ausverkauft

Ausverkauft

Research and graphical representation of 7800 public plots in Berlin that were privatized between 1989 and 2017.

While it was quite known that the city of Berlin sold big quantities of its municipally owned land after the fall of the wall, there used to be no published data on the exact quantity and location of these sales. The project for the first time researched and represented this sellout, by evaluating more than 8000 data sets of the ‘Gutachterausschuss für Grundstückswerte’, and mapping about 7800 of these plots. Altogether around 21 square kilometres or 2,100 hectares of land were privatized. This corresponds to ten times the area of the Berlin Tiergarten or six times the area of the Tempelhofer Feld or the entire area of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district. This way, 50 per cent of Berlin's public properties suitable for building purposes have been sold off. The neoliberalism of the post-reunification years and its effects on urban development are now revealed in intensified conflicts over the socially just distribution of space. With missing flats and more and more expensive prices effects are now becoming apparent on the Berlin housing market that are actually produced beforehand on the land market.

The map, showing the origins of today’s lack of real estate for schools, kindergartens and housing, stand as a warning: communal land is limited and must be protected by law.

Shown in the exhibition “1989–2019: Politik des Raums im Neuen Berlin,” n.b.k. Neuer Beriner Kunstverein, september 2019.

Published in: ‘Ausverkauft‘, in: Arch+ Nr. 241 Berlin Theorie – Politik des Raums im Neuen Berlin, 12/2020, p. 76–85 https://archplus.net/en/ausgabe/241/#article-5889

Press: https://taz.de/Oekonomie-und-Architektur-in-Berlin/!5741438/ https://www.freitag.de/autoren/antonia-maerzhaeuser/stadt-als-ramsch