Referendums are a funny thing in this city, especially to the CDU. Enteignen went through barely a couple of years ago and the CDU-led government have made it expressly clear they’ll be ignoring it. The CDU/FDP-initiated Tempelhofer Feld referendum in 2014 overwhelmingly resulted in Berliners insisting on keeping this open space theirs, yet it has since faced continued attempts by said parties to initiate further referendums on the matter. Although the Klima 2030 referendum did not win enough support to become law outright, a majority of Berliners backed it, yet are rewarded with Autobahn extensions and the suspension of badly-needed cycle infrastructure work. Kai Wegner loves democracy, and will honour the result of any Berlin referendum, so long as you are courteous enough to vote for the one he wants.
I suppose I should declare an interest - I use Tempelhofer Feld every day, very early in the morning, to walk the perimeter and indulge in my mid-life crisis of befriending crows (they’re super-intellectual animals and incredibly misunderstood). Given that the proposals given would have zero effect on my morning walk, and given that crows are famously durable enough to adapt to (and even thrive in) human habitat, I will not be personally impacted. Nevertheless, transparency is important.
I’m also not a NIMBY (for those who aren’t familiar with the acronym - “not in my back yard”. A term used to describe those who simply oppose development that impacts them). We are living in a housing crisis and the torrid experience faced by those hunting flats in Berlin must be addressed.
Pretending for a moment that we don’t have a considerable amount of brownfield space to already build on in Berlin (we do), there are therefore two options: build on open spaces, or build upwards. And on this, I could not be clearer, as much as it may lose me the votes of my neighbours: build a skyscraper outside my balcony, and build it tall. I love the view I get of the sunset on a summer night, but frankly, those who join 200-deep queues in the hope they’ll be selected to part with half their monthly income for a tiny flat have a somewhat more pressing problem than I do with the loss of a view I don’t own.
And don’t just build a skyscraper outside my home. Do it for every politician in Berlin who has said that the Feld must be developed on the basis that we must all make sacrifices during a housing crisis. I’m a firm believer that the term “we” should do much less heavy lifting, so it’s only fair that Kai Wegner and Franziska Giffey are gifted sprawling buildings next to their homes too. After all - we must all make sacrifices, and I’m certain that in the spirit of the sacrifice they are expecting the users of the Feld to make, they too will offer up their contribution.
Because that’s what it really boils down to with Tempelhofer Feld - those who wish to build on it don’t use it, and they can barely hide their resentment for those who do. Of all the spaces in Berlin on which we can build on (and there are plenty), they always home back in to the Feld for some reason. And I have a suspicion I know why. Take a look at who uses it - Skaters. Windsurfers. Activists. Musicians. Young people who can’t afford a bar tab but can make their money stretch to a case of beer they drag to the Feld to enjoy with their friends. Students and young professionals who don’t have a garden or a balcony to enjoy, so they come to the open space of the Feld. And yes, political candidates living a mid-life crisis with crows.
The Feld represents everything about Berlin the CDU despises - a vast expanse of people who don’t or can’t vote for them, and concreting it up with clinical apartment buildings would put this unique space out of sight and out of mind for them, as they continue on their quest to make Berlin a dull gentrified landscape. Building on Tempelhofer Feld is the ultimate NIMBYism. You do not solve the problems of the cash-strapped by taking away the open spaces they use.
There is of course a list of bad-faith arguments we need to counter. The first is that those who oppose building on the Feld are harming the poorest in Berlin. Because of course, we all truly believe that the FDP’s hunger for construction on Tempelhofer Feld is to build social housing. There can be absolutely no doubt about that.
Second is the most effective one - that it’s just a small amount of construction around the peripherals of the Feld. Well, as a former district councillor, let me explain this one to you. The desperation to break ground on THF is simple: after it’s been done once, it’s politically far easier to do it again, and again, and again. The hardest political barrier is the initial seal, and once it is broken, everything else is just “a little bit more” until the whole thing is enveloped. The thin end of the wedge.
And if you think I’m being perhaps too cynical, simply look at the logic. The Feld must apparently be built on to make a significant dent in the housing supply, yet if the intention is just a small section of housing on the southern peripherals, the impact would almost be non-existent, especially when compared to the available other options. The effort that would need to be undertaken to build on the peripherals would be unfeasible unless further development was intended down the line.
Third is factually dismissible after a quick Google, yet comes up again and again: “no other city in the world has something like this”. To which there are two things to say. First of all, San Francisco has the Golden Gate Park; New York has Central Park; London has the royal parks - all vast open spaces in cities whose housing crises are in a far more advanced stage than Berlin’s. And why? Because in these cities the market rules when it comes to rent. No Mietpreisbremse (nevermind a Mietendeckel); no protection against evictions; and no strong tenancy rights - all things that have come up for discussion by the very same people who claim to want to solve the housing crisis by building on the Feld. And secondly - if other cities didn’t have this, perhaps that’s a very good reason to keep it.
And finally, the last resort: that we should simply support the building of more housing. The truth is that meeting the increased demand for housing in Berlin simply by building more apartments is not just politically impossible, but physically impossible too. The current rents are simply too high, and the rules of supply and demand dictate that the only way they can go down is if we the supply/demand ratio for housing eases. We saw the same arguments in London - build build build. And they did build. Yet these premium-price skyscrapers sit empty, owned by foreign investors, whilst a run-down former state-owned apartment in Brixton is now shared by 4 professionals simply so they can afford to pay the rent. In fact, whilst writing this piece, I checked out what the tiny 30m^2 apartments in my old building now rent for - the equivalent of 2,917 euros per month. Building more solved nothing, because they weren’t building affordable housing.
It’s truly bizarre how housing remains the one aspect of our lives that each of us requires to live, yet we are expected to pay vast amounts of money for. Nobody would accept this for medicine or energy - it would be considered a relic of an uncivilised society that one should not be able to afford to treat their ailments or heat their homes, yet for the home itself it remains acceptable.
For affordable housing in cities, there are two options: a rent cap, or enough social/state-owned housing as to make a rent cap unnecessary. Berlin should, right now, be embarking on an ambitious state-owned-house-building initiative. They could follow in the footsteps of Vienna, where 60% of the housing stock is owned by the state. Rent is not based on the apartment itself, but on a proportion of the residents’ income (20-25%), ensuring a high standard of living. They could do this, because it would benefit the people of Berlin immensely, yet they don’t. Why? Well, it would certainly provoke grumbles from notable CDU donors in the construction industry. But I think the real reason is a lot more base than this: Tempelhofer Feld, this historic patch of Berlin that once served as a beacon of hope during the years of division, now enjoyed by the full diversity of this wonderful city, would remain. That’s why they want to get rid of it, and that’s why we must do our absolute utmost to ensure that “THF bleibt”.
