I'd much rather see Kleingarten disappear than public spaces.
The issue there is the usual weird coalition between landlords that don’t want more residents (if they live there) or more competition (if they rent their flat) and the fringe of the green/left that is worried about urbanisation, gentrification economic activity.
On one side it also has the actual airport building. They have very interesting historical tours there.
You can see a couple of representative photos here.
https://www.npr.org/2018/08/11/634394533/the-site-of-the-ber...
Tempelhofer field is one of the jewels of the city.
People need the space. It's not fair to force a whole city to live their lives entirely in 25m2 apartments, if more apartments are built, there's a chance more will go to speculators. I, and a large portion of Berlin, would rather force speculators out.
And, of course, “half of it” was a hyperbole.
The issue is that it's very difficult for individuals to acquire housing units. My apartment costs about 1500x its monthly rent to acquire (€400 vs €600k min). Which means it's now a lousy investment for people wanting to live in it (since they won't be saving any money unless live to be 150 years old), and for people wanting to buy a small number of properties to rent (same deal).
Since real estate is traditionally kind of a "future insurance", for old people not to have to rely on pension to live, it also makes the future a lot grim and uncertain for people who'll have to rely on public pension for a place to live.
Getting more units in the market will only make things worse for those people: rent prices will make it impossible for them to own, and won't make sense for them to own to rent.
Individuals not being able to acquire apartments also has the side effects of things like crazy rental terms (not difficult to see the best apartments with limit of 6 months rental) or even empty units because they're used for commercial renting only. Across the street from me there's a 50-unit condo that's fully empty. I know that because I used to live there and for a while I was the only tenant. It costs about €2000 a month vs my €400.
I don't know what's the endgame of speculators. Maybe they're waiting to own everything so that they can jack up the prices? Maybe they're merely taking opportunity of the low interest rates to pay for those things in 100 years? Is that investment companies buying it to force people into private pension?
I don't know. I just know that the issue is a lot darker and I don't see "the market" solving it by itself without creating even more problems. I know this is a very sensitive matter to some people but I just don't see "the market" doing anything positive if left by itself.
EDIT: As user probably_wrong put below, "the losses would be socialized (namely, the park) while the benefits would go to the wealthy."
As user probably_wrong put it below, "the losses would be socialized (namely, the park) while the benefits would go to the wealthy."
What we need is more units. The affordability to non-speculators follows from that, which is just supply and demand playing out. If you double supply via high rise apartments, the value is guaranteed to drop significantly. Increasing supply by removing regulations around apartment construction also reduces the incentive to buy to invest. Who would want to invest when the supply is liable to increase?
I don't follow the same economical dogmas you do. In my opinion it's not about supply or demand, but purely about a certain group of investors fucking up everyone lives. I'd prefer to attack this problem head-on rather than having bandaids that involve destroying Tempelhofer Feld or removing the Kleingarten, like other people suggested.
Property investors really aren't the root problem because they lease the property back onto the market and that supply doesn't vanish.
This is not dogma. Quite the opposite. The impact of supply caps due to zoning has been studied to death by economists.
The "preserve greenery" perspective is just a highly privileged one and a false choice/false dilemma to boot. You can build vertically without sacrificing greenery or destroying your parks and bushland. Why not just do that and solve the entire problem? Oh wait that is illegal...
What? Berlin has lots of parks and public areas, much more than Munich and slightly more than Frankfurt or Dusseldorf.
You make it sound like Berlin is full of cramped buildings and someone is trying to take away the last open space. That's absolutely not true.
All I am saying is that those areas are not "useless" by any means.
I'd rather attack speculation head-on that have band-aid solutions.
I also don't believe that removing those areas will make any difference regarding speculation. Again, as user probably_wrong put below, "the losses would be socialized (namely, the park) while the benefits would go to the wealthy."
From my perspective, the worst use of land in berlin is the Schrebergarten[1]. These are little free standing "houses" with a garden which some families own and spend time in during the summer. I live close to a canal on the south-east side of Berlin, within the ring, and there are several patches of these within 10 minutes biking from my apartment. This is very well-located land, and from what I can tell it goes completely unused 6-9 months per year, and at best sporadically during the summer months.
I understand that this is very traditional in Germany, but the idea that some of the most desirable land in Berlin is being used for some families to use a handful of weekends per year is just crazy. At least Tempelhof is public and serving hundreds or thousands of people every day.
[1]: https://www.dw.com/en/a-brief-guide-to-german-garden-colonie...
For those unfamiliar with the situation I found this article [1] which, biased as it is, I think accurately reflects the opinion of the common Berliner at the time. If the plan had proposed 100% social housing, I bet the story would have been different.
[1] https://www.exberliner.com/features/opinion/everyone-is-lyin...
Also it is not just social cases who have problems with high rents in Berlin. You suggest the majority of people in Berlin want only more social housing, implying most of them are social cases themselves?
As for the second part: Berliners feel that the city should belong to those that lived there when no one wanted to, and recognize that those people are probably not rich. Kicking the hairdresser that lived there for 40 years to make room for the tech bro is not generally seen as a positive development. Social housing would ensure that the city remains in the hands of its citizens.
The park would not be "given to the rich", presumably the parts open for building would have been sold to "the rich", with the money benefitting every Berlin citizen (ideally - but we know our government her is composed of very good people, right?).
Also what does it matter if the "rich" rent out their old apartment? What is needed is supply of apartments. Per supply and demand, more supply means lower prices.
Do the people expect to live in luxury apartments for little money?
And it is very touching that nobody wanted to live here 40 years ago and the people held on. But then they could have bought their living places for very little money. Also the whole place was subsidized by the USA as a stand against the Soviet Union. The people staying benefitted a lot.
There already is a construct for the place where you live belonging to you: it is called "buying your own place to live". If you choose to rent instead, you signal that you don't necessarily want to stay forever.