The Urban Planning Context in Berlin: a City Twice Unique

Abstract

Over the last decade Berlin has come to be known as ‘Europe’s largest construction site’, and as ‘the construction site of German reunification’. There is no denying that since the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 the city has experienced dramatic economic, political and social changes, as well as a radical upheaval in urban planning and design for which there are few parallels. The urban development and restructuring processes in particular have demanded a great deal from Berlin’s citizens, as construction projects are not just visible for all but are physically experienced and encountered on a daily basis. The rebuilding of urban spaces, daily adjustments to traffic circulation patterns, and the great volume of demolition and new construction all add up to influence what is known in German as a Heimat feeling, or a person’s identification with a particular place. Thus it comes as no surprise in Berlin that all of the planning and development of the last decade has led — and continues to lead — to intensive and very controversial debates. This has to do with nothing less than the bringing together of two cities with a combined population of over 3 million, who were shaped by their extremely different urban development paradigms of the previous fifty years.1