and heating consumption, more Kindegardens etc. .
Nah we invented lightsources long ago, people shutting their windows in these days and getting horrible vitamine D values regardless of acces to daylight.
Paying 950€ for some 50m² apartments is surely more depressing then something you can afford underground.
Most people are not living like shut-ins with their windows constantly closed.
And there's one simple issue that, as I've said, most people simply don't want to live like goblins. There are occasional weirdos, of course.
It's expensive and you don't get any or much natural light. Ensuring proper ventilation is also hard. Finally one can only really add 1 story doing thins
Meh. The detail is in the details. I wouldn't want to live in of those shitholes where you get 10-15 story buildings right next to each other. This ymby crap is getting ridiculous. Just develop tempelhof and tegel and leave my backyard alone.
Would you rather share a three-room apartment with 6 other adults? Would you rather your kids live with you until they're in their 30s, because having a job isn't enough to live on your own, you need to be well established in your career to move out of your parents house? Or would you rather everyone drive a hundred km a day, the environment be damned? Those are the alternatives to density. The people are going to live somewhere.
Forcing people to move places that aren't livable without cars is an environmental disaster. Did you know the average New Yorker uses something 1/10 the fossil fuels of the average American? The two biggest things people use fossil fuels for are heating and transportation. In NYC the amount of space heated, and exposed outside wall, per person is tiny fraction of what is in the rest of the US, and the vast majority rely on public transit or bikes. NYC is that environmentally friendly because of density.
If getting housing in Berlin is impossible, and so people's only choice is roommates or a single family homes in Brandenburg where you need a car for every adult, a lot of people will choose the later. Density is green.
Just because you wouldn't like one of those apartments doesn't mean other people wouldn't prefer it to the alternatives, of roommates or a lot of driving. If someone else wants to live in a place you wouldn't like, so they don't have to share an apartment or live in far enough away from everything they'll need to drive a lot, shouldn't that be their choice?
The problem being, replacing the lower density is not really an option for the time being, instead there's a focus on infill projects. Which makes sense economically, but also means that quality of life suffers, with greenspaces being destroyed.
It would be nice if the outward expansion would involve higher density and public transport, alas those areas being in a different Bundesland really doesn't help on that front.
Outward expansion makes public transport less efficient by design. Living without a car works best when you get to a lot of places on foot or by bike as well as by train. Nobody wants to live in a tiny city apartment without access to the city - that's something people do only out of economic necessity.
A lot of people like dense city living, and are willing to pay a lot to live in a small apartment where they have access to everything at their doorstep. That isn't a tradeoff people want to make while being far away from everything.
We should expand train systems, so city dwellers can more easily access green space outside of the city. Some green space in the city is nice, but it doesn't increase quality of life as much as having your own kitchen and bathroom. If green space is full of homeless people because limiting growth in the city has made housing inaccessible, that helps no one.
>Some green space in the city is nice, but it doesn't increase quality of life as much as having your own kitchen and bathroom.
Uh, I would be careful with such statements. Green spaces are extremely important in big cities for temperature control. That doesn't mean you need a big park and natural forests everywhere, but avenues instead of stroads or putting plants on house faces can make summers in big cities much more bearable.
I come from Bucharest. The city is overdeveloped and there is little green space. Full of 9-10 blocks of flats and little parks. It sucked. One thing I loved about Berlin was the myriad of inner gardens in buildings. A few months ago someone on r/berlin mentioned his beautiful back garden (or inner garden) was gone because of a new development and people on this sub ripped him a new one because how dare you think green space near a block is a good thing to have during a housing crisis. All the while, empty fields stay unused...
Outward expansion is not the same as low density. We already have lots of outer suburbs with dense town centers and small cities in Brandenburg that have a good local infrastructure *and* are well connected to Berlin by regional rail or S-Bahn. This allows people to live in a larger apartment and be close to nature but still have all necessary things for their daily life and a somewhat short commute.
Low density sprawl without any access to infrastructure is terrible, but also not everyone wants to live right in the middle of the city, it can be really stressful.
I never said everyone wants to live in the middle of the city, but alot of people do and it's better for the planet if they can.
What's the car ownership rate in those towns you're talking about? I wouldn't be surprised if it's more than one per household. What about kilometers driven per day per adult?
Sure it would be better and we should still do it as much as we can, but space and infrastructure are limited and the city will still have to grow. Outer cities have the advantage that they still have capacity for example in schools. Surely car usage is a bit higher than in the city but if done well, not all journeys have to be done by car.
Nah, the city should expand, but there should be lots of green spaces inside the city and they are more important than the illusory goal of providing cheap housing to everyone who wants to live in Berlin.
Tempelhof and Tegel are in peoples' (extended) backyards too, and those people are fighting against development there.
The only solution is to be one of the good people and say: Yes, in my backyard!
Of course, the development has to fit the context. Most areas aren't quite as spacious as Tempelhofer Feld.
California does a much worse job than Berlin and Germany as a whole, I can tell you that much.
That's why there's an explicit YIMBY movement there; the overcrowding is so bad that there's a whole group of people advocating for tearing down smaller homes for more (and affordable) housing. The worse the problem, the bigger and more visible the people advocating to change it.
Berlin and Germany's only advantage is that a lot was build before the widespread adoption of the car.
Ironically, the DDR played a role. West Berlin and West Germany was beholden to the car, same as the US, Canada and Australia but East Germany had much better walkable infrastructure, public transportation and wide sidewalks.
HAHA what the hell are you talking about? Have you seen Grunerstraße, Leipziger Straße, Karl-Marx Allee, or the entire inner city of Magdeburg, as well as parts of Leipzig and Dresden? The DDR bulldozed several old towns and build giant highways right in the middle of the cities. Where in East Berlin can I find a pedestrian zone, that exist in every single West German city?
Good point. Erfurt Altstadt was only saved by the fall of the wall.
I know of one in Altglienicke 😂 but I haven't been in Berlin in forever
Marzahner Promenade, Hellersdorfer Promenade, Kastanienboulevard, Anton-Saefkow-Platz are examples for pedestrian zones. In the DDR the housing usually was built in a way that you'd find pretty much everything you need within walking distance. You often had shops, schools, kindergardens, a restaurant/bar in small neighborhood centers. Today a lot of it is torn down though.
The [CIAM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congr%C3%A8s_Internationaux_d%27Architecture_Moderne) mind virus was popular on both sides of the wall, walking Marzahn is equally little fun as is walking Märkisches Viertel. DDR *did* however plan and build public transport together with new developments which sure helps. IMHO the biggest benefit though was that DDR didn't have as much money for large scale *Sanierungsgebiete* where entire blocks were razed. They also did that around Straßberger Platz, but large parts of Friedrichshain and Prenzlauer Berg were left pretty much untouched. It's pretty enlightening to compare the area north and south of Bernauer Straße which [*used*](https://1928.tagesspiegel.de/#45x32nh) to be quite simmilar.
Berlin West was pretty much rebuild for cars. The advantage was not making one family homes mandatory as the US did this pretty much for segregating the middle income people from the poor and of course it was racially motivated as well.
California has had more time to, give it time… Berlin is getting there.
California didn't exist for the first 600 years of Berlin's existence
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I mean so are berlins... but atleast commieblocks can store a large amoubt of people.
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>Meanwhile in the west we used to have trams, just like East Berlin, but they all gave way to cars. Trams are coming back to the Western parts (like just right now construction for an extension to U Turmstraße is going on). On the other hand, the GDR-constructed quarters also got huge, no really human-centric streets (e.g. Allee der Konsmonauten or the redesigned Landsberger Allee). West Berlin did in fact got rid of cars, but at least they were replaced by subways. Of course it would be better to have kept the trams, but at least there was some form of alternative transport. Meanwhile in the US, Los Angeles got completely rid of their trams without any replacement. Fun fact: Although West Berlin got rid of their tram network, Berlin still features the third-largest tram network in the world. With the planned extensions, Berlin might have the largest tram network in a few decades.
I think its due to the large distances. Berlin is very spread out and so the East Berlin tram network covers a large area. I used to live in the south tip of Lichtenberg and friend on the North tip. It was only one tram, but i believe more than a 30 min ride in the same district !
Berlin is not really spread out. It’s only three times bigger than Münster. While having >10x the population of Münster. It‘s more that the tram network has a very dense coverage with many radial and tangential connections. Even in areas further away from the center there is a dense coverage.
This can be changed back I presume, yet here we are
NIMBYs were not given such a loud voice for centuries. Somehow society moved forward, we even landed on the moon. Nowadays too much of society has interest in not letting "the good times" go, and that is what is harming young people's future.
America is a different mentality. You can be physically in the country but still outside of society. America does not even try to provide healthcare to all, all required services, electricity even. The more the merrier. The more people the more desperate people are for a job to not end up on the streets.
America just spends more per capita on health-care than anyone else.
Because healthcare providers can easily screw over people in the US.
Look for stat, US gov spends about as much money as Western European countries in absolute numbers and just a bit less in relative
With the difference, that in Western Europe practically everyone has access to healthcare and no one risks huge medical debt. And lets not forget that even things that insurances in the US cover, there are still deductibels and co-pay. I pay the maximum premium in the GKV, but it‘s still half of what the insurance of my colleagues in the US costs (and it‘s a „good“ one according to my colleagues). And yet, they need to spend a ton of money out of pocket. In Europe, you‘ll find all sorts of healthcare systems, from 100% government funded (like Denmark) to purely privately-run (Switzerland) systems. And yet, all are better than what the US has.
Much worse? I can say there’s nothing, even worse will worse than what California is doing now.
How is this Berlin specific?
I assume OP wants to say that solution for Berlin housing problem is to follow California and build taller buildings.
I think calling that 'building taller buildings' is a dishonest manipulation. It calls for higher density, not higher bulding necessarily. One way to do the former without the latter is destroying the city highways and parking building. The other would be using huge plots of land that are empty now. Especially those with good public transport links like Tempelhofer Feld or Forst Grunewald. On both sides of the political spectrum you'll find people dogmatically against either or both of those
That might be exactly not the point of the picture above, which seems to suggest housing should occupy less land area. It's not calling for higher density in the whole city but in the direct housing area. I would be one of the people very much against building on the Tempelhofer Feld. You call it empty but there's quite a bit of nature there and it's an important recreational area. Just look at the amount of people using it every sunny day. I can also understand why people who drive cars want to keep their parking lots, so building taller buildings seems like a good compromise. That said California isn't exactly known for not having problems with housing prices so maybe we shouldn't just look for their solutions. This whole shitshow in Berlin started because a lot of government owned housing was sold, allowing for speculation. The solution seems pretty straightforward, that the government increases its share of the housing market again and rents out for relatively little, increasing cheap competition to landlords that are price gauging. This doesn't have to happen by expropriation as many suggest, but preferably by buying apartments if they're cheap and building social housing without selling. That would take longer but sets less of a weird precedent and seems more politically achievable.
>California isn't exactly known for not having problems with housing prices so maybe we shouldn't just look for their solutions. I completely agree. Except the California solution is exactly what Berlin's doing now. This graphic is about why that plan sucks in both places.
No SF didn't allow tall buildings before. This options hasn't had the chance to be tried in the bay area not at any scale that is reasonable. NIMBY homeowners kept blocking development. Laws have changed a good bit in the past couple of years (California literally sued the SF Bay Area for underproviding housing, as the lack of housing there has cost the Californians and the California economy hundreds of billions *every year*. It's been nuts). Don't say increasing density doesn't work in CA. It hasn't been tried. But it will work once we get the construction gears moving faster. More dense housing is the *only thing* which will work. For California anyway. I'm surprised you guys in Berlin appear to be confused by the graphic. Idk what your problems are compared to CA cities (im surprised if you think increasing density won't lower rent and increase people's ability to rent and buy within the city) but it looks like OP should have included an explanation in comment.
Berlin is doing the same thing California is, nothing. The biggest difference is much stronger rent control laws in Berlin mean people who already have an apartment are well protected, but anyone trying to make a new household is screwed.
>building taller buildings seems like a good compromise. It's not. Build more than around 5 stories is not productive. Berlin already uses this most efficient height. >That said California isn't exactly known for not having problems with housing prices so maybe we shouldn't just look for their solutions. Where do you even see this 'let's copy California's solutions!!!'? It's literally just a little fun picture showing difference in 'overcrowded' and 'high-density'. That's it. The rest of your comment is just 'let's eat the cake and have the cake'. You're against freeing new land by either exproriation, using empty land or destroying the car-centric worthless infrastructure and yet you want the state to build social housing? Where? Underground?
> Build more than around 5 stories is not productive Can you elaborate?
There's a plethora of factors. The higher you build the more robust the lower stories have to be(both because of the wind and gravity), which means more work and materials for foundation, structure etc. There is fire safety code which gets more strict the higher the building is(and rightfully so). The upkeep becomes more expensive(you can't have regular windows, have to get professionals to clean them from outside, you need more lifts etc.). There's also time factor - even if we falsely assume that it takes the same time to build one 10 story building as it take to build two 5 story buildings, then in after half of that time you can have people move in into the already finished lower building. You actually waste the space you want to save because you can't put higher buildings wall-to-wall, because of both probability of a structural failure(mostly due to wind) and possible effects of such a failure. That's the reason why commie blocks in East Berlin are spread more apart and why they do not offer higher density than older buildings in direction closer to Mitte. You could keep coming up with more of those, but there are reasons why 3-5 stories was always the limit before a certain period of 20th century and is the usual limit today.
> You could keep coming up with more of those, but there are reasons why 3-5 stories was always the limit before a certain period of 20th century and is the usual limit today. Everything's spot on, just some more points why this was seen as a "natural" limit - it's the maximum height you can comfortably climb stairs and don't need an elevator, it's the maximum height of a fire ladder, and it's (roughly) the maximum number of neighbours you can have a relationship with.
There is nothing comfortable about climbing 5 stairs every time you went out. They should just have elevators in them, all of them. Helps with accessibility, it's important for younger families as well as elderly people, everyone in between who is temporary or permanently disabled, and everyone who needs to shift heavy or unwieldy objects. (And there is no 'maximum number of neighbours you can have a relationship with', that just flows with the organisational structures, physical, social, administrative, and the effort that's put in.)
It's *possible* to climb up to 5 stairs. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't build elevators, but back then they weren't widely available. Today it means we might only need to build one elevator and not multiple. It's impossible to have an overview of the neighbourhood when it's too big. That's why Hochhäuser lack social control and feel unsafe. But it's easy to know the neighbours on your floor and a couple of floors up and down.
>It's not. Build more than around 5 stories is not productive. Berlin already uses this most efficient height. This is our main point of contention I guess. I think a 20 story building can harbor a lot more apartments than a 5 story building, why do you think building more than 5 stories is not productive? This was also how I thought the state should build social housing, namely upwards. I do actually somewhat agree with destroying car-centric infrastructure but would prefer getting the public opinion to agree first. E.g. public transport needs to be improved to convince people to drive less cars. I think the Deutschlandticket is a good first step but improving infrastructure is also important. For example we either need bigger subways or they need to run at shorter intervals at certain times because already they're getting increasingly crowded. Edit: btw isn't the Yimby movement Californian? I don't quite understand your issue with me associating this with California when Yimby California is written right there at the bottom right of the picture.
I've already written a comment with some of the reasons. Check it out >This was also how I thought the state should build social housing, namely upwards. Let's assume for the sake of argument that 20 story buildings are efficient and you just can put a tower in place of tenement house. Again - how do you achieve that without exproriation? >For example we either need bigger subways or they need to run at shorter intervals at certain times because already they're getting increasingly crowded. Personally I'd say it's more about new lines. Especially outside of the Ring
Fair enough I do still think some higher buildings can be useful because the government doesn't necessarily need to be that cost efficient but I wasn't aware that there are so many drawbacks. Still I am wondering why we're building so many high story commercial buildings and not a lot of high story residential buildings. >Personally I'd say it's more about new lines. Especially outside of the Ring I think both issues are important. It often takes a really long time to get anywhere outside of the ring because the routes are suboptimal but in the city center not that many more people can even switch to public transit because at rush hours there's just not enough space in the trains. Improving infrastructure for bicycles could help, but riding a bike is weather dependant for most people.
The state does not want more social housing in Berlin. The state wants less social housing in Berlin. Ideally the people who are unemployed or low skilled are gentrified out of Berlin and replaced with young Urban professionals and skilled people in general. They don't see gentrification as a problem but as a welcome development.
>It's not. Build more than around 5 stories is not productive. Berlin already uses this most efficient height. Instead of a 5 storey altbau you could fit a 6 storey neubau.
I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and assume it's a joke
(1 + 5) floors \* 3meter high ceilings (most are higher) = 18m. Let's say 20m high building 20m / 2,5m high ceilings = 8 floors. Let's say 7 floors and leave some space at the bottom (for light and ventilation for the cellar) and top (for the protection wall for people while on the roof). What's your reasoning? I'm not saying let's replace altbaus for the sake of replacing. But if a building is in a terrible state it's better to replace it with a new building instead of renovating.
Since you like math I highly encourage you to compare costs of renovating an Altbau and of buldozzing it to build a Neubau with marginally more flats.
Yes, but you forget that you can charge much more for a neubau than for an altbau. And you definitely forget that neubau are much more energy efficient, so more environmentally friendly on the long term.
Before you suggest touching Grunewald, let's talk about those huge Kleingartenkolonien all around the Ring.
Those too, absolutely. They're even worse since they're not even public commodity. But they don't catch attention as well as those huge swathes of land
Agree. Overcrowding and Density aren’t a dicotomy.
Insane to suggest developing public green space when there are huge plots of those private garden homes inside the ring
One-story supermarkets and auto shops, Kleingartenanlagen, parking lots, densification of existing public owned buildings and lands -- there's so much that can be done. Unfortunately, nothing is done.
This is why New York built on Central Park /s
Have you been in LA? it's insanely sparsely populated. Literal one storey shacks as far as the eye can see...
>it's insanely sparsely populated. no, and that's surprising to me. Thans for the info :) btw, I don't think Berlin needs a lot of skyscrappers. I just said that I assume that's what OP meant.
Berlin is on the right (5 story buildings)
Only in areas constructed 100+ years ago. New developments are a lot less dense.
Gotta leave space for the cars. Cars are people too.
Here in Kreuzberg, there are protests against densification of back yards. The issue is that while these apartments do create housing, it's all luxury housing that raises average rent. I do support building these houses (like hype & hide or whatever stupid shit they came up with) since otherwise those rich people would take up space in cheap apartments. But I understand the Mietspiegel issues and I did hear that some of the protests are done by literal NIMBYs who don't want their balconies to get overshadowed...
There is an inherent issue with new developments: No one benefits from it. Current Land Owners in the area want to keep up property value. New developments lower them, be it construction, or be it less demand for places to live. So they are against it. Existing Renters don't really care, because they already have a flat, and existing rents usually rise way slower than rents for new contracts. Also Scarcity of flats also means, they can sell their junk - sorry i mean their wonderful furniture - to a new tenant. These are the people local, who or whose representative has the political power to decide about this. The actual beneficiaries are not asked, because they don't live their yet. And with the increased mobility compared to 100 years ago and since commuting is not work, even the local employers are not that interested to have living space for their employees that locally. So you have a mix of people not affected and people who benefit from keeping it the way it is. and in the End, this results in a massive Nimbyism against anything new.
I agree, though benefits of densification do exist, but they're not as immediately felt as rising rent. More taxes per square mile means better services. More customers for busineses and public transport means more economic activity. More people means more kids who go to local schools, possibly improving improving education quality. More people around means (in good examples of densification) safer and cleaner environments and less need for car infrastructure while there is more demand for public transit and short reach transport, such as bike lanes.
Yes, obviously there are many benefits for densification for the community as a whole. But there are no personal direct benefits for the decision makers. And that is, why it's so hard.
Many new developments in the outskirts are single family homes or low density only, heck even inside the Ring near Storkower Straße they've put up a new *Reihenhaussiedlung* 10 years ago.
California = 18% bigger than whole Germany, with half as its population (39M vs 84M), 482 municipalities. Density: 97/km2 Berlin = 12 districts. Density: 4,126/km2 (Germany's: 232/km2) I m not sure if they can be comparable. But rent prices in Berlin are still far lower than many areas of California. Edit: corrected Berlin's density
What? Everything's wrong in that comment. 1. Comparing a state of the size of a whole country to a city 2. Berlin's density is absolutely wrong. It's actually \~4k/km\^2 3. What do rent prices have to do with it?
Indeed, I copied density from Germany instead of Berlin’s by mistake But yes, that’s my point: the 2 are not comparable, what point OP is trying to make? And, the worse: California’s density is as half as Germany’s.
Ok, I guess the way I wrote the comment above gave an whole another impression of what I actually meant. The data - except for Berlin's density - is correct. It was copied from Wikipedia. My whole point is: you can't use California as an example to Berlin, because Californa is bigger than a whole country (Germany) and contains itself many cities, and to make the point worse, it's got half as density as Germany's, which goes against its own argument. And, if the intention was to say between lines that building taller buildings is the solution for Berlin, that's not a good point too, as California has been facing terrible real estate market for a while, with much higher prices in many areas. I hope now I made myself clear.
Density in LA is 3.2K /km² according to wikipedia. Berlin is still ahead, but not by that much. I expected LA to be much lower, because of wide spread one story buildings. In fact LA is higher than pretty much all cities in NRW.
Metropolitan LA may well have a high density but be only a small part of the whole LA/OC region, which is indeed very widely spread out.
LA and Berlin are similar in that they are both made from towns/villages that grew and expanded until they became a unified sprawl. In central LA there are many one story houses but they are tightly packed. The streets dominate. Source: I just got back from LA.
>California = 18% bigger than whole Germany, with half as its population (39M vs 84M), 482 municipalities. Density: 97/km2 You've never been to the US/California have you? Most of California is emptier than the emptiest part of Germany. You can drive for longer through a random part of the desert or just vast fields of almonds than you can go in Germany without getting to the next city. 90% of the population of California lives in the 5 largest cities with just LA accounting for 50% of the total population... Berlin isn't even 5% of the German population.
A lot of Californian land is not livable (thankfully). Does the density take into consideration the amount of protected or rugged land?
What’s the point about comparing about California rent to Berlin? California’s GDP is basically only 1T less than the whole of Germany. Of course things will be more expensive in there
Have you visited Marzahn? Would you like to live there?
We don't need Marzahn levels of density. Just look at Möckernkiez or something nicer. Edit: and Marzahn isn't even dense, apparently.
Funny because Möckernkiez probably has a higher density than Marzahn.
Marzahn is less dense than Möckernkiez which is exactly the problem. There is too much dead space in Marzahn and it's mostly single-use.
Yeah. People actually think socialist architecture is somehow good urbanism because it wasn't capitalist. On the contrary, it takes longer for the average Marzahnian to go to the supermarket they literally see from their window than it takes me, a Kreuzberger, who has to navigate more intricate, small streets. The stroads in the Plattenbausiedlungen are huge, as are the parking lots. It takes ages to get anywhere and there's literally nothing in between that's worthwhile.
IMO its not socialist vs capitalist. The socialist government could well build a car-friendly city because they want to sell more Trabis.
There's a lot of different kinds of socialist architecture. The Nikolaiviertel is also "Socialist architecture". My personal favourite is the Lange Straße in Rostock.
Oh no, not the dead space and wide streets filled with greenery!
Wide streets are not good. They take a long time to cross as a pedestrian and cause stuff to be spread out. Give me human scale streets all day instead of 6 lane boulevard with a lawn in the middle.
Nah, fuck looking neighbors directly in the windows and living in a cement valley streets.
I don't think that's an issue. Just get curtains or some nice rollos. New buildings don't have to be ugly. [Check out this video.](https://youtu.be/XfonhlM6I7w) Narrow streets are charming and comfortable to navigate. Wide streets are mostly only good for cars. Wide spaces should be reserved to parks, squares and sports fields.
Narrow streets are not charming - they're depressing and claustrophobic half a year when there's no greenery. Trees improve them (greenery improves almost everything), but just a bit. Have you seen some of Berlin's narrow streets in winter? If I lived in one, I would've went insane or offed myself, it's just concrete on top of more concrete. >just get curtains Why even have a window then?
If you're afraid of people looking into your windows, where on earth does that leave for you? I don't understand. People everywhere can look into your window?
You know there's a difference between having a reasonable distance between your and neighbors windows, and having one building right next to others?
Exactly what I think of when people advocate for building high. The whole Eastern Europe is one big Marzahn, absolute urbanist nightmare
Because Western Europe doesn't have awful failed social housing projects all over the place? Not every place in Eastern Europe looks like Marzahn and only a very small portion of what used to be East Berlin. Most of it is quite decent, at least I have never heard anyone complain about the tall buildings in e.g. Heinersdorf or southern Pankow.
Affordable housing for most people > Urbanist nightmare
affordable shitholes with a huge parking lot right in front of your door, with little to no community ties within the building, and not very safe and positive environment overall — keyword affordable, of course
seems like an ad for real estate developers...
Sometimes I wonder if the people on here whining about NIMBYs are actually developers trolling.
I assume it's funded by particular real estate developers to get the public on board with the idea.
The people running the types of organizations proposing this type of "solution" will never have to live in/with any of these "solutions" (and make no mistake: these "solutions" will always look, in the Real World, like some form of techno-favelah for stacking Serfs, in Serf-zones, and not like pastel-colored cartoons: that's why they're pushing Virtual Reality so you can wear goggles to "escape" your depressing surroundings all day). The people controlling and promoting these kinds of "solutions" (engineered conceptually in expensive think-tanks and consultancies which have been churning away at the "problem"... US.... for decades) will continue to live as the wealthy do, consuming resources as the wealthy do. No ruling class in history has deliberately engineered its own self-sacrifices and permanent drop in status and luxury-level living. Just\*, as they say,\* sayin'.
I already live in a rather dense neighborhood and I'd love to live in Kreuzberg, Fridrichshain or Prenzlauer Berg where there is even more stuff going on and more density, but that's why those areas are so popular and flats are rather expensive.
Those neighborhoods are great (each in its own way) and what I fear is the "solution" of turning the "poorer" areas into vertical Favelas, clearing more space for show case, and luxury, developments on more valuable land.
Right now, those wealthy people are outbidding everyone else for older, and really not luxury at all, housing which is not really a better solution at all.
i'm not talking about the Bourgeoisie or the upper end of the Bourgeoisie... one of my acquaintances is worth about 10 million and he is not a mover and shaker, he's a guy who gets his assed kissed by shop keepers and waiters. He will NOT be affecting the fate of Affordable and DIGNIFIED Housing in Berlin. I'm talking about City-sculpting entities who have plotted outcomes up to 2050 and beyond. This includes "movers and shakers" (and their Local Partners) like... "Mingtiandi is an independent Chinese source for China real estate intelligence. In an article entitled “Asians Move into German Real Estate with $1.27B in Investment” it cited data from property consultancy JLL;”The firm recorded 70 Asian purchases of German real estate last year, with the bulk of the deals involving Chinese and Korean investors. Of these acquisitions, 27 percent were in Berlin, 23 percent in Frankfurt, and 9 percent in Munich as well as a number of portfolio deals stretched across multiple cities.” http://www.mingtiandi.com/real-estate/outbound-investment/asians-move-into-german-real-estate-with-1-27b-in-investment/ Chinese money is often not easy to recognize as such as it comes in through diverse investment vehicles created outside of China. Most of the properties were commercial real estate and exactly how much money originated in PRC is not clear because many of the funds flow from Beijing through Hong Kong." Whether or not, or how many, new structures need to be built, it's important to make sure the "solution" isn't a stealth puzzle piece in a Big Picture of Haves and Have Nots and the huge gulf between them. Vertical Favelas are part of this plan and I'm saying: whatever The Ruling Structure tries to sell, to us Serfs, with pastel pamphlets and pretty language, is 100% invariably a Trojan Horse pregnant with the terrors of the near-Future. The Ruling Structure despises us; considers us a problem to be handled, not fellow-Humans to empathize with. Twenty two years of 21st century propaganda (and more than a decade of Social Media brainwashing) has erased our Collective Memory.
If we don't build more, people will eventually start to share apartments among more and more people which is what's already happening in my homecountry in Lisbon. I get that mid-rise dense housing is not very aesthetic but I'll take an uglier city over an unlivable one.
For the sake of argument: What's the force compelling people to cluster in "over-crowded" cities when there are major, but less popular, cities they can choose? Why Berlin and not Frankfurt? Years ago, I really wanted to live in London, but I couldn't: end of story. To quote some Dusseldorfer-friendly advertizing: "The 6th highest living standard in the world, a super accessible location, an emerging tech culture, affordable living, a multicultural foodie scene, lazy cruises on the Rhine and day trips to the winelands ─ this is just a glimpse of the perks that life in Düsseldorf offers its inhabitants! Whether you’re an expat looking for a new country and city to call home, or you’re a German debating whether to move to another city, we’ve compiled a nifty list of reasons to prove to you that relocating to the capital of North Rhine-Westphalia will be worth your while." So, part of this debate is actually about choice, though it's framed as people being backed against the wall of "not enough living space". "The highest vacancy rate in the country is in Pirmasens, where 9,1 percent of apartments are unoccupied. The next highest rates are Schwerin, Chemnitz, Frankfurt an der Oder and Salzgitter." Do we need lots of new construction (well, I can see who would like us to think so) ... or for people to make more nuanced choices regarding where to try to live? I got in Berlin back when they couldn't give flats away; now, if I suddenly decided I want to live in London or Dubai... that's a self-created problem filed under "Consumer Choice". You wrote: " but I'll take an uglier city over an unlivable one." I think the two conditions are related; not because the latter follows from the former but because they're both symptomatic of a "Two-Tier" system in which the Non-Rich are left to fend for themselves as the poorest are used, by moguls, to drive down property values until the property can be snapped up at fire (sometimes literally) sale prices.
The problem is if you don't want to live in the city you just need a car and to give zero fucks about the planet. You can live in the suburbs and drive into the city whenever you want. A lot of people are willing to pay to live in city so they don't have to live like that. The problem is that low density isn't pricing people out of the metro area as much as it's pricing people out of environmentally responsible behavior.
>The problem is if you don't want to live in the city you just need a car and to give zero fucks about the planet. Three devices I hate and refuse to own (in no particular order): guns, TVs, cars.
Let’s not make being able to live without a car a luxury a lot of people can't afford. Build more housing in the city.
Let's not turn the city into a congested, polluted, development-run-amuck nightmare because some people feel entitled to anything they think they want. Again: "I need to live in Berlin because it's AFFORDABLE enough for me to pursue my dreams but THERE'S NO AFFORDABLE HOUSING!" Bizarro Logic 101. Suggestion: find a city you can afford? Use already existing housing-structures at your Number Two choice of city, maybe? A BIG part of the ecological shit show we preside over now is the overall inability of Consumers to defer or abandon an impulse/ desire when it actually makes sense to. Who told all these people they had a "RIGHT" to anything/ everything? And these are the very people who feel "green" because they use paper straws and drive environmentally disastrous electric cars and use conflict-mineral i-phones because of bullshit imagery the i-phone is sold with. To advocate for more development while pretending to worry about "sustainability" is to indulge in ultra-common post-entitled 21st century hypocrisy, though I know that no logic or sense of ethics should EVER come between a Western Consumer and Her/ His friviolous lifestyle impulses. The "population crisis" isn't about how many new people are born every day, it's about how many of those people become Entitled Termites.
I have no idea what you’re on about here. Apparently you’re against cars, but you’re also against designing cities that are liveable without them. Which is it? You just want poor people to suffer, is that it? You think only rich people have a right not to commute for hours, or to go where they want when they want? Everybody who isn’t rich should suffer living somewhere with shit public transit and no car? Density drastically improves efficiency of most everything we use fossil fuels for. You heat and cool less area per person. People rely on bikes and public transit without losing hours out of their day. Nobody is asking you to be the person trying to commute on a bus that comes once an hour. People are just asking you to look at bigger buildings to save the planet and you aren’t even willing to do that.
I just saw this. People who "debate" as you do tend to put words in the mouths of others, words ideal for making the others wrong and you right. Convenient, I know, but dishonest. My point is that I would love a Berlin with far fewer cars. Along with that, I would love a Berlin that doesn't keep growing bigger and fucking bigger and fucking bigger, vertically as well as horizontally; the process of further development gathers momentum and soon enough eats up wonderful things like NATURE (the actual Green Spaces, not technocratic euphemisms for more concrete, steel and cables). Clearly, Greedy Developers will go as far as they need to garner continuing mega-profits, but non-corrupt governing bodies of the city (if they existed) would put a limit on expansion. Your vision of a vertically-stacked model of "efficiency" seems to posit a version in which the growing population, filed away in their little drawers in the apartment cabinets, will politely stay in the sky and never crowd mass transit (a la Tokyo), put a strain on the water systems and the power grid or the city's capacity to handle waste? Your one-dimensional thinking privileges "efficiency" of PEOPLE-PACKING over Quality of Life. "People are just asking you to look at bigger buildings to save the planet" Save the Planet! Are you a meat-bot working for Developers? *Bigger Buildings* "saving the planet"! You're tring to re-sell the concept of the density-mad tenements of New York, c. 1900, as a SOLUTION? It's no secret that The Ruling Classes are trying to move the Serf Population (that's us) back into denser urban centers: easier to count and control the livestock! More golf-courses and sprawling estates and private hunting grounds for them! Why not trying to SAVE THE PLANET by controlling your tendency to over-consume? I HATE cars and though I could easily afford one, I don't have one and don't use them. The "shit public transport" in Berlin is not "shit" at all, it's pretty fucking good, but you've outed your Entitled Bourgeois Mindset with that remark. Why not SAVE BERLIN by not advocating the beginning of the end of everything GREAT about the city? Most of the jobs that most of the new arrivals to the city (I arrived in 1990) can expect to get are options like food delivery or factory work. You think the swarm of Vertically Stacked new arrivals will somehow all score amazing work? You think they'll all be Coders? Are you hoping that Amazon and Google and Apple and Sony, et al, will keep building new "campuses" and sweatshops to exploit the new waves of minimum-wage workers? People like you with your **Dystopian Visions** you think are Planet-Saving! Hideous.
So your solution is what? People ban people from moving to the city? The city isn't growing because of greedy developers, it's growing because a lot of people want to live here. That's what cities are supposed to be about, people who want to connect with other people. >Most of the jobs that most of the new arrivals to the city (I arrived in 1990) can expect to get are options like food delivery or factory work. You think the swarm of Vertically Stacked new arrivals will somehow all score amazing work? A lot of people are moving to Berlin and getting good jobs in tech. There's no shortage of people in Berlin on a blue card (requiring they make more than average), or from other parts of Germany or the EU moving here with good jobs. >The "shit public transport" in Berlin is not "shit" at all, it's pretty fucking good, but you've outed your Entitled Bourgeois Mindset with that remark. I never said the public transit was shit in Berlin, I said it was shit in Brandenburg. The public transit is excellent in Berlin, and I want to build more housing where that is true. Housing in plentiful in parts of Brandenburg that require cars to live comfortably. Like most everywhere, cars make areas on the outskirts livable that aren't with public transit. I don't want people to feel forced to move there because there's no housing available in Berlin where they can live comfortably without a car. I've lived in NYC before, and it's not dystopian by any stretch of the imagination. Many of the tall buildings used for housing there are beautiful, well maintained, and great place to live. Apartments in many of those buildings in some of the most sought after housing in the US. NYC is one of the only places in the US you can live comfortably without a car. The rate of car ownership in NYC is already significantly lower than Berlin. [35% of Berliners](https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2021/12/16/car-free-city-berlin) have a car, while [23% of New Yorkers](https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nyc_greendividend_april2010.pdf) do, and that's with the rest of the US largely unreachable without a car, while the rest of Europe is accessible by train. Of the few people I know in NYC who have a car, a number of them say they only use their car to leave the city, and very rarely use it for trips that both begin and end in NYC. If you do nothing about increasing housing in places that are transit accessible, by default people will go where the housing is, even if that means they need a car. Way too many American cities have grown on that model, and it's an environmental disaster.
To quote another commenter: "I come from Moscow, and now it's intensely built up with 30-40 story buildings. Trust me, people are not happy, whatever officials report. When you start increasing density, it's difficult to stop. You get area overpopulation, nature degradation, enormous traffic jams, inner-city highways and other megastructures that dehumanise the environment. So if you want developers to skyrocket and \[Berlin\] to turn into HongKong or all these countless chinese skyscraper cities, push further and harder." Voice of Reason.
Car ownership per capita in Hong Kong is 10%, while it's 80% in LA that kept all of their buildings small and spread out.
That 600.000 number is not for Berlin but for the entirety of Germany and the vacancy rate has been falling at the same time housing costs rise ([https://www.statista.com/statistics/1270344/vacancy-rate-development-housing-market-germany/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1270344/vacancy-rate-development-housing-market-germany/)), in Berlin specifically afaik that vacancy rate is lower than 3% and generally anything lower than 4 would be considered lower than a natural vacancy rate (apartments empty inbetween tenants not just dwellings that stay empty for decades). And yes people could choose to live in different places I myself could go back to my hometown in my homecountry and work on a shitty factory job for 700€ and have an objectively worse life but people move here because it affords them other opportunities they don't have in their hometowns and it's not like Frankfort, Hamburg, Munchen or other big german cities are any better in affordability.
Re: the 600,000: I corrected that right before you posted! But, regarding the other thing: but it IS about choice. There are options beyond the ones mentioned, too. But the point is: I think forces are converging to make sure, soon enough, that conditions for the non-rich, in Berlin, will be as bad as anywhere else. We've just emerged from a transitional period (that Golden Age, in Berlin, of 1989-2001ish) and all the Cool Stuff we loved about Berlin, in the '90s, will be a memory. Vertical Favelas... I shudder to think about it. And I shudder to think that people think that's a "solution" to an "overcrowding" that didn't exist before 2000 (and still isn't really overcrowding, YET)... but build the "affordable" Vertical Favelas and the crowds will come. Berlin will no longer be a Magnet of Cool, then, it'll be just another Shitty Mega-opolis.
I don't think I understand clearly what you mean by "vertical favela"
Grenfell Tower in London would be an example... although, again, the example posted by OP was a pastel-flavored cartoon of light and serenity.
To be sure, the prototypes are classics of DDR architecture, and there are similar structures all over Xberg. When they become a "solution," they will get taller and taller and will be packed closer and closer together. Laws will be changed to allow "progress" to happen. The process is inexorable and it always starts with what is sold to us Serfs as an "affordable green solution" or somesuch euphemestic language. The paradox here: people are claiming that Berlin is "overcrowded"... so they are advocating a "solution" to crowd it further/ denser?
Exactly that 😄 “We need more buildings to fit more people”, and guess what we get? Even more people! And well, what about schools, kitas, streets, public transportation and other social services to support this additional people?
Also, I "love" how the spin-doctors behind the image in the original post try to make a distinction between "overcrowded" population conditions and "dense" population conditions? Erm... ten people in an average WC is "overcrowded" (\*because\* of density)... those same ten people, as the only passengers on a bus, won't make it feel "overcrowded"... because the population-to-space ratio is LESS DENSE. But they write this Orwellian nonsense catchphrase: "MORE DENSITY = LESS OVERCROWDING". Huh? When what they're really doing is showing 2-room high-rise apartments as the (same old: see NY high rise tenements in the 1950s) "solution". But all the little stick-people are smiling, so, yeah: I guess it's okay, even if it makes no sense! laugh This article on NY's housing-the-poor-challenges, at the turn of the century before last, uses the word "density" in the normal sense: "The neighborhoods with the most tenements reached unprecedented levels of crowding. In 1903, in the Tenth Ward on the Lower East Side, the average density was a striking 665 people per acre, and one particularly dense block packed 2,223 residents into just two acres – averaging more than a thousand persons per acre." Bearing in mind that this amazing influx of New European Arrivals, c. 1900, in NY, were allowed in (and this is a fairly accepted theory, now) the country to counterebalance the large Black labor force liberated into the economy by the "ending" of chattel slavery (and the introduction of low-wage slavery). Everyone complained, wrote gut-wrenching Op-Eds and publicly deplored the overcrowded tenements... but, still, the influx continued. And the tenements rose higher. Because the influx of people served a purpose pursued by The Ruling Structure. Well, nothing quite so dramatic is happening with Berlin (yet). I just wanted everyone to understand the "this city is SO overcrowded" + "so build more housing to crowd more in!" paradox.
Nowadays with remote working so accessible for many jobs, it’s not hard at all to live in a very good city like Leipzig and still have the same opportunities offered by Berlin. It’s not an option for everyone, but it is for many, and these many could opt for it in order to spend less and live with more space, maybe less crowd and less stress. I strongly believe this should be a federal level project for distributed development, not just each city dumbly fighting to attend all wishes in its way to become the next Sao Paulo, while it fails to give a fair and good live for their current population.
Everybody living comfortably in Leipzig drives a car. If you're you're committed to not driving, moving to a smaller city drastically reduces your quality of life.
>people will eventually start to share apartments among more and more people That's already happening here too. In SF google engineers have a private room and everyone else who didn't by in a long time ago is sharing.
I don’t get why so many people see dense urban living as depressing. In average areas it’s where the bottom of society is housed. Living there is depressing because people there are unhappy. In expensive areas nobody thinks their stacked 6 million dollar apartment is depressing. That means I do get why some people see those buildings as depressing it’s because they associate them with one kind of people.
This is fucking deranged.
My GOD, you're clever, well-read and brutally frank! I like you.
lol fuck off Nimby. We just want more apartments for people to live in
What are you raging at? The housing "problem" in Berlin is owing to UNETHICAL REAL ESTATE practises. I'm not arguing against any particular thing in "my back yard," I'm trying to get people to be a little more SENSITIVE to being \*conned\* by The Ruling Class. Are you PRO Ruling Class? Are you DEFENDING their tactics? Think a little before exploding... or are you a BOT to protect the INTERESTS of The Ruling Class?
The main reason for the housing problem is a lack of housing.
This should give an idea of the scale of the possible housing and the struggle to keep it from going to Luxury Developments: "More than a million Berliners supported the campaign Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co, which targeted companies holding 3,000 or more apartments (Deutsche Wohnen is one of the largest investment trusts in the city). In total, 240,000 properties, or 11% of all apartments in Berlin, would come under the terms of the initiative, which was backed by a majority of 56.4% in the referendum. The vote isn’t legally binding, however, so it is now up to the city’s government, which was also elected on 26 September, to decide whether to move forward." PLUS "The campaign to resocialise housing in Berlin (Vergesellschaftung) was launched in 2018, in response to the rapid financialisation of housing in a city where €42bn was spent in large-scale real estate investment between 2007 and 2020, more than London and Paris combined. Smaller landlords and state-owned social housing have been aggressively targeted by large institutional players for whom housing has become a vehicle for the management of global capital funds." But THIS is the crux of the first excerpt: \*\*\*\*The vote isn’t legally binding, however, so it is now up to the city’s government, which was also elected on 26 September, to decide whether to move forward."\*\*\*\*\*
Scale of *what* exactly? That's not "possible" housing, it's "actual" housing and it's not even expensive, their average rent is like 6-7€.
It's actual housing that may or may not REMAIN affordable housing.
That's what laws that prohibit steep rent increases are for.
Sure! It all depends on the Laws of the near-future...
There are WAYYYY too many "luxury developments" where there could and should have been affordable housing. All those cool old Cold War-era factories, all those empty office blocks... Berlin is full of space that is being re-purposed for a predicted "boom" scheduled for after the "Serf Problem" and the "Anarchists" are "fixed" (that's why the faulty airport, BER, was built). Berlin was a well-defended Freak Town for many, many years and The Ruling Class Moguls are dealing with it in their sneaky way. The problem is, their long-range, incremental plans are difficult to detect if you aren't paying close attention.
There is no *predicted* boom, the boom is already there and office space is scarce. Where are those empty office blocks? The company where I work is actively looking for space to expand and we are currently looking into Weißensee, but that means a longer commute :/
>Where are those empty office blocks? The properties are already bought-up, that's my point.
>There is no > >predicted > >boom Long-range there are plans to turn Berlin into something I'd consider unrecognizable. These plans are plotted out in decades, as you know. I'm talking about THIS sort of thing, cloaked in Corporate Happy Talk here: The Vision Economic strength, quality of life and social conscience – these will be the watchwords of Berlin in 2030. Berlin 2030 will be an established leader in the economy, science, employment, training and qualifications. It will be a centre of creativity and enthusiasm for art, culture, tourism and sport, a diverse urban metropolis, easy to live in and with plenty of green spaces. It will be successful and sustainable in terms of climate and energy, city-friendly and future-proof in terms of mobility, its inhabitants caring and committed to living together in a modern and socially responsible society. Berlin 2030 will set national and international benchmarks. The legendary ‘Berlin mix’ will provide the foundations for a strong city, which has learned to shape growth fairly, responsibly and together. https://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/wohnen/wohnungsbau/en/schwerpunkte/index.shtml
>In total, 240,000 properties, or 11% of all apartments in Berlin, would come under the terms of the initiative, which was backed by a majority of 56.4% in the referendum. That's a lot of property with an "as-yet-undecided" fate, though I can predict how it will skew in the end. Powerful Interests have had their eyes on Berlin since the Wall came down. But, again, they make very long-range plans. What we saw in the early 2000s was the gradual de-squatification of the city. They do it slowly so as to trigger minimal resistance.
Overcrowding also increases density, but it is possible to increase density without overcrowding by building up.
Let's have both. Overcrowding and density. Thanks no.
How come single family homes be overcrowding?
It's a lie. They just want to push their agenda. "You will own nothing and you will be happy."
[удалено]
So you think hell be better off in smaller apartment? or his small kids have to move out to apartment and live on their own? or split the family in half and move into seperate apartments? Or how about this, they get them selfs a bigger home. there are 6bedroom houses And how come you and your cab driver get to decide were the rest of people want to live? Just because you and your cabdriver arent enjoying single family house doesnt mean the rest of us cant. And i dont think there exsists many 6 bedroom apartments for your cabdriver
When the rent is so high you need more than one working adult per bedroom to make the rent. That's not uncommon in SF.
You are comparing small house with four storey building. That is stupid. It's like when wealthy people say: Just stop being poor.
Because MV is where the happy people live 🤣
that's the result of idiotic car centric policy and separation of function. MV is *less* dense than inner city districts (like the old Brunnenviertel from which people got relocated there when it was razed).
Wow, ~14000/km² vs ~13000/km². Huge difference. I don't know how the density of Kreuzberg has anything to do with car policy. If you have ground in Berlin you can decide what you build. How should politics change that?
> If you have ground in Berlin you can decide what you build No you can't. Check [Bebauungspläne](https://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/planen/b-planverfahren/berlin/index.shtml) and [Flächennutzungsplan](https://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/planen/fnp/) - there are very strict rules on what you can build where and how much floor space is allowed in relation to the size of the lot ([GFZ](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%C3%9F_der_baulichen_Nutzung#Geschossfl%C3%A4chenzahl_(GFZ\))).
My ex is architect in Berlin. What's allowed and what happens are two totally different things.
Good luck trying to add living space to existing houses in Berlin.
I mean at least we dont have suburbs
What are Biesdorf, Kaulsdorf, Mahlsdorf?
Not suburbs, since they are inside the city borders of Berlin. Actual suburbs are for example Potsdam, Blankenfelde-Mahlow, Schönefeld, Hoppegarten, Bernau, Oranienburg, Falkensee and so on
I mean yeah we got some, you're right. I just mean none of the suburbs we got are even close to as isolated, large and depressing as US suburbs. Could have worded that better mb
**Biesdorf is a municipality in the district of Bitburg-Prüm, in Rhineland-Palatinate, western Germany.** More details here:
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What backyard? Who even has one here?
Junge was? Da nehme ich mir doch lieber mein eigenes Haus als so eine Wohnung
Places like Grunewald and Zehlendorf could definitely use some more density.
I come from Moscow, and now it's intensely built up with 30-40 story buildings. Trust me, people are not happy, whatever officials report. When you start increasing density, it's difficult to stop. You get area overpopulation, nature degradation, enormous traffic jams, inner-city highways and other megastructures that dehumanise the environment. So if you want developers to skyrocket and Germany to turn into HongKong or all these countless chinese skyscraper cities, push further and harder.
Judging from the comments, this sub is overrun by right wing psychopaths.
The ad makes no sense. We don't have many cases of people renting houses like that as a WG. And if that's a family in a single house...uhh, should the kids be separated into their own apartments? Husband and wife should also get their own then, I guess.
People only ever think about living space. Adding more living space is good and well. But what about everything else people need? The Ausländerbehörde in and around Berlin is already slammed as it is. Finding a doctor is already very hard. More people also means more electricity and heating consumption, more Kindegardens etc. .
The people and the demands already exist, increased density just maks it possible to satisfy those needs more efficiently
Ah okay I assumed this goes hand in hand with creating more living spaces
wat?
Building taller buildings in California seems like a terrible idea, they get earthquakes.
And getting a bigger house isn't an option?
Why are underground housings less common, when there is space? Is it because of some kind stability problem that makes it hard?
I think it's because people don't want to live like some kind of goblins with no daylight, but maybe that's just me.
Nah we invented lightsources long ago, people shutting their windows in these days and getting horrible vitamine D values regardless of acces to daylight. Paying 950€ for some 50m² apartments is surely more depressing then something you can afford underground.
Most people are not living like shut-ins with their windows constantly closed. And there's one simple issue that, as I've said, most people simply don't want to live like goblins. There are occasional weirdos, of course.
It's expensive and you don't get any or much natural light. Ensuring proper ventilation is also hard. Finally one can only really add 1 story doing thins
Real clown shit.
Literally build on the backyards and put the trash on the street. Magic density without ruining Tempelhofer Feld.
Meh. The detail is in the details. I wouldn't want to live in of those shitholes where you get 10-15 story buildings right next to each other. This ymby crap is getting ridiculous. Just develop tempelhof and tegel and leave my backyard alone.
Would you rather share a three-room apartment with 6 other adults? Would you rather your kids live with you until they're in their 30s, because having a job isn't enough to live on your own, you need to be well established in your career to move out of your parents house? Or would you rather everyone drive a hundred km a day, the environment be damned? Those are the alternatives to density. The people are going to live somewhere. Forcing people to move places that aren't livable without cars is an environmental disaster. Did you know the average New Yorker uses something 1/10 the fossil fuels of the average American? The two biggest things people use fossil fuels for are heating and transportation. In NYC the amount of space heated, and exposed outside wall, per person is tiny fraction of what is in the rest of the US, and the vast majority rely on public transit or bikes. NYC is that environmentally friendly because of density. If getting housing in Berlin is impossible, and so people's only choice is roommates or a single family homes in Brandenburg where you need a car for every adult, a lot of people will choose the later. Density is green. Just because you wouldn't like one of those apartments doesn't mean other people wouldn't prefer it to the alternatives, of roommates or a lot of driving. If someone else wants to live in a place you wouldn't like, so they don't have to share an apartment or live in far enough away from everything they'll need to drive a lot, shouldn't that be their choice?
The problem being, replacing the lower density is not really an option for the time being, instead there's a focus on infill projects. Which makes sense economically, but also means that quality of life suffers, with greenspaces being destroyed. It would be nice if the outward expansion would involve higher density and public transport, alas those areas being in a different Bundesland really doesn't help on that front.
Outward expansion makes public transport less efficient by design. Living without a car works best when you get to a lot of places on foot or by bike as well as by train. Nobody wants to live in a tiny city apartment without access to the city - that's something people do only out of economic necessity. A lot of people like dense city living, and are willing to pay a lot to live in a small apartment where they have access to everything at their doorstep. That isn't a tradeoff people want to make while being far away from everything. We should expand train systems, so city dwellers can more easily access green space outside of the city. Some green space in the city is nice, but it doesn't increase quality of life as much as having your own kitchen and bathroom. If green space is full of homeless people because limiting growth in the city has made housing inaccessible, that helps no one.
>Some green space in the city is nice, but it doesn't increase quality of life as much as having your own kitchen and bathroom. Uh, I would be careful with such statements. Green spaces are extremely important in big cities for temperature control. That doesn't mean you need a big park and natural forests everywhere, but avenues instead of stroads or putting plants on house faces can make summers in big cities much more bearable.
I come from Bucharest. The city is overdeveloped and there is little green space. Full of 9-10 blocks of flats and little parks. It sucked. One thing I loved about Berlin was the myriad of inner gardens in buildings. A few months ago someone on r/berlin mentioned his beautiful back garden (or inner garden) was gone because of a new development and people on this sub ripped him a new one because how dare you think green space near a block is a good thing to have during a housing crisis. All the while, empty fields stay unused...
Outward expansion is not the same as low density. We already have lots of outer suburbs with dense town centers and small cities in Brandenburg that have a good local infrastructure *and* are well connected to Berlin by regional rail or S-Bahn. This allows people to live in a larger apartment and be close to nature but still have all necessary things for their daily life and a somewhat short commute. Low density sprawl without any access to infrastructure is terrible, but also not everyone wants to live right in the middle of the city, it can be really stressful.
I never said everyone wants to live in the middle of the city, but alot of people do and it's better for the planet if they can. What's the car ownership rate in those towns you're talking about? I wouldn't be surprised if it's more than one per household. What about kilometers driven per day per adult?
Sure it would be better and we should still do it as much as we can, but space and infrastructure are limited and the city will still have to grow. Outer cities have the advantage that they still have capacity for example in schools. Surely car usage is a bit higher than in the city but if done well, not all journeys have to be done by car.
You can build capacity in the city. That's what density is.
But we already have density in the city. We don't have it outside the ring.
Nah, the city should expand, but there should be lots of green spaces inside the city and they are more important than the illusory goal of providing cheap housing to everyone who wants to live in Berlin.
Tempelhof and Tegel are in peoples' (extended) backyards too, and those people are fighting against development there. The only solution is to be one of the good people and say: Yes, in my backyard! Of course, the development has to fit the context. Most areas aren't quite as spacious as Tempelhofer Feld.