Pushing the Urban Frontier: Temporary Uses of Space, City Marketing, and the Creative City Discourse in 2000S Berlin

Abstract

ABSTRACT:In spite of the amount of urban development that followed the Fall of the Wall, Berlin’s urban landscape has remained filled with a large amount of “voids” and disused sites, which have gradually been occupied by various individuals, groups, or entrepreneurs for “temporary” or “interim” uses (such as urban beach bars). This paper analyzes how, and why, such temporary uses of space have been harnessed in recent economic and urban development policies and in the official city marketing discourse in Berlin post-2000, in the context of the discursive and policy shift toward the promotion of Berlin as a “creative city.” The gradual process of enlistment of new forms of cultural and social expression by policy-makers and real estate developers for urban development and place marketing purposes has put pressure on the very existence and experimental nature of “temporary uses” and “interim spaces.” These have consequently been going through various trajectories of displacement, transformation, commodification, resistance, or disappearance, and in particular cases have become the focus of intense local conflicts.