Berlin is a city where they do things in a monumental way. This is driven in part by its historic status as a city, in part by Cold War era competition between East and West and in part, it seems, because they just like things to be big and chunky.
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To me, the Berlin Cathedral sums up the monumental scale at which Berliners build. I thought to myself: which great Kaiser built this timeless wonder? After being more or less destroyed in WW2, it was rebuilt at the back end of the 20th century at a scale you would expect from a great empire of yesteryear…not a city undergoing the strains and social upheaval that was the reunification of East and West Germany.
The public buildings are eye watering, the public transport system is on a mega scale and the apartment blocks run for hundreds of metres. Grunge is the dominant feel, which is such a stark contrast after coming from the manicured cities of the Netherlands.
Initially, it is hard not to be judgmental about the pride that Berliners take in their city. To an outsider it might feel graffiti-ridden and a bit confronting. However, with active protests against the gentrification of Berlin, it is clear that there is great pride in the city from the locals who don’t want to conform to the sanitised versions of other cities.
Berlin is a city with “rizz” (although my teenagers deride me for misusing their slang) …but it is the best way I can describe the style and charm that you feel once getting past the initial impact of such an “in-your-face” city. This city flirts with you even if it is a bit scary at the same time.
For a city that has the capacity for such monumental outcomes, surely the answers to a housing crisis can be found here.
Unfortunately no. Berlin also has a housing crisis…or more accurately, I should say an apartment crisis as nearly everyone lives in apartments and nearly all – 85 per cent – rents. The average dwellings is small at 40 square metres per person compared to 100 sq m for Australians. And despite rent controls, Berlin rents have almost doubled in the past decade, often absorbing 40 per cent of a tenants’ income.
The causes of the crisis include the usual culprits such as increased construction costs, population growth, lack of land releases and slow approvals. However, it also appears that a large sell off of public housing and reluctance for investment by private investors due to rental controls are big contributing factors in Berlin. Solutions will only be achieved through unpopular policies, which puts politicians between a rock and a hard place.
Like in Australia, solving housing in Berlin won’t be simple. But Berlin is so different from anywhere in Australia, it left me scratching my head about applicable learnings for Australia. I didn’t have to scratch too hard before a few useful learnings came to mind.
Lesson one: don’t make the job hard by spreading out further. In Australia, despite NIMBYism, many jurisdictions are on the right track in densifying around existing hubs.
But the even more unpopular political decision needs to be made to further increase this densification, not just to within a few hundred metres of railway stations.
We need more options between the high density and low density across our suburbs. Otherwise, we’ll end up with an infrastructure crisis that exceeds our housing crisis. It is a lot cheaper to add another train on existing networks than it is to add new tracks or to add another classroom rather than a new school.
The second thing that struck me about Berlin was how “in character” building was across suburbs. In many cases it was difficult to identify the era of a building without quite a deal of detective work. This is even more remarkable as buildings could have been five or 150 years old.
Within suburbs buildings were generally of a similar character, so much so that individual apartment blocks were often difficult to tell apart. (I don’t think I actually liked that but on the odd occasion that I saw a standout building, it felt wrong even when it looked superior to the buildings around it.)
I am not suggesting that we homogenise our suburbs, but a bit more “pattern book” approach wouldn’t hurt. The consistency of building might come across as a bit devoid of character, but it would be more efficient to build and maintain. To solve a housing crisis, we probably need to avoid the architecture for architecture’s sake that many places in Australia may be accused of. I would challenge anyone to argue that Berlin is devoid of character.
My final takeaway is that public transport can replace cars…and fewer cars means fewer garages, so more of what is built can be lived in.
The double garages in Australian suburbs (of which I am a guilty owner) are nearly the size of an average living space for Berliners. How could planning policy for Australian cities de-prioritise the car and get more people moving on public transport (and bikes).
Public transport in Berlin is more than just a means of transport. It’s a community builder: it empowers all people and services to connect in a way that this big city also operates as a 15 minute city. Berlin doesn’t sprawl. It is one of Europe’s mostly populated cities (comparable to Sydney and Melbourne) but you could move across the city in the blink of an eye as it is geographically compact due to its high density and being incredibly well connected.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could better connect the people and services within our cities as part of the policy suite to solve the housing crisis?