Berlin: Legacies of Division and Problems of Unification

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by  Ellger C.

Berlin: Legacies of Division and Problems of Unification
Author(s): Christof Ellger
Source: The Geographical Journal, Vol. 158, No. 1 (Mar., 1992), pp. 40-46
Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3060015 .
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The GeographicaJlo urnal,V ol. 158, No. 1, March 1992, pp. 40-46
Berlin: of division and of
legacies problems
unification
CHRISTOF ELLGER
Institutf iir GeographischWe issenschaftenF, reie UniversitdtB erlin, Grunewaldstrass3e5 , D-1000 Berlin 41
This paper was acceptedforp ublicationi n October1 991
The city of Berlin has developed over a period of 800 years. It provides a unique
location for the study of urban processes under widely different geopolitical and
economic conditions. This paper traces the history of urban development in Berlin
from 1871 onwards, including the period of division of the city following the Second
World War. It examines the spatial consequences of this division, and considers both
the similarities and differences in urban development that occurred in East and West
Berlin. The need for and problems of economic restructuring following unification are
highlighted, as well as the necessity for planning Berlin's growth. It is suggested that
as a latecomer in global metropolitan development, the city could benefit from the
experiences of other cities.
KEYW ORDS:G ermany, Berlin, urban development, economic restructuring, unification.
BERLIN IS THE PLACE WHERE German gamation of 1920. At this time, the old urban
unification becomes most apparent. It is here nucleus of Berlin together with its predominantly
that the two unequal halves meet, or rather working-class suburbs to the east (in Prenzlauer
clash, most strongly within the territory of one city, Berg and Friedrichshain), north and west (Wedding
after forced separation for over 40 years. and Moabit, also including the open space of the
In this situation, Berlin is an excellent 'test case' Tiergarten), as well as to the south (Tempelhofer
for urban geography. After nearly 800 years of Vorstadt, which then became the district of Kreuz-
urban development, including its 40 years of divided berg) was amalgamated with seven other cities
existence in the midst of a divided Europe, and now (Spandau, Charlottenburg, Schoneberg, Wilmers-
in the second year of the rapid merger or rather dorf, Neuk6lln, Lichtenberg and Kopenick), 59
take-over of the former socialist capital by the West, villages and 27 manorial estates to form a city of 883
it serves as a unique location for the observation of square kilometres and about 3-9 million inhabitants
urban processes under specific geopolitical and - to become the third largest city in the world, after
socio-economic conditions. New York and London.
Intensive research into the current situation of It is important to note that with the division of
Berlin is, however, rather difficult. In the first place, the city of Berlin into West Berlin (comprising the
the collection, management and publication of French, British and American sectors) and East
statistical data in East Germany have differed Berlin, in the late 1940s, the two parts received in
considerably from the West, so that the material, if many ways similar shares of the urban fabric. In
it is available at all, is not compatible. Moreover, the particular, the large belt of pre-World War One
evolving economic, demographic and spatial struc- housing, the most typical facet of the built-up
ture of the city and its region as well as behaviour structure of the city, called the 'Wilhelminian belt'
patterns of the population which can be observed after the two emperors of that era, was divided
and mapped at present are in many respects between the two halves of the city. It consists of
ephemeral. Finally, in a situation like the one Berlin densely built blocks of usually 5-storey tenement
is experiencing at the moment, experts are asked houses, which often stretch over several courtyards.
not to analyse, but rather to advise: strategies, A hundred years ago, in the enormous boom of
rather than analyses, are required. Berlin, imperial capital of Germany since Bismarck's
unification of 1871, this speculative building
The aftermatho f the war: Berlin divided brought fortunes for landowners, agencies, devel-
The Berlin the Allies dealt with after the Second opers and landlords and meant often abominable
World War was the result of the grand amal- housing conditions for the working-class population,
0016-7398/92/0001-0040/$00.20/0 ? 1992 The Royal Geographical Society
BERLIN: DIVISION AND UNIFICATION 41
which flowed into the city between 1850 and 1900. other airfields of Gatow and Tegel (now the most
The population more than quadrupled, from important of the Berlin airports), West Berlin, was
450000 to 2 million, reaching nearly 4 million in assigned the main upper-class residential areas both
1920. The Wilhelminian tenement housing is within and beyond the Wilhelminian belt, including
particularly densely built and poorly equipped in one of the largest suburban detached villa areas in
the traditional working-class areas of Moabit, Europe. West Berlin also encompassed the Tier-
Wedding, Schoneberg, eastern Kreuzberg or garten park, the zoo and the shopping and
Neukolln (West Berlin), and Prenzlauer Berg and entertainment areas on Kurfiirstendamm and
Friedrichshain (East Berlin); here, the challenge for Tauentzienstrasse, which had become fashionable
urban renewal has always been greatest. It is rather long before the war and the division of the city.
better equipped in the traditionally more fashion-
able middle-class areas of Charlottenburg or Spatial consequenceosf the division
Wilmersdorf, i.e. the 'West end' parts of nineteenth- The division, needless to say, resulted in the isolation
century Berlin. of West Berlin from the Eastern city centre and the
Beyond the 'Wilhelminian belt', urban devel- surrounding Brandenburg hinterland, as well as in
opment in the inter-war years was largely dominated the duplication of various basic urban functions.
by communal and cooperative housing schemes Most of the top-ranking functional units had been
under a social-democratic city government. This in the city core in the East: the Berlin Town Hall
type of government survived again both in East and (Rotes Rathaus), university, state library, the main
West Berlin. These residential premises, the older museums on 'museum island', administrative and
tenement housing, and the later 'socialist' (in the service areas. West Berlin had to develop them
East) or 'social' housing developments (in the anew: city government and parliament moved to
West), make Berlin a city of tenants. Less than ten the (district) town hall of Schoneberg; the Free
per cent of the population own the dwelling in University as well as the official museums were set
which they live. up in the south-western borough of Dahlem, then
The industrial districts too, were divided fairly already an established 'science site'. Near the Wall,
equally between East and West Berlin. They spread not far from the location of the old Philharmonie
along the waterways of the rivers Havel and Spree, concert hall, the new Philharmoniwe as built, forming
the Landwehr-Kanal running parallel to the Spree, the nucleus of the new West Berlin Kulturforum
and the Teltow-Kanal (in the southern districts), as close to Potsdamer Platz. Most important, however,
well as along the railway lines leading either radially is the fact that the' capitalist West Berlin had to
to the various stations formerly arranged around develop its own Central Business District, in the
the pre-industrial city core or forming the circle line area around the Zoo railway station, which became
of the 1870s. This circle line generally marks the the focal point of the inner urban transport network
edge of the Wilhelminian belt. of West Berlin. This development of tertiary
Finally, there were open spaces for leisure activities followed the pre-war tradition, when
purposes; parks, forests and lakeside areas, in both department stores such as Kaufhaus des Westens
East and West Berlin, especially around Miiggelsee (department store of the West), theatres (including
in the East and Wannsee and Grunewald in the the communal opera house of Charlottenburg),
West. cinemas, and the numerous and famous cafes,
On the other hand, in some respects the dis- where the Berlin arts world met in the 1920s,
tribution of the pre-war urban structure between already formed a lively communication centre of
East and West was rather different. East Berlin the metropolis.
contained the district of Berlin-Mitte with the
historic town centre. (Note that the Brandenburg West Berlin- the capitaliste xclave
Gate used to be the entrance to the city from the After establishing the urban functions that had been
west!) While very few relics of medieval Berlin missing in its part of the city, West Berlin with its
survive, the important architectural heritage of the population of 2'2 millions learnt to live with its
'Frederician' Berlin of the eighteenth century, 'island' situation, especially after the four-powers'
especially along the main east-west axis of Unter agreements of 1971, when guarantees of links with
den Linden and around the Gendarmen-Markt, fell and access to and from the rest of West Germany
to the East. It is in this area too, centred on the were granted.
north-south axis of Friedrichstrasse, that the Cen- Integrated into the political and economic system
tral Business District of Berlin developed, at the turn of the Federal Republic of Germany and the West,
of the century, with shopping, entertainment, West Berlin functioned basically as an exclave of
administration, banking and many other service West Germany. This is indicated not only by the
functions. fact that the bulk of its trade was undertaken with
Apart from the old airport of Tempelhof and the Western Germany, but also that migration patterns
42 BERLIN:D IVISION AND UNIFICATION
Fig. 1. Berlin
were either in line with those of the whole of West for personnel to move to Berlin, to subsidize air
Germany (the influx of migrant labour from the travel and to promote urban renewal.
Mediterranean) or otherwise dominated by move- In this 'island', processes of urban development
ments between Western Germany and West Berlin. in West Berlin have been far from normal. Special
People have come to Berlin to study or to work, and consequences to be noted in particular are the
also to flee from military recruitment or a rural restricted suburbanization process and the latent
lifestyle to the alternative 'scene' which was to over-industrialization which was fuelled by the
develop in Kreuzberg and other 'forgotten' parts of federal aid.
Berlin; Berliners retired to (or at least had their There was, of course, no room for urban expansion
second homes in) rural areas in West Germany, a beyond the Wall in West Berlin. Despite some new
half-day journey through the corridor away from housing developments on the fringe of the city (the
Berlin. most important being Gropiusstadt in the southern
The exclave circumstances are also indicated in district of Neukolln, Markisches Viertel (MV) in
the financial aid from the federal government in the north and Falkenhagener Feld in Spandau to
Bonn, on which West Berlin has depended. In the the west) and, as a result of these new building
late 1980s 20 billion DM per year were given to schemes, some migration from the older inner-city
Berlin in order to support the city state's budget, to residential quarters to the outskirts, suburbanization
subsidize manufacturing production in the city and has been very restricted in West Berlin. Large parts
compensate for the transport costs to and from of the city centre had to be retained for residential
Berlin, to finance an eight per cent tax reduction for purposes. This was helped by the comparatively low
everybody employed in West Berlin - as an incentive pressure to provide land for tertiary activities.
BERLIN:D IVISION AND UNIFICATION 43
Policies protecting housing - including rent control, movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Even
which was only abolished in West Berlin just before if many projects have failed, a large number of
the fall of the Wall - have been indispensable. cooperatives, printers, publishers, newspapers and
West Berlin's industrial structure is also rather working groups in other crafts have made their way,
distorted, compared to any 'normal' city of its size. quite successfully, into the formal economy.
Subsidies for goods transported to and from Berlin Under the 'exclave-island' conditions, West
meant that largely low-skill mass production was Berlin could have developed its own adequate
greatly supported, for example, the production of transport system. Having virtually no hinterland
electrical goods, for which Berlin has always been commuters, but only inner-urban or long-distance
famous, but also special food industries such as transport, it would have been possible to base urban
tobacco and sweets. New premises have been transport largely on public means of transportation.
developed only to a small extent, modernization has Unfortunately, the policy in West Berlin has,
occurred mainly in the large pre-war manufacturing however, always been not to take away the beloved
districts. four-wheeled toys from the West Berliners - who
On the other hand, as early as the 1950s, most of already had to endure so many other hardships of
the company headquarters in West Berlin - such as location!
AEG or Siemens - left the city, because the location
was perceived as 'politically insecure'. These head- East Berlin- the socialist capital
quarters moved to other places in West Germany, The eastern part of Berlin has over the last 40 years
leaving the factories in West Berlin behind as consciously been developed as the capital city of the
externally controlled branch plants with little German Democratic Republic. As the adminis-
management, marketing, research and other service trative centre of a centralized state, it was in the best
functions. The notable exception is the pharma- position to gain financial and other resources, to
ceuticals firm Schering, which still controls its house the essential state functions and to increase its
world-wide operations from its centre in Wedding. population, very much disfavouring the rest of the
With only a few industrial headquarters located East German Republic. The preference given to
in West Berlin, and lacking a hinterland for services Berlin by the GDR state culminated in the 1980s
such as banking, insurance, advertising and consult- with the preparation of the 750th anniversary of
ancy, producer services have so far played only a Berlin in 1987, when all the administrative districts
minor role in the economic structure of West Berlin. (Bezirke) of the GDR were called upon to help with
In contrast, special public services are over- the building projects in Berlin.
represented in the city. The Berlin headquarters of As capital of the GDR, Berlin housed all
the German state pension fund (Bundesversicher- government institutions (apart from the defence
ungsanstalt fur Angestellte), of which every em- ministry in the small Brandenburg town of Straus-
ployee in Germany is a compulsory member, berg), the top party bureaucracy and a large
employs a workforce of over 15000. In addition, number of headquarters of the industrial conglomer-
there are the vast staffs of the educational, medical ates (Kombinate),a s well as embassies. Moreover, it
and public research and administration institutions served as the main centre for medicine (with the
located in Berlin. renowned Charite hospital), education (Humboldt-
In the retail trade and other consumer services, Universitat and most of the institutes of the
tourists in many respects made up for the lack of a Academy of Sciences) and media (especially broad-
hinterland. Undisturbed by 'greenfield' sites, the casting). Within East Germany, which between
inner-urban hierarchy of central places in retailing 1950 and 1989 experienced a decrease in its total
and other consumer services in West Berlin can population from 18-4 to 16-4 million, the capital city
serve as a text-book model. Beneath the top-ranking district of Berlin was the only district with a net
CBD on Kurfiirstendamm and Tauentzienstrasse, population increase (from 1-189 to 1-279 million), as
there are five retail centres of secondary rank (in a result of in-migration from the conurbations in
Charlottenburg, Steglitz, Neukolln, Wedding and Saxony (Halle-Leipzig and Dresden) and from
Spandau). rural areas in all parts of the country.
Neglected by commercial development, especially The restructuring of the urban core of Berlin
in services, which would have happened in any under the SED regime of the last 40 years has been
metropolis of more than two million inhabitants a combination of modern redevelopment, like that
in the West, large tracts of the city were left derelict in other Eastern European capitals, and historic
(e.g. the area of Potsdamer Platz near the Wall), or reconstruction of the Prussian heritage. The latter
served as niches for alternative experiments, for marks a fundamental change in the attitude of the
which - among other phenomena - the name of SED state towards German history and the per-
Kreuzberg has become a symbol. Their protagonists ceived position of the GDR in this tradition. In the
were the leaders (or later the heirs) of the students' 1950s, the huge Hohenzollern Palace in the city
44 BERLIN: DIVISION AND UNIFICATION
centre was blown up. In the 1970s careful refurbish- West Berlin, whereby under differing socio-econ-
ment of the architectural heritage began, for omic circumstances similar spatial consequences
example the mainly eighteenth-century Forum have resulted. The most important feature here is
Fridericianum( with arsenal, university, state opera, the containment of urban sprawl, both in West and
St Hedwig Cathedral and various other buildings) East Berlin. For West Berlin, there was of course the
and the Gendarmen-Markut,n der the name of Platz Wall beyond which no development was possible
derA kademie,w ith its twin churches on both sides of (though West Berlin did use the surrounding
the Schauspielhaus (theatre) built by the most hinterland for solid waste deposition and waste
important architect of the classicism epoch in Berlin, water management, a most problematic source of
Karl Friedrich Schinkel. The complete rebuilding hard currency for the GDR). In East Berlin, the
of the quarter around St Nicholai Church in a neo- building and planning policies, in combination with
medieval style, in a variation of the widely-used the lack of funds and building material for individual
prefabricated concrete panels, is another example. building, concentrated the suburbanization process
Earlier phases, such as the Stalin era architecture of in the large new suburbs in the north-east, although
the 1950s and the high-rise modernist development there has always been some commuting into East
of the 1960s and 1970s, are represented by Stalin- Berlin from areas outside, from as far away as
Allee (today still Karl-Marx-Allee) and by the Potsdam.
buildings around Alexanderplatz (including the The other, rather unexpected aspect of similarity
television tower) and in most of the remaining areas in urban processes lies in the conservation of the
of the city centre, lining the broad roads which filled industrial structure in East and West Berlin. In
with cars only after the borders were opened. West Berlin it was the system of financial aid for
Without the pressure of a capitalist land market industry that favoured mass production on a low-
and the tertiarization dynamics of the West, a high skill level, in parts more labour-intensive than
proportion of surface area in the very centre of elsewhere in West Germany. In East Berlin it was
Berlin has been given over to residential redevel- delayed modernization and rationalization in
opment, often combined with shopping facilities manufacturing which hampered structural change.
which, together with theatres, concert halls and Both processes resulted in a relative over-industrial-
museums, were to make East Berlin a showcase of ization of Berlin, which is also reflected in the small
the East (in some ways similar to the function of proportion of services, above all producer services,
West Berlin as the showcase of the West). There is in both halves of the city.
still a population of nearly 80000 in Berlin-Mitte,
and residential development is continuing. The Economicr estructurinign the unifiedc ity
population increase in East Berlin, however, could The present-day economic situation in Berlin reflects
not possibly be housed within the built-up area of the situation in the whole of Germany: booming
pre-war Berlin. There have been three large modern manufacturing and services in the West, collapsing
developments on the urban fringe, in Hohen- enterprises in the East. With the new hinterland in
sch6nhausen, Marzahn and Hellersdorf, which East Berlin and the surrounding Brandenburg,
together provide housing for over 450000 in- West Berlin's retail trade has shown a remarkable
habitants. Marzahn is the largest single housing increase in sales over the last 18 months. West
development in the whole of Germany. Berlin's manufacturing has also profited from the
In manufacturing, most production continued on unification. This is because East Germany (and
pre-war sites, producing the traditional goods of East Berlin) is currently used as a market and not as
Berlin industry such as machinery, cables, light a production region, given that there are con-
bulbs and beer, or new products which Berlin was siderable overcapacities in the West and that
to produce within the organized division of labour, Western (not only West German) marketing is
e.g. television sets. quicker and more efficient.
There are a number of reasons why investment in
East-West similaritiesi n urband evelopmen1t9 49-89 East German industry in general and East Berlin
The differing political, economic and social systems industry in particular is very low. The first is the
of East and West have of course made their impact enormous workload of the Treuhandt,h e state trustee
on urban development in the two halves of Berlin. holding company which has been set up to turn the
The most noteworthy aspect is the importance of public enterprises of the GDR state into workable
consumer services, mainly retailing, in the Western private companies, currently holding the largest
Central Business District around Kurfiirstendamm public property in the Western world. In many
and the minor role they have played in the centre of individual cases of enterprises, it is still not clear
East Berlin. who does actually own the property. The unification
More interesting, however, are the striking treaty has generally decided in favour of the former
similarities in urban development between East and owners (the principle being 'handing back comes
BERLIN:D IVISION AND UNIFICATION 45
before compensation'), i.e. in most cases those or the other of its presently-housed public institu-
whose businesses were expropriated by the SED tions. It still seems that, not only to placate Bonn,
regime. Exceptions are possible, but rarely applied. there will be a longer period of transition before
For management buy-outs, which the Treuhand Berlin will be established as the accepted location of
encourages, there are not sufficient numbers of political and administrative control in the united
capable managerial staff in East Germany, and Germany. However, a general relocation of German
Westerners are unwilling to migrate in the large company headquarters to Berlin cannot be ex-
numbers required. Often, the old Eastern man- pected. Parties, lobbying associations, pressure
agement elite has been either politically discredited groups as well as embassies, however, will set up
or intimidated by the 'culture shock' experienced offices in Berlin and swell the elite service workforce
after the Wall fell. in the city.
After the currency switch, in June 1990, the The role of acting capital of Germany will
Eastern companies lost most of their traditional certainly give rise to a major source of employment.
outlets in the Eastern European countries, which On the other hand, the still largely speculative
are incapable or unwilling to pay in hard currency. boom in office-based advanced services is threat-
As far as the West is concerned, the process of ening the existence of small-scale production and
economic take-over of the East German economy service distribution for the Berlin population. These
falls into a period of marked over-production. production and service industries have traditionally
Moreover, and completely in line with the capitalist existed side by side with housing in the districts of
logic of economics, Western investors wait for a the Wilhelminian belt (i.e. the typical 'Kreuzberg
further fall in prices; bankruptcy relics are cheaper mixture' of dwellings and workplaces). Particularly
than working companies. in Kreuzberg, bordering Berlin-Mitte, rents for
The strongest dynamics can currently be seen in shops and other commercial premises are being
the small-scale private sectors. Interestingly enough, raised by up to 600 per cent. In contrast to housing
it is not the spaciously laid out shopping streets and rent legislation and regulations such as those used in
precincts of the centre, but rather the nineteenth- Paris to stabilize commercial rents, there is at
century thoroughfares with their small private shops present no administrative means available in Berlin
and services, which at the moment show the most to stem the price explosion.
signs of modernization and change in the city.
In the long run, at least as far as employment is Planning Berlin's growth
concerned, Berlin will lose workplaces in manu- Partly in connection with the above-mentioned
facturing, thus catching up with de-industrialization 'push' factors in the central areas, Berlin is becoming
processes elsewhere in Western cities. Producers of a normal city in the sense that inhabitants and
rather unspecialized electrical goods, paper-ware or economic institutions are now looking for new
food, for instance, will be leaving the city for locations on the urban fringe particularly in the
suburban or rural locations or for locations in the sparsely populated Brandenburg hinterland, pre-
Third World; with increasing land prices their viously inaccessible to Berliners in the more affluent
space can be used much more profitably for office Western part. In the Berlin region, urban sprawl is
functions, i.e. by producer services. The prospects setting in again. The pressure for land by various
for re-industrialization on a high-technology level users is striking. Developers expect demand for
in Berlin are rather difficult, since other conur- housing, especially family homes, and they are only
bations in Germany, especially Munich and Stutt- too eager to provide it. In addition, there are
gart, are so far advanced in research, development production, service and leisure users that compete
and application in various fields, e.g. micro- for land. So far, applications for 40 golf courses and
electronics, biotechnology. In general, to find 27 Disneyland-type theme parks have been handed
employment for the manufacturing workforce will in to the planning authorities in Brandenburg.
continue to be a problem in Berlin. The danger for Berlin is that suburbanization of
Thus, the city bases its hopes for the future on the population will be, to a high degree, a socially
service employment. A rush for retail and office selective process. The more affluent young will
floorspace indicates that this will indeed constitute leave the old quarters of the Wilhelminian belt
a dynamic sector for the city, though much of the rather than the working-class population. It is the
current boom is over-heated and speculative. old or foreigners who will remain there. Segregation
Concerning service employment, the question over will be exacerbated by an inflow of poorer migrants
the capital of unified Germany is of course relevant. from the smaller cities and rural areas of north-east
As the German Parliament has now formally made Germany, where the whole region will go through a
Berlin the seat of government and parliament, the process of urbanization centred on Berlin with its
political institutions will move from Bonn to Berlin. 'Western' focal point. Moreover, it is expected that
In turn, Berlin will perhaps have to give away one with the opening up of the Eastern European
46 BERLIN: DIVISION AND UNIFICATION
countries, migration to Berlin will increase, tem- planning concept for the central area. Decisions
porarily or permanently. This, too, will contribute have to be made concerning the land along the
to a new form of proletariat in the city and increase former Wall and especially the derelict area around
existing problems with socially-polarized population Potsdamer Platz (now in the very centre of the city
patterns in the poorer areas of the Wilhelminian between the two competing Central Business Dis-
belt. The tradition of urban renewal in Berlin, tricts). Here Daimler-Benz and Sony Europe,
securely established and already celebrated in the among others, are pushing to gain building per-
1987 International Building Exhibition in West mission for enormous office developments.
Berlin, will possibly be able to keep the inner-city The discussions between experts and among the
quarters attractive for all sections of the population, general public suggest that any planning concept
if helped by housing policies protecting the tenants for Berlin will have to encompass the historical
and offering revenues for the owners at the same (mainly nineteenth century) evolution of the built-
time. In the massive new high-rise housing areas on up form and will be required to meet social as well
the periphery, especially in the north-east of Berlin, as ecological criteria.
however, it will be much more difficult to improve As a major European metropolis, Berlin was a
the building and infrastructure situation and still latecomer in the nineteenth century, thereby bene-
retain the rather heterogenous social mixture that fiting from the experience of other cities. Now, at
existed in GDR times. the end of the twentieth century, Berlin again
An agreement between Berlin and the surround- arrives late on the global metropolitan scene, at a
ing federal state of Brandenburg to coordinate time of new objectives in planning. Berlin has been
planning and development procedures in the Berlin a place where social and ecological considerations
region, and to set up a joint land-use plan is in urban planning have been discussed for a long
urgently needed. So far, the administrative reaction time, and the city can perhaps avoid the mistakes
to investment projects in the hinterland is rather that other cities have made. As many as possible of
piecemeal, uncoordinated and governed by com- the special characteristics of its 'abnormal' de-
petition rather than cooperation between local velopment should be preserved. With the potential
authorities. The situation is aggravated by the fact of its nineteenth-century urban lay-out, the variety
that the methods used by capital investors in buying of its multiple centres and the unique traces of its
land and obtaining planning permission are often history manifest in the built-up form, it can again
anything but respectable. become a fascinating and beautiful place worth
The development pressure and the investments living in.
needed to create employment also demand a
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Planungsgruppe Potsdam, 1990. Umweltschutz, 1990.
Muller, H. 1985 Berlin (West) und Berlin (Ost)-sozial- Werner, F. 1990 Ballungsraum Berlin. Raumstrukturen und
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