View source for Shared Spaces as Urban Commons in Amsterdam and Berlin


'''* Report: Urban Commons Shared Spaces. By Jens Kimmel, Sophie Bloemen and Till Gentsch. Commons Network and Raumlaborberlin, 2018'''

URL = http://www.commonsnetwork.org/news/shared-spaces-new-paper-on-urban-commons/

‘Shared Spaces’ features many concrete policy ideas for municipal leaders and lawmakers, as well as strategies and tips for urban commons pioneers. It was written  and designed by raumlaborberlin."

=Excerpts from Case Studies=

==On Amsterdam==

"Public space vs. buildings

While the broedplaatsen policy focuses strictly on the use of
buildings, much commoning in Amsterdam also plays out in public
space using the city’s side-walks, streets, parks and squares. More
precise, such spaces are public-access and become genuinely
public when people are free to actively use them.18 Commons
making temporary use of public city spaces fit in the tradition of
placemaking, which concerns ‘’the deliberate shaping of an
environment to facilitate social interaction and improve a community’s quality of life’’.

A special case of commons in Amsterdam, in the sense that it
concerns neither the use of buildings nor public space but the
squatting of a large lot of unused land, is the self-built village on
the ADM area in the Western part of the Amsterdam port, a final
branch of the former kraker movement. Whereas the municipality’s attitude toward smaller and temporary initiatives has been
relatively supportive, its stance in the ADM case reflects unwillingness at best as it has made little effort to protect the community
from large-scale developer plans and thus failed to recognize
ADM’s added social, cultural, ecological and even scientific value."


==On Berlin==

===A [[Commons History of Berlin]]===

By Jens Kimmel, Sophie Bloemen and Till Gentsch:

"The squatter movement has also played a very important role in
Berlin of the sixties and seventies, especially in the Kreuzberg area
which remains one of the most vibrant and politically engaged
neighbourhoods today. The squatter or Hausbsetzungs movement
challenged central urban planning, which had led to the structural
and large scale disuse of empty buildings while many young people
needed housing. Their actions in the early eighties enjoyed wide
support throughout Berlin society and beyond. The culture of
Selbstverwaltung (self government) and collectivity was very
influential and still echo in the Freie Szene (free scene) of Berlin
today.

During the late 1980s and 1990s a great deal of the land in Berlin
lay vacant too. After the fall of the Berlin wall, especially many
buildings in the East were not in use and ownership often remained unclear. The squatter movement, the techno scene and
many other defining traits that led to the fascination so many
people feel towards Berlin, would not have been possible without
this great vacancy and the city’s political situation at the time.22
Indeed, the then still generous welfare system, which allowed
people to dedicate their time to unpaid work, also contributed
greatly to the development of communities and cultural and
political initiative at the time.

The city of Berlin, however, was heavily indebted and started to
sell off public property – buildings as well as land – to the highest
bidder in 2002, a habit that intensified over the years. At the same
time, privately owned companies started to manage public
property without much eye for potential community-based use.

As of 2008, right after the global financial crisis, interest in buying
real estate was low for several years, which, much like the situation in Amsterdam, presented a window of opportunity for commons in the urban environment. In Berlin it allowed, for example,
for the start of the well-known and greatly successful urban
agriculture initiative Prinzessinnengarten (Garden of the Princesses), which took on a political role and challenged dominant ideas
about who owns the city and what purposes city space can serve.

As the banking sector was ‘secured’ and the economy picked up
steam a few years later, the interest in buying Berlin estate
re-emerged and grew fiercely to eventually escalate into heavy
speculation on housing and land. As a consequence, a great deal of
public property accommodating social and cultural initiative has
been sold off while tenants in Berlin are increasingly spending
major parts of their income - around fifty percent - on rents.23
Over the years, many urban commons initiatives have been
evicted, not being able to secure ownership of the spaces they
were using. The phase of so-called Zwischennutzung (in-between
use) of buildings and public spaces seems more or less over with
only very few vacant spaces left."
(http://www.commonsnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/SharedSpacesCommonsNetwork.pdf)

===Recent developments regarding urban commons===

Several key events took place in the 2010s, setting the tone for the
political debate and shaping the expectations of Berlin citizens
with respect to affordable housing and the collective stewardship
of city spaces. The initiatives below vary in the way they reflect the
commons, but all seem to have developed a community-based
perspective on the right to city spaces.

One of these events has been the activist citizen initiative 100%
Tempelhofer Feld, which was founded in 2011 and demanded to
secure the open space of the former Tempelhof airfield for the
public. The group worked tirelessly to prevent the senate’s largescale development plan for the area from being implemented. By
the time the development plan was introduced, the 380 hectare
space had been standing vacant for a long time in which many
different individuals and communities had already been using the
place for various activities – from urban gardening to sport
activities – and now were being threatened to lose it. A city-wide
referendum was held on 25 May 2014 in which 63,3% of the participants said yes to Tempelhofer Feld’s proposal.

Another prominent example is the 40-year battle of neighbours
and activists for participation in the development of the contested
Gleisdreieck territory in the borough Kreuzberg/ Schöneberg.
After an extensive period of meetings, protests and lawsuits, the
action group eventually succeeded to prevent the construction of
a highway, an exhibition and an amusement park. In 2005 the
initiative Aktionsgemeinschaft Gleisdreieck (Action Community
Gleisdreck) was finally invited to take part in the planning process
of the park and present its vision, which generally deviated
strongly from what the architects, the senate and Grün Berlin
GmbH, the project management company, had in mind. Although
the result was a compromise, the heterogeneous initiative was
able to directly participate in the planning of their neighbourhood
through which they were able to protect the area’s social value.

A group of tenants renting from Berlin’s social housing corporations organized themselves in 2012 as Kotti and Co to protest the
increasing rents. Right in front of their homes, they occupied parts
of the Kottbusser Tor public square and built a protest house on it,
the Gecekondu (Turkish for informal city/slum), which served as a
place of assembly for everyone taking part in the protest and
became the symbol of the ongoing conflict.

As recent as April 2018 a demonstration protesting the high rents
brought together 20.000 people to the streets and received major
attention. In May this year, Berlin saw a revival of political squatting as two houses in Kreuzberg and Neukölln were occupied
while 5 others were announced to be occupied in a political
gesture. Increasing housing needs, speculation and steep rent
increases are leading to radical responses that enjoy broad support
from citizen and parts of the political establishment, as did the
squatter movement in the 80s. 

The initiative Stadt von Unten (City from Below) is promoting
communally owned and self-governed housing as well as “100%
affordable rents” at the Dragonerareal, a building complex consisting of, among others, a former military base. The people involved
in Stadt von Unten are campaigning against the planned privatization of space in the city and develop concrete alternative models
that allow for and ensure sustainable housing.

In 2012 200 refugees and helping activists occupied the buildings
of the Gerhardt-Hauptmann school in Kreuzberg as a response to
both unaffordable housing and asylum policies. The building
provided a home to up to 200 people. Several big theaters in Berlin
also took part in the alliance, referred to as My right is your right,
which helped to politicize the struggle for a right to the city and
questioned the inclusiveness of national citizenship.

Despite these examples of people actively claiming their right to
the city, the senate’s top down style of governing has not significantly changed."
(http://www.commonsnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/SharedSpacesCommonsNetwork.pdf)

[[Category:Urban Commons]]

[[Category:Germany]]

[[Category:Netherlands]]

[[Category:Commons Policy]]