PUSHING THE URBAN FRONTIER: TEMPORARY USES OF SPACE, CITY

PUSHING THE URBAN FRONTIER: TEMPORARYUSES OF SPACE, CITY MARKETING, AND THECREATIVE CITY DISCOURSE IN 2000s BERLIN

CLAIRE COLOMBUniversity College London

ABSTRACT: In spite of the amount of urban development that followed the Fall of the Wall, Berlin’surban landscape has remained filled with a large amount of “voids” and disused sites, which havegradually 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 usesof space have been harnessed in recent economic and urban development policies and in the officialcity marketing discourse in Berlin post-2000, in the context of the discursive and policy shift towardthe promotion of Berlin as a “creative city.” The gradual process of enlistment of new forms ofcultural and social expression by policy-makers and real estate developers for urban developmentand 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 varioustrajectories of displacement, transformation, commodification, resistance, or disappearance, and inparticular cases have become the focus of intense local conflicts.

Temporary uses are generally not considered to be part of normal cycles of urban development.If a building or area becomes vacant, it is expected to be re-planned, built over and used assoon as possible. Temporary uses are often associated with crisis, a lack of vision and chaos.But, despite all preconceptions, examples like the vital scene of Berlin’s nomadic clubs ortemporary events proves that temporary uses can become an extremely successful, inclusiveand innovative part of contemporary urban culture. (SUC, 2003, p. 4)

After the Fall of the Wall and the reunification of the city in 1989, a period of intensive urbandevelopment began in Berlin. Throughout the 1990s large-scale construction sites punctuatedthe urban landscape of the inner city, in particular around Potsdamer Platz, near the new seatof the Federal Government near the river Spree and in the historical core of the Friedrichstadt.The transformation of the city was promoted to an internal and external audience of Berliners,visitors, and potential investors through high-profile city marketing events and image campaigns,which featured the iconic architecture of flagship urban redevelopment projects to symbolize

Direct correspondence to: Claire Colomb, Senior Lecturer in Urban Sociology & European Spatial Planning, The BartlettSchool of Planning, University College London (UCL), Wates House, 22 Gordon Street, London WC1H 0QB, UK. E-mail:[email protected].

JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Volume 34, Number 2, pages 131–152.Copyright C© 2012 Urban Affairs AssociationAll rights of reproduction in any form reserved.ISSN: 0735-2166. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9906.2012.00607.x

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the “new Berlin” of the postunification era (Colomb, 2011). Yet by the mid 2000s the “newBerlin” marketed by urban boosters was no longer, in the eyes of many, so new and exciting.After a short-lived period of economic and real-estate euphoria in the early 1990s, it becameapparent that Berlin would not become an economic powerhouse of global importance on a parwith London or New York. Because of the highly polycentric nature of the German territory andurban system, the decision made in 1991 by the German Parliament to relocate the seat of theFederal government to Berlin was not followed by a large-scale wave of company relocations tothe nation’s largest city. The city’s economic growth rate has, since the mid-1990s, remained lowand unemployment has been significantly higher than in other German Lander. The governmentof the Land of Berlin—a city-state in the German federal system—nearly faced bankruptcy in2001 and had to make severe cuts in public expenditure to tackle its large debt, which amountedto approximately 60 billion euro in 2010.

One of the consequences of Berlin’s historical legacy and low levels of growth is that manyempty sites and wastelands still punctuate the city’s landscape, not only on the urban fringebut also in central areas. These vacant sites are not dead spaces, however. Many have beenused on a temporary basis by a variety of actors and transformed into beach bars, open airtheaters, community gardens, sculpture parks, or alternative living projects. For several yearsthese sites—and their temporary use—were neglected by local policy-makers and left out of theofficial promotional discourse of urban elites: they were perceived as irrelevant, marginal, or noteconomically useful in the dominant language of place marketing and interurban competition.From the early 2000s onward, however, the creative, unplanned, multifaceted, and dynamicdiversity of such “temporary uses of space” was gradually harnessed into urban developmentpolicies and city marketing campaigns. New images and narratives began to be integrated intoBerlin’s official promotional discourse—including sites, places, activities, and people which hadbeen left out of the promotional imagery of the 1990s.

This article analyzes how and why former wastelands that have been occupied by variousindividuals, groups, or entrepreneurs for “temporary” or “interim” uses have been harnessed inrecent economic and urban development policies and in the official city marketing discoursein Berlin post-2000. It then discusses the implications of this process for such spaces. Thevast quantity of disused spaces available in Berlin—the capital city of one of Europe’s largestnations—and the relative freedom and tolerance under which “temporary uses” were allowed toflourish on such spaces, are rather unusual in comparison with the situation in other Europeancapital cities or large metropolises. Some scholars have indeed argued that contemporary Berlinis an atypical case study in urban research because of its peculiar history as a divided city in adivided country and of the legacy of past authoritarian regimes on its urban form.1 Yet in spite ofits historical specificities, post-Wall Berlin illustrates several (partly interrelated) processes thatare not unique to the city: the transition to a united city after a history of conflict and division;the transition to a capital city in a nation redefining its national identity; the transition from asocialist to a capitalist city; and the transition from an industrial to a postindustrial or post-Fordistmetropolis (Strom, 2001). The intensity of the urban restructuring processes that unfolded over ashort period of time post-1989 has acted as a “magnifier” that makes the city a particularly salientcase for making a contribution to theoretical debates on the relationship between “symbolic” and“material” politics in contemporary urban governance (Colomb, 2011).

Following a brief presentation of the temporary uses of space that have grown on Berlin’s vacantsites, the second section of the paper analyzes the mobilization and trajectory of such uses withinthe context of the discursive and policy shift toward the marketing and promotion of Berlin as a“creative city.” The paper thus contributes to the current debates, in critical urban research, aboutthe implications of the policy shift toward the promotion of the “creative city” in many placesacross the globe. The proliferation of temporary uses of urban space in Berlin is a good example

II Temporary Uses of Space in Berlin II 133

showing that cultural innovation is often a phenomenon of cities “in crisis,” that is, sufferingfrom deindustrialization, low growth, or shrinkage (Bader & Scharenberg, 2010), something thathas been overlooked in the theses of Richard Florida adopted by urban policy-makers around theworld.

In spite of the specific characteristics and particular intensity of the phenomenon of temporaryuses of space in post-Wall Berlin, what is not unique to the city is the gradual process of enlistmentof new forms of cultural and social expression by local policy-makers and real-estate investors inthe name of the “creative city” agenda (Peck, 2005). This process is inherently contradictory andconflictual, because it changes the way such spaces work and often threatens their very existenceby raising investors’ interest in previously neglected areas. This contradiction, discussed in thethird section of the paper, generates resistance on the part of the producers and users of temporaryspaces threatened with displacement, and leads to localized conflicts around the spaces earmarkedas “creative” in public policies and the official marketing discourse.

THE “VOIDS OF BERLIN”: WASTELANDS AND “URBAN PIONEERS” IN THE1990s AND 2000s

In spite of the large amount of urban redevelopment that took place post-1989, Berlin is acity which remains full of “voids” (Huyssen, 1997, 2003)—holes, wastelands, brownfield sites,and vacant plots. There are a number of factors that explain land vacancy in cities around theworld: “weak demand in the local [real] estate market, delays in the political decision makingand planning processes, unclear ownership or exceptionally high construction costs caused bysoil contamination and massive old infrastructures” (Hentila & Lindborg, 2003, p. 1). In Berlin,some context-specific factors need to be taken into consideration: the former division of the cityby the Wall and its surrounding no man’s land, a zona non aedificandi (Figure 1); extensivebomb damage during World War Two; the destruction of unwanted buildings and monumentsby successive political regimes; the abandonment of industrial and infrastructural sites causedby the rapid deindustrialization that took place after the unification of Germany; and the slowresolution of conflicts over the restitution of land and property in the 1990s. “Vacant spaces” arealso, in some cases, the deliberate product of particular urban planning models, for example, theModernist urban planning principles applied in parts of East- and West-Berlin between the 1950sand 1970s that privileged large open spaces between buildings. All these specific factors explainwhy Berlin has a significantly larger stock of empty, disused, or vacant sites than other Europeannational capitals or large cities, for example, London or Paris.

Following the reunification of the city, in the early 1990s many of the vacant plots located inthe central districts of Berlin became prime pieces of real estate in the context of the speculativeboom which hit Berlin in 1990–1991. Many sites in the Friedrichstadt were snapped up byinternational investors; while one the most famous “wastelands” inherited from Berlin’s division,the Potsdamer Platz, was sold in May 1990 by the Berlin Senate (city government) to theDaimler-Benz corporation at a price below market value—a controversial sale later challengedby the European Commission. This was a period of economic boom and inflated growth forecastsfor Berlin, which came to an end in 1993. Those brief years of building boom left an oversupply ofoffice space which has not been absorbed since. Lower than expected growth rates and investmentflows have limited the demand for commercial development on Berlin’s remaining vacant lots.In conventional urban development processes, the time gap between the end of a previous landuse and the beginning of a new one is supposed to be kept as short as possible. But political,environmental, and economic factors can stretch this interim period for a long time, when as inBerlin, development does not occur for a variety of reasons.


FIGURE 1

Vacant Land in the Shadow of the Former Berlin Wall: Behind the East Side Gallery, Berlin-Friedrichshain (Photo: Author, 2010)

Vacant plots of various sizes are consequently found all over Berlin. The inventory of greenand open spaces contained in the online environmental atlas produced by the Berlin SenateDepartment for Urban Development (SenStadt, 2008) defines “vacant areas” as “areas currentlynot used or cared for, on which variegated stands of vegetation can develop” (including sandbeaches, other nonvegetation-filled areas, a few artificial rain catchments, ditches, landfills, andwet areas). In 2008, 14.4% of Berlin’s green and open spaces were classified as “vacant areas”(i.e., 3.4% of the city’s total surface). A study commissioned by the Department for UrbanDevelopment in the mid 2000s identified five types of vacant areas: abandoned industrial sites(500 hectares), abandoned infrastructure sites such as harbors or railways (at least 100 hectareswithout counting the former Tempelhof airport, itself 350 hectares), disused buildings in theeastern part of the city (140 hectares),2 disused cemeteries (143 hectares), and roughly 1,000small building plots totaling 170 hectares (SenStadt, 2007, pp. 28–30). Some of these sites havebeen the object of specific plans for urban development, others not yet. Many empty sites areowned by public institutions or semipublic agencies, in particular in the eastern part of the city.The Liegenschaftsfonds, a private company owned by the Land of Berlin, was created in 2001to market those publicly owned sites and properties. The small building plots (Baulucken) thatdot inner-city neighborhoods are often privately owned, and can be put for sale by their ownerson a Berlin-wide database of vacant plots available for development. As of October 2010, thedatabase listed 550 plots amounting to 110 hectares of buildable land (SenStadt, 2010).

For many politicians, public officials, planners, and city marketers, the vast quantity of “urbanvoids” which remain in reunified Berlin is considered to be a negative feature of the cityscape.Urban voids, for them, represent the ruins and ghosts of burdened, unwanted pasts, or the failure


of the contemporary urban economy in bringing expected amounts of investment and growth.They are “wastelands,” literally: sites that are “wasted” as long as no investment or profitable usecan be found for them, “urban sites that appear to be unmarketable in the medium to long term,”as phrased by the Department for Urban Development (SenStadt, 2007, p. 22). Doron (2000)highlighted how planners and urban policymakers discursively construe such urban spaces as“dead,” “void,” or “wasted.” In Berlin, moreover, the depiction of such spaces in the discourseof politicians and policy documents has often been marked by a rhetoric of “reurbanization” and“densification”3 (Hain, 2001; Ladd, 2000), which stresses the need to fill those “urban voids.” Inthe absence of investment, such spaces are often visually hidden from the public eye by large-scalecanvasses fencing empty plots or by billboards advertising future development, and are left outof the promotional imagery of place marketing brochures and campaigns.

Yet most of these “indeterminate spaces” (Groth & Corjin, 2005, p. 503) are not “dead”:they are spaces of urban wildlife, spaces of “micro-political activity” (Cupers & Miessen, 2002,p. 123), spaces of “alternative cultures” (Shaw, 2005), or “spaces of transgression” for marginal-ized social groups, youth, or artists:

for some groups not incorporated as part of the contemporary “imageable city,” the urbanspaces popularly represented as dystopias may actually be practised as essential heavens,transgressive lived spaces of escape, refuge, employment and entertainment. (MacLeod &Ward, 2002, p. 164)

Berlin has indeed been a very fertile ground for all sorts of formal and informal activitiestaking place on its interstitial, “in-between” spaces. This did not happen out of the blue: therewas an existing basis for such uses of space in Berlin. In the 1970s and 1980s the former West-Berlin district of Kreuzberg had become a pocket of radical social movements (e.g., gay, student,antimilitary, punk, and squatting movements), of countercultural initiatives materialized by squatsand alternative living projects. In the 1990s, the underground techno music scene was heavilyreliant on disused buildings and sites for its clubs and parties. As Shaw (2005) emphasized,the existence and development of underground and alternative urban cultures, in Berlin andelsewhere, has been indissociable from the availability of such vacant or abandoned spaces.

After the reunification, the city of Berlin “became the projection surface for a new wave ofuncontrolled urban practices and ideas (. . .) whose restless speed was barely slowed down byformal control mechanisms” (Cupers & Miessen, 2002, p. 78): flea markets, car boot sales, beergardens, sports ground, waterfront beaches, community gardens, and techno clubs. The Germanword “Zwischennutzung” (“interim” or “temporary” use) was coined to refer to such activities.Temporary uses can be defined as uses that are “planned from the outset to be impermanent” and“seek to derive unique qualities from the idea of temporality” (Haydn & Temel, 2006, p. 17). Till(2011) suggests the term “interim spaces” to refer to the spaces used “temporarily” in a variety ofways, in order to move away from a focus on temporary land uses per se and instead grasp “thedynamic and open-ended sense of in-betweenness, interventions, and unexpected possibilities”present in such activities and spaces. “Interim suggests a fluidity of temporality, rather than anunderstanding of time measured and designated as insignificant or as located between the ‘real’times of before development and after development” (p. 106). In the remainder of this paper wewill therefore use her terminology when referring to the spaces used on a temporary or interimbasis, whilst using the terms “temporary uses” or “users” to refer to the activities themselves andtheir initiators.

In Berlin, research conducted in 2004–2005 found almost a hundred temporary uses on vacanturban sites (SenStadt, 2007), covering a very diverse set of activities which include artistic, cul-tural, leisure, trade, entertainment, social, sports, or gardening initiatives (tx-buro, 2005; SenStadt,


FIGURE 2

A Beach Bar on the Northern Bank of the River Spree, Berlin-Friedrichshain (Photo: Author,2009)

2007). Some of the activities are run commercially (as part of the formal or the shadow economy),some are not-for-profit or outside circuits of monetary exchange. The diversity of temporary usesreflects the very heterogeneous nature of their initiators, who may be artists, private entrepreneurs,“culturepreneurs” (Lange, 2007a), community groups, voluntary workers, or political activists insearch of spaces of autonomy. The first large-scale European research project that analyzed suchtemporary uses4 identified five different types of temporary users (SUC, 2003, p. 10): start-ups(new businesses, inventors, or patent holders whose aim is a full integration into the mainstreamurban economy); migrants (persons who are temporarily not integrated in stable social networksor employment structures); system refugees (individuals or groups who make a deliberate, i.e.,ideologically motivated choice to “withdraw” into an alternative universe); drop-outs (e.g., home-less people, illegal immigrants, etc.); and part-time activists (those having a regular position andincome in society, but wanting to enrich their lives with experiences outside the established order).It is interesting to note that most of these actors come from “outside the official, institutionalizeddomain of urban planning and urban politics” (Groth & Corjin, 2005, p. 506).

Many temporary uses have a ludic, leisure-oriented focus: the first beach bar in Berlin, Strand-bar Mitte, which opened in 2002, was soon followed by many others and in 2010 there were over60 such urban beaches in Berlin. These beach bars or clubs were created by installing sand, deckchairs, outdoor furniture, and exotic decoration in disused sites usually located on the waterfrontof Berlin’s canals or main river (Stevens & Ambler, 2010) (Figure 2). By contrast, other temporaryuses are the product of a search for spaces of cultural–artistic experimentation, as exemplifiedby the Skulturenpark collaborative art project set up by a collective of young artist–activists whohave, since 2006, designed participatory art projects on an empty wasteland in the district ofMitte (see Till, 2011 for a detailed analysis). In some (rarer) cases, temporary uses have createdspaces of “insurgent urbanism” (Sandercock, 1998, p. 120) and social innovation.5 This is thecase for projects inherited from the politicized movements of the 1980s (such as the trailer site


FIGURE 3

Schwarzer Kanal, an Alternative “Queer” Living Project and Trailer Site on the Southern Bankof the Spree River, Berlin-Kreuzberg (Photo: Florian Kettner, 2009)

and “queer community living project” Schwarzer Kanal) (Figure 3), or more recently for projectsaiming at the integration of marginalized populations in the production of urban open space (e.g.,the intercultural garden of Kopenick).6

Very often the appropriation of disused urban spaces is done in a bottom-up, grass-root manner,with little financial investment, minimal interventions, and a high degree of recycling of existingstructures—that is, a form of “urbanism light” (SUC, 2003). Obtaining the permission to usevacant space involves negotiations between interested users and an owner who is often seekingto improve value or reduce maintenance costs (SenStadt, 2007, p. 22). Whether temporary usesare made possible, accepted, or repressed depends on the attitude of land owners—which mayrange from sympathetic support to outright opposition as owners fear that “unwanted temporaryusers [will] block redevelopment and frighten away more profitable users” (SenStadt, 2007,p. 46). Some users manage to secure the use of the site for free; others for a moderate rent orservice charge. Some sites are used all year round, others, such as the beach bars, only in summer.Finally, one additional characteristic of interim spaces in Berlin is the active participation of thevisitors or consumers of the site in the production of a sense of place—the “continual, performativeco-production of place by managers and users” (Stevens & Ambler, 2010, p. 517).

A young generation of architects and urban theorists has begun to research the rapid de-velopment of such practices of temporary uses in Berlin (and elsewhere) to make sense oftheir implication for urbanism and urban development processes in contemporary cities. Some


authors have emphasized the challenges that they pose for “conventional” forms of urban planning(Oswalt, 2000; SenStadt, 2007) as well as the lessons they offer for new forms of flexible, “opensource” urbanism (Misselwitz, Oswalt, & Overmeyer, 2007). Practices of temporary uses havebeen interpreted as “post-Fordist place making” (Stevens & Ambler, 2010, p. 532), that is, a flexi-ble mode of production of urban open spaces (or “loose spaces”) which differs from conventionalstate- or market-led development processes (Franck & Stevens, 2007; Groth & Corjin, 2005;Stevens & Ambler, 2010). Such practices “might change how planners, designers and managersthink about the production of urban open space” in an era when “major flows of urban develop-ment finance are lacking” (Stevens & Ambler, 2010, p. 516). Many authors have integrated theiranalysis of temporary uses within a wider reflection on the evolution of land uses in shrinkingcities and regions, and the challenges which depopulation and building vacancy generate forplanners (Oswalt & Kulturstiftung des Bundes, 2005, 2006; Oswalt & Rieniets, 2006).

In the Berlin context, however, scholars seem to have paid less attention so far to the explicitmobilization and integration of temporary uses and interim spaces into urban policies and theofficial place marketing discourse—a development that has been witnessed since the early 2000s,as public officials and investors began to react to the increasing popularity of interim spaces. Thisrecent development raises important questions for critical urban research: what consequencesdoes the “instrumentalization” of temporary uses for policy purposes have for temporary usesand users? Are temporary users “to remain nothing more than gap-fillers until market demandpermits a return to regulated urban planning” (Misselwitz et al., 2007, p. 104)? Interim spacesare characterized by a tension between their actual use value (as publicly accessible spaces forsocial, artistic, and cultural experimentation) and their potential commercial value. It is thereforefundamental to analyze the trajectory of these temporary uses and interim spaces within thebroader political economy of urban transformation, economic restructuring, and changing urbangovernance in Berlin.

PUSHING THE URBAN FRONTIER IN THE “CREATIVE CITY”: THE MOBILIZATIONOF TEMPORARY USES IN URBAN DEVELOPMENT POLICIES AND PLACE

MARKETING

By the turn of the 2000s, the phenomenon of the temporary use of vacant buildings and spacesin Berlin had captured the attention of local politicians, planners, economic development officials,and city marketers. The Berlin Senate and other local agencies began to integrate such uses intoexisting strategies and to set up new policies and actions to support their further development.This has to be read within the context of two related trends addressed in turn in this section:

(1) A shift in local economic development policies in Berlin toward the explicit promotionof the cultural industries and the concept of the “creative city,” with the development ofassociated policy initiatives to encourage “creative spaces,” of which former “urban voids”are a key component;

(2) The transformation of the place marketing discourse produced by Berlin’s city and tourismmarketing agencies, which involved the gradual integration of previously nonrepresentedspaces and people into official marketing and media imagery (Colomb, 2011) to renew theimage of Berlin in the new millennium.

In this context, temporary uses and interim spaces have been marketed for several reasons: asplaygrounds or workspaces for “creative” entrepreneurs, as milieux that can attract other creativeworkers and consumers, as a location factor for firms directly or peripherally related to the creativeeconomy, or as tourist attractions.


Berlin and the Creative City Mantra: “Planning for Creative Spaces” or Runningafter Self-Generated Cultural Dynamics?

In 2001, a new coalition between the Social Democratic Party and the left-wing party PDS(Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus, now called Die Linke) came to power in Berlin andruled the city for a decade. The new coalition inherited a totally bankrupt city and had little roomfor maneuver. In comparison to other German cities, Berlin’s growth rates have remained low andunemployment high. One of the few sectors which has, however, been doing well in Berlin is thatof the cultural industries—the fastest growing sector in the city’s economy. In 2002 this sectorrepresented 18,000 small and medium-sized enterprises, 8% of the Berlin workforce and 11% ofBerlin’s GDP (SenWAF, 2005). By 2006, the sector accounted for 10% of the workforce and 21%of the GDP (SenWTF, 2008).7 Several factors have explained the successful growth of culturalindustries in Berlin, in particular cheap living and working spaces, a pre-existing concentrationof artistic, alternative, and counter-cultural networks, and a vibrant music and art scene attractingyoung cultural producers from other parts of the world.

It therefore does not come as a surprise that in the early 2000s, the Department of the Economyof the Berlin Senate began to integrate the theme of the “creative city” in its policies and strategies.The analysis and policy recommendations made by Richard Florida (2002), controversial andcriticized as they may be in academic circles (Kratke, 2010; Markusen, 2006; Montgomery,2005; Peck, 2005), have been extremely influential on local policy-makers around the world,and German cities are no exception (Berlin-Institut fur Bevolkerung und Entwicklung, 2007).The Berlin government’s approach to the growth of cultural industries was initially reactive, butit later turned to more proactive policies (SenWAF, 2005; SenWTF, 2008). Cultural industrieshave been targeted both as an economic sector in its own right, and as an important locationfactor for the attraction of other industries and for the continuous expansion of urban tourism(a very dynamic sector of the Berlin economy). Strategies to encourage cultural clustering andentrepreneurship became key areas for public intervention, through support to affordable workspaces, start-up centers, or Internet-based platforms aimed at facilitating network formation inthe music and design sector. Such policy efforts earned the city the UNESCO designation as“City of Design” as part of the “Creative Cities Network” in November 2005.

In 2007, the Senate Department of Urban Development commissioned a study to investigatehow urban development and planning policies could encourage the further growth of culturalindustries (Ebert & Kunzmann, 2007; STADTart, Kunzmann, & Culture Concepts, 2007), aspart of a deliberate attempt to transform disused urban areas into new creative clusters. Policy-makers started to realize that one of the city’s characteristics—the presence of many unused sitesand buildings, which was previously perceived as a sign of market weakness in the dominantcapitalist urban development rationale—could be promoted as a strength to attract more “youngcreatives” (many of whom did not wait for official promotion policies to settle in Berlin in thefirst place). The first report on the cultural economy (SenWAF, 2005) had already mentionedthe availability of vacant spaces for temporary uses as key for the continuous development ofthe cultural economy. In April 2005 one session of the Stadtforum, a consultative body advisingBerlin’s decision-makers on urban planning and development issues, was dedicated to exploringthe potential of temporary uses for the city. In 2006, the Department of Urban Developmentcommissioned a detailed study of temporary uses in Berlin (Stadt Land Fluss, 2006) and on thatbasis developed various policy measures to facilitate such uses for leisure, sport, entertainment,cultural, ecological, and social purposes (SenStadt, 2007).

In an era of financial restrictions in which public authorities have a limited direct investmentcapacity, the ways in which the local state has promoted temporary uses of space involve medi-ation, assistance in locating sites or the relaxation of licensing and planning procedures (SUC,


FIGURE 4

Berlin’s Largest Vacant Site. Temporary Uses of Space at the Former Tempelhof Airport (Nowa Public Park) (Photo: Author, 2011)

2003, p. 23). In 2003 the district of Marzahn-Hellersdorf pioneered the concept of a coordinationunit whose task is to match site owners with potential temporary users, as well as launch calls for“temporary use ideas.” The concept was replicated elsewhere in the city: public subsidies weregranted to small organizations which act as brokers between land owners and potential temporaryusers in search of a space for their “creative ideas.” The Zwischennutzungsagentur, for example,received funding from the Federal urban policy program Soziale Stadt to encourage the uptake ofempty retail spaces in deprived neighborhoods. The formal remit of the Liegenschaftsfonds, thestate-owned company in charge of marketing and selling public property, was modified to allowtemporary use contracts for nonprofit, community-oriented activities on the publicly owned sitesthat are held in its database, in the absence of interest by potential buyers (Land Berlin, 2005).Additionally, the local state recognized that normal planning and land development proceduresare not well suited for temporary use projects (Kohoutek & Kamleithner, 2003), which “areassessed according to standard criteria as stipulated by building and planning regulations andthe Federal State building order” (Stevens & Voigt, 2007, p. 118). In 2005, a reform of Berlin’sbuilding code simplified the licensing system necessary for temporary uses (SenStadt, 2007,p. 164). More recently, the creative ideas and initiatives of temporary users have been explicitlyincluded by the Berlin Senate Department for Urban Development in the redevelopment of large(public) open spaces in Berlin, most notably in the planning of the public park now occupyingthe site of the former Tempelhof airport (Figure 4) (SenStadt, 2011).

It is worth analyzing the rationale that underpins the Berlin Senate’s increasing support fortemporary uses of vacant urban spaces. For the local state, there are three main reasons forsupporting such uses (SenStadt, 2007, pp. 22–23): the (free) maintenance of public property andthe avoidance of decay and vandalism; their contribution to economic development; and theircontribution to social objectives through the creation of new, publicly accessible open spaces atlittle or no costs for the public purse (Figure 4). The economic development rationale, however,has been predominant. There is an explicit linkage between the mobilization of temporary usesand the creative city agenda of the city government:

The broad range of temporary use projects in Berlin has become a PR and economic factorfor the city. Whether as a motor for creating jobs, a catalyst for the relocation of internationalcompanies or as an attraction for tourists, the financial stimulus generated by temporary usersis increasingly important for Berlin as a creative metropolis. (SenStadt, 2007, p. 41)


Temporary uses, nonetheless, are at the same time often (although not always) perceived bypublic authorities as an intermediary, second-best option for vacant urban spaces in the absenceof other development options, or as a prelude to more profitable ventures to be launched bythe initial users themselves or by external investors. It is rather telling that the title of theSenate-commissioned study on the potential of temporary uses for urban development in Berlinis “urban pioneers” (Raumpioniere). The term was first used by architect Klaus Overmeyer(2005) who made an analogy between temporary users and the military scouts who would go onreconnaissance trips to chart unknown territories and prepare the ground for those who wouldlater settle there. The term was taken over in official publications and in the speeches of the BerlinSenator for Urban Development to describe “a new species of urban players, for whom urbanspaces, untamed territory at best, is something to be discovered, squatted, conquered” (Misselwitzet al., 2007, p. 104). Academic observers will undoubtedly note the striking (although unintended)parallel with the notions of “pioneers” and “new urban frontier” used by Neil Smith (1996) inrelation to the shifting geographies of gentrification. The Berlin Senate has actually acknowledgedthat temporary use projects “give a considerable boost to future developments” by “anchoring anew image of a disused location in the public eye”—a change of image which is a prerequisitefor the change in a site’s purpose or function (SenStadt, 2007, p. 47).

There is indeed evidence in Berlin that in certain areas temporary users (such as techno clubs)have acted as “truffle pigs” (Lange, 2007b, p. 136), turning sites such as the Spree river banksinto attractive locations for large media or music corporations (Bader & Scharenberg, 2010).This is well-illustrated by the remark made by the CEO of Universal Music with regard to thedecision to locate the European headquarters of the company in the Media Spree area of Berlin:“we built our palace in a swamp intentionally, and the swamp better not dry out!” (quoted byLange, 2007b, p. 139). The thriving club and music scene that developed in the area in the 1990sand the presence of innovative subcultural enterprises (e.g., labels, DJs, designers)—some ofwhich are based on temporary uses of space (such as clubs)—was a central reason why someglobal players (MTV and Universal) moved into the area in the first place (Bader, 2004; Bader& Scharenberg, 2010). This process, from the point of view of small-scale cultural producers, isa double-edged sword: whilst it offers more opportunities for funding, audiences, and contractsthrough the flexible integration of small businesses into the networks of global players, it also hasa number of perverse effects: pressures for commercialization, increasing “hype” surrounding thearea leading to higher visitor numbers (not always wanted), rapidly escalating rents, and pressuresfor redevelopment by real-estate developers who bought large parts of the site.

Pushing the Visual Urban Frontier: The Transformation of Place MarketingImagery in Berlin Post-2000

From the early 1990s onward, a number of public and private actors have joined forces todevelop elaborate activities and strategies of place marketing to “sell” the new Berlin to a variedaudience, in particular the city marketing company Partner fur Berlin, the tourism promotionagency Berlin Tourismus Marketing, the Senate Department of the Economy, the Mayor’s office,the chamber of commerce and industry and the local media (Colomb, 2011). Place marketingrefers to the intentional and organized process of construction and dissemination of a discourseon, and images of, a city, in order to attract tourists and investors or generate the support of localresidents for a particular urban vision. The process is “spatial” in the sense that it:

seeks to mediate or construct a defined identity for a particular geographical space, and usuallymakes use of spatial metaphors and of specific architectural symbols characterizing that place inthe process. Place marketing activities thus interact with place making activities (architecture,


planning, urban design and urban development) and with the cultural politics of collectiveidentity and memory construction through space. (Colomb, 2011, p. 26)

Until the year 2000, the visual imagery of the promotional campaigns designed by the citymarketing organization Partner fur Berlin predominantly displayed three sites as symbols of the“new Berlin”: the Potsdamer Platz and its high-rise, iconic corporate architecture symbolizingthe (invoked rather than actual) status as global capitalist service metropolis; the new governmentquarter and the Reichstag (seat of the federal parliament) as symbol of the new “Berliner Repub-lik”; finally the “Neue Mitte” (i.e., the Friedrichstadt area) and its reconstructed urban fabric assymbol of a retrieved traditional European urbanity (Colomb, 2011).

By the late 1990s, the ambitious vision of Berlin as global metropolis in the making thathad been embraced by the city’s economic and political elites a decade earlier had faded away.Paradoxically the need for intensive image production became even stronger as a result: themismatch between the marketing discourse produced in the 1990s and the reality of the economictrajectory of the city explained the search for new image campaigns, new slogans, a new “Berlinbrand,” at the turn of the 21st century (Colomb, 2011). In the search for new images that candistinguish a city from its competitors, the “imagineering process” (Rutheiser, 1996) needs to beconstantly taken forward by place marketing professionals through new visual “urban frontiers.”A new storyline consequently came to the forefront in Berlin city marketing: that of the creativecity, which appeared for the first time in a series of advertisements in 2000, “the New Berlin – theFive Strengths.” From then on, the city marketing organization Partner fur Berlin and the SenateDepartment of the Economy intensified their activities to attract more firms from various sectorsof the cultural industries. A 2001 advertisement specifically invited “creative entrepreneurs” tocome and start up a firm in Berlin, mentioning the city’s nightlife and cultural scenes as keyattraction factors. A year later, another advertisement, picturing the young female CEO of MTVCentral Europe, highlighted the constant change, experimentation, trend setting, and creativity ofBerlin as significant location factors.

Because all cities are now involved in the global competition for “creative” industries, “someway has to be found to keep some commodities or places unique and particular enough” “tomaintain a monopolistic edge in an otherwise commodified and often fiercely competitive econ-omy” (Harvey, 2001, pp. 396–397). The implication of this is that urban policy-makers aroundthe world are now explicitly targeting the “off-beat,” “alternative,” and previously “underground”subcultural and artistic sectors in their local economic development and place marketing strate-gies and urban policies. The “creative city” discourse consequently takes the processes of culturalcommodification and artistically inflected place promotion which have existed since the 1970sone step further (Peck, 2005, p. 762).

But it is not only urban leaders who want their city to “distinguish itself” in marketingcampaigns. The transformation of the cultural consumption practices of (part of) the middle classhas been characterized by a mainstreaming of what were previously considered as “underground”or subcultures. The consumption practices of, in particular, professionals involved in cultural andknowledge-based industries, are marked by a constant search for “distinction” from the traditionalbourgeoisie (to use Bourdieu’s concept, 1979). The possession of “subcultural capital” signalizesstatus in the form of “hipness” (Thornton, 1997). This has triggered a constant renegotiationand extension of the boundaries of legitimate culture to include new, previously illegitimate artand cultural forms (like street art and graffiti). In this context subcultures “can no longer beunderstood primarily as a cultural attack against the mainstream” or as resistance to a hegemonicculture, but have become “niche markets” (Bader & Scharenberg, 2010, p. 79), because “creativeswant edgy cities, not edge cities” (Peck, 2005, p. 745). Urban policy-makers and city marketingorganizations have begun to capitalize on this by marketing their alternative scenes, for example


in Amsterdam, Melbourne (Shaw, 2005) or Paris (Vivant, 2009). A combination of changingcultural consumption practices and changing policy focus consequently explains why new sitesand spaces have become integrated into the formal representation of Berlin to the outside world,accompanied by a narrative of “creativity,” diversity, tolerance, vibrancy, and “hipness.”

This process has been exemplified by the gradual integration of the hedonistic techno and clubculture, and the gay culture, into Berlin’s city marketing and tourism promotion campaigns. Ithas also been accompanied by what I would call, borrowing Smith’s (1996) terminology, thepushing of the visual and discursive “urban frontier” in the official representations of the cityfor marketing and branding purposes, in order to accrue a distinct “collective symbolic capital”(Harvey, 2001). New types of sites and spaces associated with urban subcultures were integratedinto the imagery of city marketing campaigns, the publications of city marketing organizations,and the discourse of the national and international media on Berlin as “destination.” The sitesoccupied by temporary uses alongside the river Spree, in particular, have become particularlypopular images, for example, the beach bars (Figure 2), clubs and Badeschiff (a boat turned intoan outdoor swimming pool). The “be Berlin” international marketing campaign launched by thecity marketing organization in 2009 (Colomb & Kalandides, 2010) featured entertainment-relatedtemporary uses quite prominently, advertising the “rough facades, cracks, contradictions,” and“fractures” of the city as assets (Berlin Partner, 2009, p. 10). Berlin’s “urban voids,” previouslyleft out of the promotional imagery of the 1990s, are now presented as new urban playgroundsfor artistic production, consumption, creativity, entertainment, and leisure, and as “unique sellingpoints” for Berlin. International newspapers such as The Guardian, The Independent, and The NewYork Times have featured articles on Berlin’s urban beaches and club culture as tourist attractionsworth a visit (Barkham, 2007; Bernstein, 2005; The Independent, 2008; Time Magazine, 2009;Woodward, 2005), shifting their attention away from the iconic sites of the 1990s redevelopmentof Berlin such as Potsdamer Platz.8

It should be noted here, however, that only certain types of entertainment-related, “ludic”temporary uses are portrayed to fit into the image of a young, vibrant creative city. The caravan sitesor alternative living projects that have squatted on vacant plots in Kreuzberg are, unsurprisingly,not displayed, although some artistic squats (e.g., the Tacheles building in Mitte) have made theirway into the tourism promotion imagery. This is because, as explained above, temporary usesand “urban pioneers” are valued as a “means to an end” rather than as alternatives to dominant(capitalist) forms of urban development. The interim spaces deemed too radical and politicized,that is, those associated with the radical Left and Autonomen movements, are perceived as toosubversive of the existing order or too threatening to the audiences which city boosters wishto attract. The existence of such spaces actually was often repressed or suppressed by Berlin’s“Red-Red” coalition government (e.g., the eviction of the squatted houses at Brunnenstrasse orLiebig 14) (Holm & Kuhn, 2011).

There is thus a delicate balancing act on the part of urban policy-makers who seek to harnessalternative or countercultural movements in the city marketing discourse and urban developmentstrategies. To maintain place uniqueness and distinctiveness, the local state and private capitalhave to support “a form of differentiation and allow divergent and to some degree uncontrollablelocal cultural developments that can be antagonistic to its own smooth functioning” (Harvey, 2001,p. 409). This means the local state “can even support (though cautiously and often nervously)all manner of ‘transgressive’ cultural practices precisely because this is one way in which tobe original, creative and authentic as well as unique” (Harvey, 2002, np). This is inherentlyconflictual because it produces, in turn, “widespread alienation and resentment among the culturalproducers who experience first-hand the appropriation and exploitation of their creativity for theeconomic benefit of others” (Harvey, 2002, np). There is, therefore, a fundamental contradiction—discussed in the next section—at the heart of the process of pushing the visual “urban frontier”


in place marketing and urban branding strategies: “a branding strategy using a city’s subculturemay enhance the city’s symbolic value, but simultaneously undermine the everyday conditionsnecessary to sustain the creative process itself” (Bader & Scharenberg, 2010, p. 80). This paradoxis inherent to the process of mobilizing culture, heritage, and history in the search for “monopolyrents” which characterizes capitalist urban development (Harvey, 1989, 2001).

TEMPORARY USERS OF URBAN SPACE IN THE AGE OF THE “CREATIVE CITY”:DILEMMAS, TENSIONS, AND CONFLICTS

The new generation of “creative city policies” of the 2000s in Berlin has accelerated the processof harnessing cultural, artistic, and alternative uses of urban spaces for economic purposes. Asdiscussed above, in this logic, artists, cultural producers, and temporary users are not only targetedas an economic sector in themselves (e.g., the cultural industries), but also as the main componentof the “soft infrastructure,” the unique “look and feel,” diversity and “hipness” which providespecific cities with a competitive advantage to attract workers in the knowledge-based industries.The instrumentalization of temporary uses and of interim spaces poses a major challenge fortheir creators and users, who are faced with major tensions between “authenticity” and “staging,”between the pursuit of truly alternative or noncommercial endeavors and their appropriation by themarket for a (longer-term) project of commercial urban redevelopment, between the spontaneoususe of urban margins and the incremental start of a process of symbolic, and real, gentrification(Shaw, 2005).

The role of artists and cultural producers in processes of gentrification has been explored indepth in the academic literature since Zukin’s (1988, 1995) and Harvey’s (1989) seminal studiesof the use of “culture” and the arts as instruments of urban revitalization in New York andBaltimore. The process of physical gentrification (i.e., an upgrade of the building stock followedby changes in tenure patterns, increases in rent and the gradual displacement of existing residentsby higher income groups) often starts with “symbolic gentrification” (Holm, 2010; Lang, 1998).Temporary uses “substantially contribute [to] the symbolic and programmatic redefinition ofsites, mostly from former industrial or infrastructural use to post-industrial types of programs(culture, services, leisure)” (SUC, 2003, p. 24), something that generates the precondition forcommercial redevelopment to take place on or around temporarily used sites. In Berlin, “symbolicgentrification” has been further triggered by the marketing of temporary uses by the local state,the media, and temporary users themselves;9 by the inclusion of new, “off-beat” areas into touristguides and by the relentless search for new “up and coming” areas in the local media (e.g., thecity magazines TIP and Zitty).

The temporary uses which have emerged since the 1990s on Berlin’s vacant spaces haveconsequently followed various trajectories of survival, transformation, or disappearance over theyears. Some temporary users have been able to consolidate their presence by securing a long-termagreement to remain on site (e.g., the beach bar Strandbar Mitte, which was incorporated in areduced and more controlled form into the long-term plans for the Montbijou park—see Stevens &Ambler, 2010). The transformation into a permanent use is often accompanied by a transformationof the activity into a proper business, turning the initial users from “space pioneer” to “spatialenterprise” (SenStadt, 2007, p. 127). A good example of that process is the Arena complex onthe southern bank of the river Spree. A former omnibus depot built in 1927 was occupied in1995 by a nonprofit artists’ collective which began to organize cultural events, while some of thebuildings and courtyards began to be used as a flea market. The building complex then becamea fully fledged, large-scale commercial entertainment venue, with a large hall hosting concerts,cultural and corporate events attracting up to 7,500 people. A boat with an outdoor swimmingpool (in summer) and a sauna (in winter), the Badeschiff , was successfully added to the site. Part


of the original flea market has survived in some of the site’s warehouses—an example of informaltemporary uses continuing to exist after the establishment of a formal, permanent, and profitableventure on the same site (SUC, 2003).

In many instances, however, a temporary use is threatened with displacement after a fewyears, although the weak economic demand in Berlin has meant that the pressures on temporaryusers have not been as high as in other large European cities. If temporary users “are forced toabandon their current locations, there is still more vacant space, though this is more and moreon the outskirts” (Bader & Bialluch, 2008, p. 98). This has triggered various reactions on thepart of temporary users. Some have consented to move and concentrated their effort on findinga suitable site to continue their activity, as did several beach bars and techno clubs in Berlin.Other temporary users have fought to remain on the initial site by negotiating with land owners,sometimes to reach a compromise combining a new, permanent use alongside the initial temporaryuse.10 Other temporary users have continued to occupy the site without the owner’s permission(i.e., squatting). Some have been displaced and have ceased their activity in the absence of a newsuitable site. Finally, some temporary users have mobilized the support of other actors to defendthe existence of temporary uses and interim spaces. Such uses and spaces, in that sense, presenta strong paradox for established city planning and urban politics:

Institutionalised stakeholders may occasionally appreciate their presence for their inherentpotential to enhance attractiveness of and revitalisation of certain parts of the city. On theother hand, these sites and the actors involved also spatialise and visualise a resistance andtemporary alternative to the institutionalised domain and the dominant principles of urbandevelopment. (Groth & Corjin, 2005, p. 503, my emphasis)

When temporary uses are repressed or threatened with displacement, forms of mobilizationbetween temporary users, the neighborhood, and sympathizers may therefore emerge to opposethe official redevelopment plans for a site (Groth & Corjin, p. 521). Often these actors do notonly demand the preservation of the existing temporary uses, but also seek to have a voice inthe planning process for the future of the site. In Berlin the most prominent example of such amobilization is the conflict that has surrounded the redevelopment of the so-called “Mediaspree”area which spans 3.7 km alongside the eastern part of the river Spree. From the mid 1990sonward many temporary uses have been set up on various disused sites in the area, in particularseveral beach bars and clubs. Some have become successful commercial enterprises (e.g., Bar25, Oststrand) whilst others have maintained a more social-cultural outlook (Yaam) or a radicalpolitical character (such as the caravan site and “rebel queer living project” Schwarzer Kanal).

In the 1990s the area did not attract much attention from local policymakers, as priority wasgiven to the rebuilding of central sites such as Potsdamer Platz and the new government quarter. In2001 and 2004, two high-profile media and music corporations relocated to converted warehousebuildings on the northern bank of the river: Universal Music Germany and MTV Central Europe.From 2002 onward, a coalition of land owners, large corporations and the Berlin Senate began topromote the redevelopment of the eastern Spree area into a large-scale office and entertainmentcomplex for the media and music industries under the label “Mediaspree.” This vision clashed inscale and in content with the existing temporary uses and small-scale cultural enterprises presentin the area.

In 2008, a coalition of actors got together under the banner “Mediaspree Versenken!” (“SinkMediaspree”) to protest against the plans for the site, in particular the scale and nature of theproposed developments and the foreseen privatization of access to the riverside (Figure 5). Themovement brought together a diverse set of actors—a rare case “where the alternative and radicalleft successfully cooperated with subcultural actors (in particular from the club scene), creative


FIGURE 5

Protesting Against the Redevelopment Plans for the Mediaspree Area. Left: Graffiti on theQuay of a Beach Bar with the 02 Arena in the Background. Right: Demonstration Against theMediaspree Development: The Banner is an Ironic Subversion of the Slogan of Berlin’s 2008 CityMarketing Campaign “be Berlin” (Photo: Left, Author, 2010; Right, Dominique Kreuzkam, 2009)

entrepreneurs, parts of the alternative middle class (often coming from previous movements) andthe marginalized” (Scharenberg & Bader, 2009, p. 332). The mobilization managed to force theinvestors and the local state to reconsider some of their plans for the area, although the long-termprospects are still unclear. The story of the struggle is well analyzed by Scharenberg and Bader(2009) and will not be discussed further here. What is worth noting, in relation to the presentdiscussion, is that the initiators of many temporary uses—artists, cultural entrepreneurs, clubowners, or activists whom the Berlin Senate labels “young creatives” or “urban pioneers”—haveplayed a prominent role in the protests against the redevelopment plans for the area, fighting inparticular against the eviction of temporary users (Novy and Colomb, 2012). From 2008 onward,the movement was renamed Megaspree and expanded its agenda and claims to address Berlin-wide issues of increasing rents, the displacement of low income residents, gentrification and theeviction of alternative, subcultural projects or “leftist free spaces” (Holm, 2010; Holm & Kuhn,2011; Novy and Colomb, 2012; Scharenberg & Bader, 2009).

This development is not unique to Berlin. There is evidence of similar forms of mobilizationin other German cities, for example, in Hamburg (Novy and Colomb, 2012), where in October2009 a collective of artists, musicians, and social activists published a manifesto attacking the“branding” of Hamburg as “creative city,” the type of urban (re)development policies done in thename of the “creative city” agenda, and the instrumentalization of artists and cultural producersin the process (NiON, 2010; Oehmke, 2010). The displacement of artistic and cultural uses,temporary or not, is one of the elements mentioned in the manifesto. In other cities across theglobe there is mounting evidence of a growing mobilization by members of the so-called “creativeclass”—some of whom engaged in temporary uses of space—to defend the urban spaces, uses,and users threatened by development policies done in the name of the “creative city” mantra.

CONCLUSION

This contribution has explored the gradual integration of temporary uses of space in Berlin’sofficial place marketing discourse and in the economic development policies set up to promote


Berlin as “creative city” post-2000. The “creative city” agenda of the Berlin Senate is closelyassociated with an urban development model which relies on a multiplicity of “creative spaces”whose boundaries, location, and nature are constantly reinvented by young “urban pioneers”(SenStadt, 2007). As noted by Peck in his analysis of “creative city strategies,” the creativityof such strategies is precisely that they enlist “some of the few remaining pools of untappedresources” and “previously-marginalized actors” (2005, p. 763)—in the Berlin case, temporaryuses and interim spaces. But the paradox here is that “reducing interim and small-scale users tobeing solely a marketing tool for real estate in the city, combined with the lack of any strategyfor their support, undermines the development of a proper long-term creative city policy” (Bader& Bialluch, 2008, pp. 98–99).

The production of new visual urban frontiers and new urban images in the branding of theso-called “creative city,” and the material impacts which this process has in terms of displace-ment, institutionalization, and commodification, generates resistance on the part of some of theproducers and users of interim spaces. This leads to localized conflicts about the future of spacespromoted as “creative” in public policies and the official marketing discourse. On the one hand,Berlin’s “urban margins” offer the possibility of an escape from “the controlled spaces of itsurbanistic interventions” and “the consumerist bombardment of meaning and messages” (Cupers& Miessen, 2002, p. 83). As in-between spaces between architecturally planned sites they stand“in the shadow of institutionalized meaning and representation” (p. 105) and thus offer spacesfor cultural, social, and artistic experimentation. On the other hand, such temporary practicesoften pave the way for more conventional forms of urban redevelopment that threaten the sur-vival of temporary, experimental uses, forcing them to transform, relocate, or disappear. Thelocal state has an instrumental view of temporary uses as uses that are permitted “by default”in the absence of strong demand for commercial development. If a site becomes valuable formainstream forms of real-estate development, conflict arises between current and future users.The Mediaspree area in Berlin is a case in point. Temporary uses are thus characterized byinherent tensions between their temporary nature and the potential search for perennity, betweentheir grassroot, unplanned character, and their inevitable encounter with top-down planning andurban development processes, between their search for alternative cultural forms of “insurgenturbanism” and their inherent tendency to pave the way for profit-oriented urban redevelopmentprocesses.

This Berlin case study, in spite of the historic and contextual specificities of the city, is ofrelevance for urban practice and research in other contexts, in particular in “shrinking cities”and regions with large stocks of disused spaces, for example, in Central and Eastern Europe, theRust Belts of the United States, and North-West Europe, but also in Latin America (Pallagst,Wiechmann, & Martinez-Fernandez, 2011). In the United States, cities like Cleveland or Detroithave lost a significant proportion of their population and are left with a built footprint muchlarger than their actual and future populations. Large urban areas are filled with vacant buildingsand disused sites. Various experiments in temporary uses and a national campaign (the NationalVacant Properties Campaign) have raised the interest of researchers, planners, politicians, andactivists in interim uses as possible solutions to deal with land and building vacancy in the UnitedStates. Following the impact of the 2008 global financial and economic crisis on cities around theworld, it is interesting to note that at present not only “shrinking cities” are faced with the issueof increasing vacancy. Cities which until recently were (or still are) growing have been affectedby the abrupt slowdown (or complete halt) of construction activity and by sharp cuts in publicinvestment in urban public spaces. Sites half-built up, where construction is unlikely to resumein the near future, are a common sight in many countries such as Spain. Temporary or interimuses are, therefore, worth exploring in those contexts too, albeit with an awareness of the inherentdilemmas which characterize their development.


ACKNOWLEDGMENT: The author would like to thank the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for a 6-monthExperienced Researcher Fellowship which funded part of the research upon which this paper is based. Thefellowship was held at the Centre for Metropolitan Studies, Berlin, in the second half of 2009.

ENDNOTES

1 In the 1990s and 2000s, as Berlin became a popular case study in urban research, a debate unfolded betweena number of (mainly) Anglophone researchers about the appropriateness of using an “Anglo-American meta-narrative of neo-liberal urban governance” for the analysis of Berlin’s post-1989 transformations (see Campbell,1999; Cochrane, 2006; Haußermann, 1999; Latham, 2006a, 2006b; Marcuse, 1998). Some authors argued thatsince the Fall of the Wall, the city has been going through a process of “urban Euroconvergence” (Campbell,1999, p. 179) or “normalization” characterized by trends witnessed in other North American and Europeanmetropolitan areas, such as gentrification or suburbanization (Brenner, 2002; Cochrane & Passmore, 2001).Others (Latham, 2006a, 2006b) have argued that “many of the more interesting and exceptional phenomenawhich are shaping Berlin” post-1989 are not grasped well by such analyses, which “fail to convey the distinc-tiveness of many of the debates around urban development, regulation (of all sorts), and how these debates areoften structured through patterns of thinking which are quite alien to Anglo-American urban practice. And theymiss – or in fact simply discount—the quite different intellectual and political traditions through which Berlinis shaped” (Latham, 2006a, p. 377).

2 Following German unification, the outer districts of East Berlin have experienced population decline — in thedistrict of Marzahn-Hellersdorf, by 17% between 1995 and 2002, with rates nearing 30% in some parts of thedistrict (SenStadt, 2007, p. 23). A federal program of urban renewal named Stadtumbau Ost was set up in 2002to tackle this decline. The program included the demolition of “surplus housing” and disused public buildings:in 2007, 185 buildings covering a surface of 140 hectares were earmarked for demolition.

3 The discourse on “reurbanization” is part of a wider debate which was particularly intense in Berlin in the 1990son what type of urban form and architectural norms should be used to guide the reconstruction of the reunifiedcity. The promoters of “critical reconstruction” advocated a return to a “traditional” European city throughthe restoration of the historical block patterns, street alignments, and building heights of the late 19th centurycity, whilst prominent architects such as Rem Koolhaas or Daniel Liebeskind argued that this “neo-historicistdesign regime” would stifle opportunities for architectural expression (see Burg, 1994; Burg & Stimmann,1995; Molnar, 2010; Murray, 2008, for an overview of the debates).

4 The project Urban catalysts. Strategies for temporary uses—Potential for development of urban residual areas inEuropean metropolises (2001–2003) was funded by the European Union 5th Framework Program for Researchunder the specific strand “City of Tomorrow – Cultural Heritage.” The project, which involved a network of 12partners from five European metropolises—Helsinki, Amsterdam, Berlin, Vienna, and Naples—investigatedthe potential of temporary uses as a motor of urban change. Its findings are summarized in SUC (2003).

5 Social innovation refers here to forms of social mobilization focused on the “satisfaction of human needs (andempowerment, i.e., social economy) through innovation in the relations within neighborhood and communitygovernance” (Moulaert, Martinelli, Gonzalez, & Swyngedouw, 2007, p. 196). Such forms of mobilization havethe capacity to “elaborate alternative (counterhegemonic) discourses and actions in terms of resistance and/orcreative alternatives” (p. 206).

6 There is no space here to analyze in detail the story and content of specific temporary uses and interim spacesin Berlin. For case studies in English, see Groth and Corjin (2005), SenStadt (2007), Shaw (2005), Stevens andAmbler (2010), and Till (2011).

7 The Berlin Senate’s definition of the cultural industries includes publishing and printed media, film andTV production, fashion, design, software and games development, telecommunications, music, advertising,architecture, and exhibition arts. This corresponds to only one segment of what Florida refers to as the “creativeclasses.” In this paper, I use the word “creative(s)” not as a rigorous analytical category, but as the term actuallyused by local policy-makers and place marketers in the policy and marketing discourses.


8 The process of pushing the visual and discursive “urban frontier” in Berlin’s place marketing imagery has notonly included temporary uses and interim spaces, but also sites of historical memory previously left out of thecity marketing discourse, as well as socially and ethnically mixed neighborhoods (such as Kreuzberg) and theiralternative and counter-cultural urban life (see Colomb, 2011, Chapter 8; and Novy & Huning, 2008).

9 In Berlin the process of marketing temporary uses as tourist attractions has certainly increased their popularityand fuelled visitor numbers, although the initial success of particular sites predated official “creative citypolicies” or media publicity. The influx of tourists to entertainment-oriented temporary uses, in particularbeach bars, has in some cases triggered a transformation of the activity at the expense of the small-scale,experimental, informal, and non-commercial nature of early uses. Some of Berlin’s beach bars have becomehighly commercial enterprises used by a rather high-income clientele.

10 This has sometimes happened with the support of the local state or of other local agencies. Berlin’s tourismpromotion organization BTM has, for example, started to call for specific measures to protect Berlin’s beachbars and clubs, as these have become such an important tourist magnet in recent years.

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