Berlin Housing Research Articles

‘Community is the One True Capital’: Ideologies of Urban Self-Build Groups in Anke Stelling’s Berlin Novels

Abstract Privately organized collective housing is currently included in agendas for sustainable urban development in a range of European cities as a resource-efficient form of housing that prevents isolation and contributes to social cohesion within urban communities. However, research has shown that the recent surge of different forms of private-collective housing in Berlin could be a driver of gentrification and segregation. This article aims to uncover potential causes of the discrepancies between the ideological, and at times utopian, motivations underpinning self-build housing projects in the former East Berlin district Prenzlauer Berg, and their actual outcomes. I do so by analysing the literary (counter) discourse on self-build groups developed in Anke Stelling’s novels Bodentiefe Fenster [Floor-Length Windows] (2015) and Schäfchen im Trockenen (2018, published in English translation as Higher Ground in 2021). I show that the realization of socially progressive, or even utopian, plans for urban private-collective housing prove difficult, and sometimes impossible, for the characters in the novels, due to the influence of other societal structures such as gender and class inequalities, urban segregation and gentrification, discrimination and the neoliberal logic of individual competition and consumption.

Different preferences, but the same approach: the practice of the sales comparison in the Berlin housing rental and sale market

Different preferences, but the same approach: the practice of the sales comparison in the Berlin housing rental and sale market

Figures of Misery: The Berlin Housing Survey (1901-1920) as an Epistemic Project

From 1901 until 1920, Albert Kohn, director of the Berlin insurance organization Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse, conducted a systematic housing survey of defective apartments. The work included statistics, reports, and photographs. I situate the project within the context of social surveys in the years around 1900. In the larger history of housing surveys, Kohn’s project was one of the first that amalgamated diverse media and data visualizations. The original publication exhibits a crucial connection between statistics, reports, and apartment photographs. I will show that both reports and photographs epistemically hinged on numerical data gained from a questionnaire. The assemblage of shocking figures in statistics, reports, and photographs was intended to make visible an epistemic object: the misery of the lower classes. Hence, Kohn’s depictions of urban misery did not depend on a specific form of representation, but rather on the consistency between descriptive registers.

Crisis mediated new discoveries, claims and encounters: Changing use and perception of residential greenery in multistory housing in Berlin, Germany

With the stay at home orders during the pandemic, the often semi-public green spaces of the residential environment, usually created during the building of the houses, became our literal spheres of experience. In our study, we explored use and perceptions of local greenery by residents after sixteen months of the COVID-19 crisis, using face to face questionnaires in eight socially disadvantaged neighborhoods of Berlin, all exposed to high loads of environmental stressors and belonging to four relevant building types of Central European cities. Residential greenery was highly appreciated by residents during COVID-19, and fostered a more active appropriation such as meeting neighbors to reduce the sense of loneliness, doing sports and co-creating refugia in challenging times (e.g. greened balconies). Having children or doing home office/schooling encouraged people to use the green in front of the door in more active ways, such as gardening or even during winter. A minor proportion of respondents reduced contacts mainly due to fear of infections, underlining the need to overcome those distances and to re-connect neighbors and living inside and outside the houses in a post-pandemic city. Our data prove the functionality of residential greenery as ‘social tissue’ or ‘social hubs’ of neighborhoods by fostering attachment to place and people and, at the same time, as healthy environment for practices such as enjoying nature and physical activity in fresh air.

How Much State and How Much Market? Comparing Social Housing in Berlin and Vienna

This article examines the effect of two different social housing systems on housing-market characteristics and affordability using a case study of Berlin and Vienna. Despite comparable framework conditions, both cities pursued very different social housing policies. While both cities are currently challenged by growing populations and rising house prices, we show that Vienna is more successful in providing affordable housing as it has created effective institutions to attract and retain private actors in this sector. In Berlin, in contrast, the current crisis reveals the lack of institutional capacity to actively pursue housing policy. We argue that different housing market outcomes can be attributed to fundamental differences in the organisation of social housing provision reflecting divergent state-market relations. While in Berlin social housing has been seen as a provisional measure to correct temporary market imbalances, Vienna’s continuous state participation in the housing market has created a framework of balanced rights and responsibilities for social and private actors to achieve social policy goals. Differences in funding arrangements and institutional embeddedness influence not only housing outcomes but also feedback on the state’s capacity to intervene successfully in housing markets.

Leicester School of Architecture Micro Living Unit Live Project 2019‐20

Abstract Leicester School of Art final year students have been working with AEDES Aedes Network Campus (ANCB) in Berlin for three years. Since 1980, AEDEs Architecture Forum has been exhibiting and publishing internationally acclaimed and pioneering architecture alongside its urban environment. AEDES was founded, as the product of a thoughts cess, to introduce contemporary architecture for public consideration. In August 2018, I discussed working within the area of housing particularly low-cost housing in Berlin, and more particularly as the State of Brandenburg was investing in 100,000 new dwelling for low to medium income families. As part of this process we decided to imagine a micro living unit which we would investigate as the first project of the year for our students as part of a Technology module that proceeds the major design project in the year. The unit could be based in Berlin or London.

Hans Scharoun’s ‘Dwelling Cells’ and the autonomy of architecture

This article traces a genealogy of three Berlin housing projects: Hans Scharoun’s housing estate Charlottenburg Nord (1956–1961); the Siedlung Siemensstadt (1929–1931), planned with Martin Wagner; the pre-modern reform block of Nonnendamm, designed by Johnson and Josef Feldhuber (1910–1912). Whilst for Scharoun the inversion of the figure of the perimeter block of Nonnendamm through the Zeilenbau organisation of Siemensstadt exemplifies modernism’s radical break from the past, it is the variegated form or Gestalt of Charlottenburg Nord that verifies the essential nature of a dwelling cell, or neighbourhood.By contrast, this paper argues that Scharoun’s dwelling cell is the result of a continuous trajectory of typological reasoning. Each of the key spatial components of Nonnendamm—the figure of the block, the façade, the ground and the void—are taken up, hyper-articulated and re-configured, all in the service of the coherence and differentiation of a segment of the urban population. This trajectory exemplifies how modern architecture’s impetus for experimentation is taken into the service of and propels the broader reflection across disciplines regarding how to house and group the urban population.

Do urban tourism hotspots affect Berlin housing rents?

PurposeThis study aims to analyze whether urban tourism affects Berlin housing rents. Urban tourism is of considerable economic importance for many urban destinations and has developed very strongly over the past few years. The prevailing view is that urban tourism triggers side-effects, which affect the urban housing markets through a lack of supply and increasing rents. Berlin represents Germany’s largest rental market and is particularly affected by growing urban tourism and increasing rents.Design/methodology/approachThe paper considers whether urban tourism hotspots affect Berlin’s housing rents, using two hedonic regression approaches, namely, conventional ordinary least squares (OLS) and generalized additive models (GAM). The regression models incorporate housing characteristics as well as several distance-based measures. The research considers tourist attractions, restaurants, hotels and holiday flats as constituents of tourism hotspots and is based on a spatial analysis using geographic information systems (GIS).FindingsThe results can be regarded as a preliminary indication that rents are, indeed, affected by urban tourism. Rents seem to be positively correlated with the touristic attractiveness of a particular location, even if it is very difficult to accurately measure the real quantity of the respective effects of the urban tourism amenities, as the various models show. GAM outperforms the results of OLS and seems to be more appropriate for spatial analysis of rents across a city.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, the paper provides the first empirical analysis of the effects of urban tourism hotspots on the Berlin housing market.

Private versus state-owned housing in Berlin: Changing provision of low-income households

Housing privatization in Germany was heavily pursued after the unification until the mid-2000s. Berlin, which once was the stronghold of state-owned housing in the early 1990s, became the center of housing privatization due to decisions of national and local policymakers. Compared to other European countries, the German (and Berlin) approach was characterized by en-bloc sales of huge portfolios and entire companies to yield-oriented Anglo-American investors. Until the mid-2000s, the critical discussion of the housing privatization highlighted a massive displacement of tenants with a low social status (hereafter referred to as low-income households) from the privatized stocks causing social segregation processes, associated with ownership. However, letting strategies of the new investors were aimed at the allocation of low-income households instead of displacing them. This development as well as a transformation of the remaining state-owned housing companies led to a change of the allocation of especially low-income tenants. In the light of these developments, the presented study examines the correlation of social and ownership structure in Berlin's neighborhoods and, thus, contributes to the ongoing debate of private and state-owned housing owners' influence on the tenant allocation in Berlin's neighborhoods. Unlike previous research, focusing on qualitative case studies, this study applies a statistical approach to reveal the increased relevance of low-income households in financial investors' housing stocks.

The market value of energy efficiency in buildings and the mode of tenure

Concerns about global warming and growing scarcity of fossil fuels require substantial changes in energy consumption patterns and energy systems, as targeted by many countries around the world. One key element to achieve such transformation is to increase energy efficiency of the housing stock. In this context, it is frequently argued that private investments are too low in the light of the potential energy cost savings. However, heterogeneous incentives to invest in energy efficiency, especially for owner-occupants and landlords, may serve as one explanation. This is particularly important for countries with a large rental sector, like Germany. Nevertheless, previous literature largely focuses on the payoffs owner-occupants receive, leaving out the rental market. This paper addresses this gap by comparing the capitalisation of energy efficiency in selling prices and rents, for both types of residences. For this purpose data from the Berlin housing market are analysed using hedonic regressions. The estimations reveal that energy efficiency is well capitalised in apartment prices and rents. The comparison of implicit prices and the net present value of energy cost savings/rents reveals that investors anticipate future energy and house price movements reasonably. However, in the rental segment, the value of future energy cost savings exceeds tenants’ implicit willingness to pay by a factor of 2.5. This can either be interpreted as a result of market power of tenants, uncertainty in the rental relationship or the ‘landlord–tenant dilemma’.

Misuse through short-term rentals on the Berlin housing market

Purpose Short-term rentals are mainly of small flats, which are offered to tourists. Currently, the providers of short-term rentals, in particular Airbnb (ABB), are being criticized in several German cities, on the grounds that shares of residential flats are being removed from the housing market, due to illegitimate misuse as tourist accommodation. Thus, the conventional urban housing markets are contending with a decline in housing supply and increasing rents. This paper aims to support these findings empirically. Design/methodology/approach The paper opted first for a spatial analysis with ArcGIS for ABB in Berlin. Second, different online data requests of periods of up to two months were used to analyze the extent of misuse with regard to the Zweckentfremdungsverbot (misuse prohibition law). Third, analysis of variance was used to analyze rental growth on the ABB markets. The data were collected in different approaches from the website of airbnb.com. Findings The paper provides evidence that 5,555 residential flats are presently being misused by ABB (0.30 per cent of the total housing stock in Berlin) and that many providers of entire flats have more than one offer simultaneously. Moreover, the paper provides the first entire-market overview of ABB in Berlin. It is evident that the ABB market is mainly located centrally and that only a few neighborhoods have large ABB markets. Rental growth is higher in the ABB markets which have a significant share of misused flats, than in the ABB markets which have insignificant shares of misused flats. Originality/value To the authors’ best knowledge, the paper provides the first empirical approach regarding misuse through short-term rentals on a housing market with an innovative design and first-hand data.

The Market Value of Energy Efficiency in Buildings and the Mode of Tenure

Concerns about global warming and growing scarcity of fossile fuels require substantial changes in energy consumption patterns and energy systems, as targeted by many countries around the world. One key element to achieve such transformation is to increase energy efficiency of the housing stock. In this context, it is frequently argued that private investments are too low in the light of the potential energy cost savings. However, heterogenous incentives to invest in energy efficiency, particularly for owner-occupants and landlords, may serve as one explanation. This is particularly important for countries with a large rental sector, like Germany. Nevertheless, previous literature largely focuses on the pay offs owner-occupants receive, leaving out the rental market. This paper addresses this gap by comparing the capitalization of energy efficiency in selling prices (rents) for both types of residences. For this purpose data from the Berlin housing market are analyzed in hedonic regressions. The estimations reveal that energy efficiency is well capitalized in apartment prices and rents. The comparison of implicit prices and the net present value of energy cost savings/rents reveals that investors anticipate future energy and house price movements reasonably. However, in the rental segment, the value of future energy cost savings exceeds tenants' implicit willingness to pay by factor 2.98. This can either be interpreted as a result of market power of tenants, uncertainty in the rental relationship, or the "landlord-tenant dilemma."

Translations in Architecture

In a recently discovered photograph of German architect Bruno Taut's retrospective exhibition at the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts, which opened on 4 June 1938, Taut in-exile stands with Erica Taut and his assistant Şinasi Lugal in front of a display (see Figure 1). What interests me in this image is not so much the frontal figures who posed for it as the documentary value of the exhibit in the background, the photographs inside the photograph. These images display Taut's Siedlungen (residential settlements/collective housing projects), designed and constructed as part of the Berlin Housing Program (1924–33) just before Taut was exiled from Germany due to the rise of National Socialism. After stays in Russia and Japan, Taut moved to Turkey, where he became head of the Architecture Department at the Istanbul Academy. Through a seminar and a studio he taught on Siedlung, he participated in a translation of the idea of collective housing that would shape the discursive space and practice of architecture in Turkey for decades to come. Most of the images in the exhibition were taken by the now-famous photographer Arthur Köster. The exhibit bears witness to the fact that Turkish architects were exposed not only to the influential Siedlungen of the Weimar period in Germany but also to their soon-to-be canonical photographs earlier than most of their colleagues around the world.

Option Value Created and Destroyed by the Big Bang in the Berlin Housing Market, 1978-2007

This paper adds the option substantially renovate or rebuild to a standard hedonic regression model. It shows that the unrealized renovation potential can be measured and included as an additional hedonic variable. A new dataset for West Berlin suggests that the events surrounding the fall of the Wall in 1989 and the return of the federal government to Berlin in 1992 produced a boom and then a prolonged decline in the housing market. This paper demonstrates that, when the housing market is booming (declining), the value of the renovation option can add (subtract) significantly to growth in house value. Change in option value accounted for about 17.3 % of the change in house value from about 1985 until the peak of the boom. But, option value played a much bigger role in the decline: the elimination of option value after 1994 accounted for about 53.6 % of the decline from 1994-2007, and most of this occurred abruptly towards the beginning of the period. Moreover, our data suggest that a hedonic model omitting option value can produce coefficient estimates that differ by as much as 40% from those with option value included, and the direction of the differences is predicted by real option theory.

Re-establishing a capital city

Dr Stimmann, an Engineer and Architect , Assistant Secretary for Planning at the Ministry of Urban Development, Environmental Protection and Technology, Berlin, and also Director of Urban Development at the same Ministry. His professional experience as architect and urban planner includes his involvement in industrial, housing and school construction and he has been Technical Advisorand Director of the Ministry of Building and Housing in Berlin, Urban Planning Department. He has been a member of the academic staff of the Technical University (TU) Berlin, Institute for Urban and Regional Planning; Lecturer at the TU Hamburg-Harburg carrying out research on urban renewal and the preservation of values. He has also done freelance work for the Office for Urban Construction and Urban Research in Berlin and has been Director of Urban Development at the Ministry of Building and Housing, Berlin. He is a member of the Social-Democratic Party (SPD) of Germany. He has published numerous articles in journals and books on urban planning and architecture, and has taken part in several urban planning exhibitions.

Re-establishing a capital city

Dr Stimmann, an Engineer and Architect , Assistant Secretary for Planning at the Ministry of Urban Development, Environmental Protection and Technology, Berlin, and also Director of Urban Development at the same Ministry. His professional experience as architect and urban planner includes his involvement in industrial, housing and school construction and he has been Technical Advisorand Director of the Ministry of Building and Housing in Berlin, Urban Planning Department. He has been a member of the academic staff of the Technical University (TU) Berlin, Institute for Urban and Regional Planning; Lecturer at the TU Hamburg-Harburg carrying out research on urban renewal and the preservation of values. He has also done freelance work for the Office for Urban Construction and Urban Research in Berlin and has been Director of Urban Development at the Ministry of Building and Housing, Berlin. He is a member of the Social-Democratic Party (SPD) of Germany. He has published numerous articles in journals and books on urban planning and architecture, and has taken part in several urban planning exhibitions.

Residential segregation and housing in Berlin: changes since unification

This paper examines the spatial patterns and extent of residential segregation in Berlin at the time of unification, and also considers changes since that date. Residential segregation is differentiated into three components - demographic, socio-economic and ethnic. For all these dimensions, segregation depends on housing provision and the rules of admission to various segments of the housing market. The former differences in housing regulations in East and West Berlin are therefore of importance, as well as changes since unification. The paper shows that before unification demographic segregation was more prominent in East Berlin, whilst socio-economic segregation was more pronounced in West Berlin. Ethnic minority communities in West Berlin had developed from the immigration of guestworkers and their families, with moderate levels of segregation: however in East Berlin there were very few foreign contract workers present throughout the 1980s. In spite of the short time-period since unification, there are clear signs of convergence between the segregation patterns in the two parts of the city. Nevertheless, it is argued that population movements between East and West are still remarkably low, so that differences in the population patterns will continue to exist for some time to come.

Housing regeneration in former East Berlin

Much of former East Berlin's housing lies within large, prefabricated estates that contain around 240 000 dwellings. However, such areas are now suffering from serious deficiencies of construction and design, and in 1992 the Berlin Senate resolved to refurbish all of these areas. The regeneration scheme for the Hellersdorf area shows how this policy has been applied, and its experience suggests lessons for housing regeneration in other contexts.

Berlin's Housing Revolution: German Reform in the 1920s

Berlin's Housing Revolution: German Reform in the 1920s

Hedonic Prices and Implicit Markets: Product Differentiation in Pure Competition

A class of differentiated products is completely described by a vector of objectively measured characteristics. Observed product prices and the specific amounts of characteristics associated with each good define a set of implicit or "hedonic" prices. A theory of hedonic prices is formulated as a problem in the economics of spatial equilibrium in which the entire set of implicit prices guides both consumer and producer locational decisions in characteristics space. Buyer and seller choices, as well as the meaning and nature of market equilibrium, are analyzed. Empirical implications for hedonic price regressions and index number construction are pointed out.