Berlin – Six civic associations, which are committed to the development of a liveable inner city, formulate their expectations of the coalition partners who will determine politics in the next few years. The main demand: finally take your right to have a say seriously.
Middle for everyone: the time has come. Let Berlin decide!
Behind the Rotes Rathaus is Berlin’s most terrible non-place: a 50-meter-wide street, construction sites, unrelated buildings, deafening noise, dirty parking spaces, worn-out posters from the Senate Administration that advertise the area as a promising place. It’s hard to believe that this was once Berlin’s oldest, most beautiful and liveliest quarter.
But urban planning in the 1960s had different ideas and buried this place under Grunerstrasse and parking lots. Now this area – Molkenmarkt and Klosterviertel – is to be developed. Again everything goes wrong: Grunerstraße is only being moved, nothing changes in the noise of a motorway. The development plan says: It will be so loud that a commercial complex has to be built to shield the planned apartment blocks from the noise. It is already clear that such shielded and monotonous apartment blocks will not become a lively and diverse city center.
Do we really want that? The Bündnis Mitte für alle demands: The urban society should decide what its core city should look like! We live, work and live here. The time has come for the citizens to help shape their city through real participation. Solved citizens’ councils are ideal for this. By drawing lots, they do not stand for special interests, but for the diverse urban society.
Experts answer questions from the public, a professional moderator controls the process. The citizens ‘councils’ proposals are presented to the public, discussed and then submitted to all Berliners for a vote. Bertram Barthel, Dr. Benedikt Goebel, Giorgio Paschotta
Future Berlin Foundation: New impulses for democracy
Berlin needs to be more confident and tackle big problems more consistently. This applies to the most important issues in the city, from housing construction to transport policy to schools, as well as to the relationship with neighboring Brandenburg and Berlin’s European orientation. More confidence is also important for the style in which politics are made here. Our democracy urgently needs more openness to impulses from the citizenry.
In the Berlin Forum, the foundation has shown for years how the dialogue can be better organized. It is now important to expand this approach by preparing decisions on an absolutely equal footing between politics and citizens. Democracy projects of this kind would strengthen Berlin and not only lead to a better acceptance of projects, but also to better results for our city.
When it comes to living, the focus must be on the speed and quality of the completion of new apartments, so the result of our civil society round table living, which brings different groups, especially tenants and landlords, into conversation. Politics and society must jointly discuss financing and rent levels, infrastructure and innovative building materials, building renovation and climate protection measures.
For better city management, a constitutional convention should fundamentally clarify the responsibilities between the Senate and the districts. Politics has repeatedly got caught between the various interests. A courageous design that removes various blockages is urgently needed, but it will only come about if urban society is involved from the start. Stefan Richter, managing director
Think of Berlin e. V .: Right to sue for monument protection!
The upcoming change in Berlin politics enables a new beginning and responsible action in the interests of society. In the past, too often decisions were made in Berlin that did not take into account the history of the city and its historical evidence in the cityscape.
There are more and more opportunities for participation and forums on urban development, but are their results actually implemented? With more and more projects there are concerted objections from citizens – Mühlendamm and Mühlendammbrücke in Mitte, the Gasometer in Schöneberg, the area around the Humboldt Forum – but they go unheard.
For us, Berlin is a cosmos of cultural and social history with more than 8,200 monuments that come from a wide variety of lifeworlds and centuries from the Middle Ages to the present. The preservation of culture is important for future generations, and that must be the focus of all those involved in urban action.
We are therefore firmly convinced that it is time for a representative right of action in monument protection, as it already exists in other areas of society such as environmental and nature conservation. In this way the citizens can defend themselves against the clearing of Berlin’s history.
Therefore, we also turn to politics and demand more attentiveness and the maintenance of monuments in their diversity so that they find a meaningful role in the future, that they create identity, but at the same time can also appear as witnesses of injustice and violence! Elisabeth Ziemer, chairwoman
Berlin Historical Center e. V .: Out with the federal highways!
The question of how Berlin can preserve a city center is more unclear than ever – and not just since the “fall of the wall” or since the palace was built, but for 100 years: At that time, Max Liebermann and Käthe Kollwitz fought for the preservation of the old town and against the major road openings Time!
Without success. The huge aisle between the castle and the Lustgarten was “cut through” as ice-cold and developed like a motorway towards the east, with even more exaggeration after 1945/1960.
Not even 500 meters further south of it – here, started back then and further perverted from 1960 under the sign of the car craze, the most beautiful and most important parts of old Berlin were destroyed in the asphalt and buried.
What could be more noble than today following in the footsteps of Käthe Kollwitz and Max Liebermann to demand the healing and reparation of the battered city? Three federal highways run through the center of Berlin – this unbearable state must be ended.
A city center is by definition an ensemble of the political center, surrounded by markets or markets, shops, museums, social facilities, cinemas, theaters, diverse places of worship, galleries, restaurants, cafes, hotels and small event spaces in a beautifully built context with interesting houses and beautiful places, trees, views and attractions. We demand:
1. Statutory repeal of all federal highways in the city center
2. Return of the Berlin Parliament to the Red City Hall as the political communal center
3. Striving for a city center for everyone in the conventional sense of mixing, taking into account the city’s history
Annette Ahme, chairwoman
Forum Stadtbild Berlin e. V .: Make old floor plans visible!
We are a non-profit association founded in 2002, which has made it its task to sensitize the Berlin bourgeoisie to issues of architecture and the maintenance of the cityscape. We pay particular attention to the planning and design of the historic center of the city while respecting Berlin’s architectural history.
The historic center of Berlin’s center has more or less disappeared. But the tradition from which Berlin as a city derives its self-image can only be maintained if places of remembrance are not devalued or destroyed. In this respect, it is now important that the historical floor plan of the streets and squares is made visible again and serves as the basis for careful reconstruction or new construction in connection with green areas.
The current planning for the eastern inner city does not do justice to this claim to preserve and further develop the Berlin identity. Instead, the opportunity should be seized to create the desired urbanity through a mixture of buildings such as in the “New Frankfurt Old Town” with lounges and green spaces (for example between the television tower and the Spree and on Molkenmarkt).
We demand the dismantling of the traffic aisles of the car-friendly city and the promotion of emission-free mobility. The historic center of Berlin should receive its visitors in a humane atmosphere. The Humboldt Forum must be given an inviting environment instead of the existing stone desert. In all of this there has to be real citizen participation and no further alibi event! Andreas Volkmann, Holger Heiken, Wolfgang Schoele (Board of Directors)
Changing Cities: Seven measures for a liveable city
In the last Senate election, we called for a bicycle-friendly city with the referendum on bicycles; the result was the Mobility Act. For the next legislature, the following applies: accelerated implementation of the law and the establishment of neighborhood blocks.
After three years of the Mobility Act, our balance sheet turned out to be devastating: At the current rate, the law will not be implemented by 2030, but by 2220. Even our grandchildren wouldn’t benefit from that. That is why we demand:
1. All districts should redesign at least two quarters per year in such a way that motorized through traffic does not occur. For this, the Senate must allocate at least two posts per district and an additional 30 million euros annually.
2. In order to complete the cycling network by 2030, the Senate must allocate a total of 750 million euros and 150 posts for cycling by 2026.
3. A Berlin-wide project management team for the planning, construction and maintenance of bicycle traffic facilities is to be set up.
4. The Senate must adopt an effective Vision Zero strategy in the first 100 days with the aim of reducing the number of dead and seriously injured by at least 40 percent by 2026.
5. By 2030, at least half of the existing parking space for cars must be converted into transport routes for the environmental network, recreation areas and green spaces to create climate resilience.
6. In order to achieve the CO2 reduction targets, from 2030 vehicles with internal combustion engines will no longer be allowed to drive in the urban area.
7. The Senate must ensure that the administration and civil society can work together on transforming the city towards more sustainability. Ragnhild Sørensen, Speaker
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