Berlin Neighborhood Research Articles

Green gentrification: a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis of greened neighbourhoods in Berlin

To contribute to the understanding of green gentrification, this study aims to elucidate the factors that contribute to its occurrence or non-occurrence following urban greening, by considering necessary and sufficient factors. The investigation examines several potential characteristics, including the distribution, size, function, transportation connectivity, neighbourhoods’ centrality, and pre-existing availability of green spaces within neighbourhoods. The research employs an embedded case study approach, focusing on Berlin as the primary case. A fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is conducted to analyse the notions of necessity and sufficiency. The analysis identifies several sufficient pathways to gentrification, indicating that the neighbourhood context, particularly the initial availability of green spaces in the neighbourhood, plays a crucial role in determining the occurrence of green gentrification. By contrast, no specific type of greening, such as scattered greening approach, park size, function, or transportation connectivity, consistently led to green gentrification.

Talking while walking but not with the locals: Social support and domesticity in public space before and during COVID-19 in Berlin, Germany

ABSTRACT How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed the spatiality of social support? Did people turn to local ties when they were requested to stay at home, and what impact has this had on the public life of neighborhoods? This paper explores these questions using survey data collected in four neighborhoods in Berlin, Germany, in 2019 and 2020. We show that people received more support in their neighborhoods—but not necessarily from their neighbors. They left their residences more often to digitally contact others in local public spaces. The COVID-19 restrictions in Berlin increased the importance of neighborhoods understood as openly accessible space. Drawing on Lofland’s idea of realms, we argue that this increase may be read as an intensified privatization of public space, as people left their homes to communicate with others on their digital devices, creating a growing sense of domesticity outdoors.

Mothering, Habitus and Habitat: The Role of Mothering as Moral Geography for the Inequality Impasse in Urban Education

AbstractFollowing Bourdieu, residential location as habitat may provide spatial profit when it matches with a habitus – but how? How can we conceptualize situations of mismatch between habitat and habitus, and what may they mean for urban inequalities? This article explores this topic through the lens of mothering practices in elementary schools. Qualitative interviews in two neighbourhoods in Berlin, Germany, suggest how moral geographies at intersections of class and race/ethnicity structure parents' opportunities to organize resources for children in their specific spatial contexts. It argues that mothering practices can help us see not just that, but how habitus and habitat are related. Empirically, it suggests that the moral geographies in which these schools are embedded reinforce the exclusionary consequences of their institutional practices. I theorize that the moral geographies of neighbourhoods as sites of mothering practices vis‐à‐vis the class‐based state logics in institutions may contribute to an urban impasse of educational inequality.

Mining Points-of-Interest Data to Predict Urban Inequality: Evidence from Germany and France

Reducing inequality is a major goal of the Sustainable Development Goals. Inequality is many-sided and often appears across geographic boundaries. Urban inequality refers to inequality between urban neighborhoods. Despite close distances, it reveals considerable disparities in income level, unemployment rates, and other socio-economic indicators and is highly dangerous for democratic societies. However, little is known about determinants indicating urban inequality. Here, we propose to explain urban inequality based on point-of-interest (POI) data from the online platform Open Street Maps. For this, we leverage machine learning to predict three major indicators of urban inequality, namely, unemployment rate, income level, and foreign national rate. We evaluate our machine learning approach using POI data for neighborhoods in Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen. We find: (1) POIs are highly predictive of intra-city inequality explaining up to 75% of out-of-sample variance of urban inequality. (2) POIs generalize across cities and, thereby, can help to explain urban inequality in other cities, where no socio-economic data is available. (3) Important POIs for the prediction model are, e.g., banks and playgrounds. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first to show urban inequality through POIs. As such, POIs can be used to infer granular mappings of urban inequality and thereby provide cost-effective evidence for policy-makers.

Does neighborhood walkability affect ethnic diversity in Berlin? Insights from a spatial modelling approach

Prior research has reported that people living in more walkable places gain significant health, and environmental sustainability benefits. However, the positive impacts of walkable urbanism are not often inclusive and might affect minority groups. On this basis, this paper develops a composite GIS-based walkability measure (0-1) for Berlin metro area and investigates the association of walkable neighborhood design with ethnic diversity (i.e., Entropy Index). We explore this relationship by applying spatial regression models (i.e., OLS, GWR), while we control the effects of traffic-related air pollution (i.e., NO2), building height, and children density. Our findings suggest that for the total of 447 Berlin neighborhoods which were examined only one out of three had walkability scores greater than 0.5 as well as that community ethnic diversity is negatively related to walkability (β=-0.159, p<0.01).

The Social Meaning of Contextualized Sibilant Alternations in Berlin German.

In Berlin, the pronunciation of /ç/ as [ɕ] is associated with the multi-ethnic youth variety (Kiezdeutsch). This alternation is also known to be produced by French learners of German. While listeners form socio-cultural interpretations upon hearing language input, the associations differ depending on the listeners’ biases and stereotypes toward speakers or groups. Here, the contrast of interest concerns two speaker groups using the [ç]–[ɕ] alternation: multi-ethnic adolescents from Berlin neighborhoods carrying low social prestige in mainstream German society and French learners of German supposedly having higher cultural prestige. To understand the strength of associations between phonetic alternations and social attributes, we ran an Implicit Association Task with 131 participants (three groups varying in age and ethnic background (mono- vs. multi-ethnic German) using auditory and written stimuli. In experiment 1, participants categorized written words as having a positive (good) or negative (bad) valence and auditory stimuli containing pronunciation variations of /ç/ as canonical [ç] (labeled Hochdeutsch [a term used in Germany for Standard German]) or non-canonical [ɕ] (labeled Kiezdeutsch). In experiment 2, identical auditory stimuli were used but the label Kiezdeutsch was changed to French Accent. Results show faster reaction times when negative categories and non-canonical pronunciations or positive categories and canonical pronunciations were mapped to the same response key, indicating a tight association between value judgments and concept categories. Older German listeners (OMO) match a supposed Kiezdeutsch accent more readily with negatively connotated words compared to a supposed French accent, while younger German listeners (YMO) seem to be indifferent toward this variation. Young multi-ethnic listeners (YMU), however, seem to associate negative concepts more strongly with a supposed French accent compared to Kiezdeutsch. These results demonstrate how social and cultural contextualization influences language interpretation and evaluation. We interpret our findings as a loss of cultural prestige of French speakers for the YMO group compared to the OMO group: younger urban listeners do not react differently to these contextual primes. YMU listeners, however, show a positive bias toward their in-group. Our results point to implicit listener attitudes, beliefs, stereotypes and shared world knowledge as significant factors in culturally- and socially situated language processing.

Communicating and Visualising Urban Planning in Cold War Berlin

This article analyses the dynamics of communication, specifically with regard to the significance of visualisations in urban planning between the two competing political regimes of East and West Germany in divided Berlin (1945–1989). The article will demonstrate the ways in which planners on either side of the Iron Curtain were confronted with matters unique to their own political contexts and conditions for public communication, as well as how they faced similar challenges in fields of urban renewal and negotiating public participation. The post-war decades in Berlin were marked by strong planning dynamics: large-scale reconstruction after WWII and the ‘showcase character’ of political confrontation and competition. In this context, new strategies of communicating urban planning to the public were developed, such as large-scale development plans, public exhibitions and cross-border media campaigns. Paradigmatic shifts during the mid-1970s generated new discourses about urban renewal and historic preservation. The new focus on small-scale planning in vivid and inhabited inner-city neighbourhoods made new forms of communication and public depiction necessary. In the context of social and political change as well as growing mediatisation, planning authorities utilised aspects of urban identity and civic participation to legitimise planning activities. The article traces two small-scale planning projects for neighbourhoods in East and West Berlin and investigates the interrelation of visual communication instruments in public discourses and planning procedures during the 1980s, a period that prominently featured the new strategy of comprehensive planning. Furthermore, the article highlights the key role of micro-scale changes in the management of urban renewal along both sides of the wall and the emergence of neighbourhood civil engagement and participation.

Catering authenticities. Ethnic food entrepreneurs as agents in Berlin's gentrification

Ethnic cuisines are an integral part of gentrifying neighborhoods in Berlin. This is not surprising, since the consumption of authenticity plays a decisive role in commercial gentrification. However, while there have been many studies on artists and white creative entrepreneurs as facilitators of urban upgrading, only few research has focused on the active role of ethnic entrepreneurs in selling culture in commercial gentrification. In this article, we want to ask how ethnic food entrepreneurs stage authenticity and create new tastes in Berlin's gentrification in their ethnically marketed restaurants. How does this relate to their positioning towards the city and towards commodified ethnicities? And what role do social backgrounds and dispositions of consumers play in this staging? To answer these questions, we embed the topic in three theoretical discourses at the interface of migration and urban research: ethnic commodification, commercial gentrification and migrant entrepreneurship. We then present two cases as examples of entrepreneurial distinction practices in different settings and periods of Berlin's gentrification: an orientalized Arab snack bar in the early 2000s in Prenzlauer Berg, and a Vietnamese breakfast restaurant in 2017 in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of Neukölln. With these two examples we point to critical aspects that shape migrant entrepreneurs' selling strategies in gentrification, such as the representation of an ethnic group within a city, the phase and local context of gentrification as well as political paradigms of urban regeneration. In Berlin, the two case studies relate to the overlapping shift from a “multicultural-differentiated” to a “cosmopolitan-diversified” city. • Ethnic cuisines are an integral part of gentrifying neighbourhoods. • Ethnic entrepreneurs are underestimated in commercial gentrification since they are seen as “traditional”, not “creative”. • Ethnic entrepreneurs stage (ethnic) authenticities in order to attract the cultural capital of consumers in gentrification. • Ethnic entrepreneurs are constrained by white middle class consumer demands and expectations of the ‘authentic’. • Staging activities reflect different positions of entrepreneurs in the field of ethnic representation and of gentrification.

No Man’s Land: The Life and Art of Mary Riter Hamilton by Kathryn A. Young and Sarah M. McKinnon

Reviewed by: No Man’s Land: The Life and Art of Mary Riter Hamilton by Kathryn A. Young and Sarah M. McKinnon Angela R. Cunningham No Man’s Land: The Life and Art of Mary Riter Hamilton. By Kathryn A. Young and Sarah M. McKinnon. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2017. viii+ 272 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $27.95 CAD, $31.95 USD, paper. With No Man’s Land, Young and McKinnon provide the first biography of western Canadian artist, Mary Riter Hamilton. Relying on correspondence and gleaning newspaper advertisements and society pages, Young and McKinnon emphasize Hamilton’s professionalism, describing the artist’s businesslike decisions about where to train and how to market herself as well as the economic realities she faced: a reliance on patrons, the effects of financial hardship, and the necessity of teaching. Young and McKinnon also describe the geographical realities of Hamilton’s work. Having spent much of her youth in Manitoba, a province to which she would periodically return, Hamilton had to leave the Great Plains, studying and exhibiting in Europe and eastern and coastal Canada, to gain credibility as an artist. The book is at its best when describing these milieux in which Hamilton lived, from artists’ neighborhoods in Berlin and Paris, to Winnipeg, a rapidly developing city just beginning to establish a culture of fine art in the Canadian interior. Given the title of the book, I had hoped for a stronger engagement with recent scholarship about women as artists and women’s role in constructing narratives of the Great War. For instance, the authors cite World War I historian Jay Winter, but I was left wondering how Hamilton situated herself within the tension between modernism and traditionalism that Winter focuses on in Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning. How might Hamilton’s letters or critics’ responses locate her battlefield paintings both within this wider discourse and her wider body of work? What insights could be gained by putting Hamilton’s experience into conversation with work on Great War women writers who, lacking frontline fighting experience, were perceived as not having the authority to speak about war? Were the conditions, products, and reception of Hamilton’s work—whether post-war or peacetime—shaped by gendered motivations as well as by gendered limitations? These questions are largely addressed with bibliographic references rather than sustained discussion. Young and McKinnon synthesize secondary and primary sources, including previously un-published material, to present a biography that will be appreciated by art historians interested in an important Canadian painter. However, the reader interested in a deeper analysis of why women’s artistic production was important, particularly in the context of World War I, would be best served by pairing No Man’s Land with other social and critical cultural histories. [End Page 92] Angela R. Cunningham Department of Geography University of Colorado–Boulder Copyright © 2019 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

‘Now the German comes’: The ethnic effect of gentrification in Berlin

Compared to the United States, the relationship between ethnicity and gentrification is still understudied in the Western European context. However, while Western Europe does not have the same racial history as the United States, ethnic and racial divisions are still expressed through urban inequality. This paper, a study of small-business owners in an ethnically stigmatized Berlin neighborhood, shows how the gentrification process leads to the revelation and reification of ethnic boundaries between Turkish immigrants and their descendants and the so-called German majority society. It firstly finds that gentrification by Turkish-origin business owners is frequently understood as an ethnic remake that leads to the displacement of Turkish immigrants and their families in favor of non-immigrant Germans. The gentrification process is accordingly perceived, not only as a form of material dispossession, but also as a form of cultural dispossession in which the multicultural character of the quarter is erased. Second, the paper postulates that, in cases in which Turkish immigrant entrepreneurs adapt their businesses to the demands of new middle-class consumers, they tend to exclude the lower-income population in the quarter whom they mainly define as Turkish or Arabic. All in all, the debate presented in this paper shows how, in the German context, gentrification relates to prior forms of ethnic prejudice, discrimination and racism. It thereby also complicates the prominent discussion on the nexus between gentrification and displacement by showing that, even if long-time residents are not immediately threatened with having to leave, they still experience forms of exclusion that are entrenched with already existing structural inequalities.

Constructing Urban Tourism Space Digitally

Over the past decade, Airbnb has emerged as the most popular platform for renting out single rooms or whole apartments. The impact of Airbnb listings on local neighborhoods has been controversially discussed in many cities around the world. The platform's widespread adoption led to changes in urban life, and in particular urban tourism. In this paper, we argue that urban tourism space can no longer be understood as a fixed, spatial entity. Instead, we follow a constructionist approach and argue that urban tourism space is (re-)produced digitally and collaboratively on online platforms such as Airbnb. We relate our work to a research direction in the CSCW community that is concerned with the role of digital technologies in the production and appropriation of urban space and use the concept of representations as a theoretical lens for our empirical study. In that study, we qualitatively analyzed how the two Berlin neighborhoods Kreuzkölln and City West are digitally constructed by Airbnb hosts in their listing descriptions. Moreover, we quantitatively investigated to what extend mentioned places differ between Airbnb hosts and visitBerlin, the city's destination management organization (DMO). In our qualitative analysis, we found that hosts primarily focus on facilities and places in close proximity to their apartment. In the traditional urban tourism hotspot City West, hosts referred to many places also mentioned by the DMO. In the neighborhood of Kreuzkölln, in contrast, hosts reframed everyday places such as parks or an immigrant food market as the must sees in the area. We discuss how Airbnb hosts contribute to the discursive production of urban neighborhoods and thus co-produce them as tourist destinations. With the emergence of online platforms such as Airbnb, power relations in the construction of tourism space might shift from DMOs towards local residents who are now producing tourism space collaboratively.

Combining means of transport as a users' strategy to optimize traveling in an urban context: empirical results on intermodal travel behavior from a survey in Berlin

Intermodal travel behavior is becoming increasingly important, particularly in large cities. Using and combining different transport modes flexibly on a single trip is discussed as being crucial to a more efficient and sustainable urban transport system. However, research on intermodality has mainly addressed long-distance traffic or specific combinations. This study analyzes how intermodality is practiced in everyday mobility by looking at relevant mode combinations, trip purposes, spatial differentiation and the requirements of intermodal users. The article presents results on intermodal travel behavior from a survey conducted in different neighborhoods in Berlin in 2016 (n = 1098). The results show that many people use intermodal combinations in their everyday mobility. Intermodal travel behavior is significantly characterized by public transport modes and trips to work. Spatial differences in intermodal use become obvious with combinations of bike and public transport being strong in urban neighborhoods, car and public transport in decentralized neighborhoods and combinations of different means of public transport in well-connected neighborhoods. In addition, the study emphasizes that time efficiency is an important aspect for intermodal users, becoming apparent in the reasons they state for performing intermodal trips and their evaluation of interchanges. Intermodal travel behavior and users' needs must therefore be taken into account in urban planning if the aim is to make the most of intermodal combinations for an effective urban transport system.

Place-making and the bordering of urban space: Interpreting the emergence of new neighbourhoods in Berlin and Budapest

The objective of this paper is to theorize border-making processes in urban contexts as exemplary of the ways in which borders within human societies are formed. In fact, the question as to whether socially meaningful borders are created through state-society and systemic relations or whether they ultimately emerge locally out of social relations is not as trivial as it might seem. The concept of ‘bordering’ implies non-finalizable processes in which socio-spatial distinction is constantly created, confirmed and challenged. Far from being solely a product of state territoriality and international relations, borders are also social institutions that are constantly created, maintained and re-created as a means of negotiating the complexities of everyday life. Urban contexts reveal much about the rationales and mechanisms behind bordering processes. Our concrete bordering focus is related to place and to place-making processes that reflect the attributions, appropriations and representations of place ideas. As is argued in this paper, urban borders are a nexus between everyday practices of differentiating social space, the instrumentality of place-making, for example, as a project of urban development, and the ontological need for a sense of rootedness in place. Two case studies of urban change in Budapest and Berlin will be developed that illustrate this nexus.

Lo no permanente en la consolidación urbano-arquitectónica

<p class="xmsonormal"><span>Este artículo plantea el tiempo como una dimensión en la que se estructuran y conectan diferentes variables que inciden en la consolidación de los sectores urbanos populares. La condición evolutiva de estos sectores se explora con el concepto de lo “no-permanente” el cual, al atravesar las diferentes dinámicas socio-culturales, permite pensar en cómo la incertidumbre, lo simbólico, lo diverso y lo múltiple pueden definir en el tiempo las características físicas de los territorios. </span></p><p class="xmsonormal"><span>El caso de estudio será el barrio Berlín de Cali, Colombia, a partir del proceso social y cultural de invasión y urbanización pirata donde se tomará como referente la variable de lo político, para exponer lo urbano-arquitectónico como algo fluctuante y no permanente. </span></p>

Beyond the Noise: Open Source Soundscapes. A mixed methodology to analyze and plan small, quiet areas on the local scale, applying the soundscape approach, the citizen science paradigm, and open source technology

Today, cities have become increasingly noisier. In Europe, over 125 million people are affected by noise pollution from traffic every year, and apparently, quietness is becoming a luxury available only for the elites. There is a growing interest in protecting and planning quiet areas, which has been recognized as a valid tool to reduce noise pollution. However, developing a common methodology to define and plan quiet areas in cities is still challenging. The “Beyond the Noise: Open Source Soundscapes” project aims to fill this gap of knowledge by applying the soundscape approach, the citizen science paradigm and open source technology, with the ultimate goal of making quietness as a commons. Accordingly, a new mixed methodology to analyze and plan small, quiet areas on the local scale has been tested through the development of a pilot study in a Berlin neighborhood affected by environmental injustice and noise pollution. In this pilot study, a number of citizens have been involved in crowdsourcing data related to “everyday quiet areas” by using novel mobile technologies. This contribution illustrates the project’s theoretical background, the methods applied, the first findings of the study and its potential impact.

Spatial Distribution of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in Berlin: Application of a Geographically Weighted Regression Analysis to Identify Location-Specific Risk Groups

Understanding which population groups in which locations are at higher risk for type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) allows efficient and cost-effective interventions targeting these risk-populations in great need in specific locations. The goal of this study was to analyze the spatial distribution of T2DM and to identify the location-specific, population-based risk factors using global and local spatial regression models. To display the spatial heterogeneity of T2DM, bivariate kernel density estimation was applied. An ordinary least squares regression model (OLS) was applied to identify population-based risk factors of T2DM. A geographically weighted regression model (GWR) was then constructed to analyze the spatially varying association between the identified risk factors and T2DM. T2DM is especially concentrated in the east and outskirts of Berlin. The OLS model identified proportions of persons aged 80 and older, persons without migration background, long-term unemployment, households with children and a negative association with single-parenting households as socio-demographic risk groups. The results of the GWR model point out important local variations of the strength of association between the identified risk factors and T2DM. The risk factors for T2DM depend largely on the socio-demographic composition of the neighborhoods in Berlin and highlight that a one-size-fits-all approach is not appropriate for the prevention of T2DM. Future prevention strategies should be tailored to target location-specific risk-groups.

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.

Gaining Freedoms: Claiming Space in Istanbul and Berlin. By Berna Turam. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2015. Pp. xiv+250. $27.95 (paper).

<i>Gaining Freedoms: Claiming Space in Istanbul and Berlin</i>. By Berna Turam. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2015. Pp. xiv+250. $27.95 (paper).

From Public Familiarity to Comfort Zone: The Relevance of Absent Ties for Belonging in Berlin's Mixed Neighbourhoods

AbstractSegregation along lines of race/ethnicity and class has created multi‐ethnic and rather class‐homogeneous neighbourhoods in various European cities, commonly labelled as ‘disadvantaged’. Such neighbourhoods are often seen as ‘lacking’ community, as local networks are crucial for belonging and mixed neighbourhoods are too diverse to provide homogeneous identifications. However, in contrast to the understandings of the sociology of community, people might still experience ‘belonging’, yet in different ways. This article argues that we have to focus on the under‐researched ‘time in‐between’ (Byrne, 1978), the absent ties that Granovetter (1973) pointed to, to understand belonging, while moving away from a conception of the anonymous city and from the urban village. This article explores how absent ties affect belonging by empirically sustaining the notion of public familiarity: both recognizing and being recognized in local spaces. Using regression models on survey data from two mixed neighbourhoods in Berlin, Germany, we analyse the importance of neighbourhood use for public familiarity as well as how it relates to residents' comfort zone: people's feeling of belonging and their sense that others would intervene on their behalf. Our findings indicate that research on neighbourhoods could benefit greatly from a careful consideration of the ‘time in‐between’.

Orchards for edible cities: Cadmium and lead content in nuts, berries, pome and stone fruits harvested within the inner city neighbourhoods in Berlin, Germany

Today's urban gardening focuses mainly on vegetable production and rarely includes fruit trees. Health effects of consuming urban crops are questioned due to high local pollution loads. Here, we determined cadmium and lead content in the edible parts of nuts, berries, pome, and stone fruits harvested from fruit trees and shrubs within inner city neighbourhoods of Berlin, Germany. We analysed how local settings at sampling sites shaped the trace metal content. We revealed significant differences in trace metal content depending on species, fruit type, local traffic, and parameters related to barriers between the sampling site and neighbouring roads. Higher overall traffic burden and proximity to roads increased whereas buildings or vegetation as barriers reduced trace metal content in the edible biomass. We demonstrate, that the consumption of non-vegetable fruits growing in inner city sites in Berlin does not pose a risk on human health as long as the fruits are thoroughly washed and it is provided that site pollutions and impacts are considered in garden concepts and guidelines.