Urban development: spaces for dreams – culture

Mathias Hellriegel is a lawyer and specialist lawyer for administrative law. Tim Renner is a music producer and SPD politician.

Hello federal and state governments, we have a problem! This problem is the prevailing concept of culture. Now at the latest, with the second lockdown, it becomes clear that culture is understood as something good and beautiful, but not as something essential.

As a cultural and creative economy, it is a veritable economic factor. In this country it is the industry with the second most employees and the third largest turnover, and it has a decisive, meaningful role in a secular state. Cultural sites have now been closed again, other businesses, churches, temples and mosques remain open.

Economic policy is primarily about infrastructure. That is why roads are being built and commercial areas are defined in development plans. It’s not much different in culture. If its places are in danger, it can no longer develop. For this reason, many theaters were secured as early as the Weimar Republic. The state took over places that were threatened by the boom in cinema.

Outdated concept of culture?

With the same consequence, one would now have to acquire cinemas that threaten to be replaced by Netflix or Amazon Prime. The same goes for clubs. But is our concept of culture modern enough for that?

The answer came last week from the building department in the Ministry of the Interior: A cross-party application on club culture was answered by the Interior Minister equating the clubs with entertainment venues such as brothels and amusement arcades. He was neither ready to allow the federal states an “experimentation clause” in terms of noise protection, nor did he want to change the building usage regulations so that clubs can also operate outside of mixed and core areas.

The request of the more than one hundred parliamentarians to extend milieu protection to the cultural sector was also rejected. It is hard to imagine that this would happen in the federal government without the signatures of the departments concerned: in this case the (Federal Ministry of Culture and Media.

Unlike building law, culture is a matter of the state. Sometimes it would only take a little creativity to interpret existing jurisprudence in terms of culture. In Berlin in particular, we are experiencing how soulless event centers or supermarkets are created from outstanding cultural locations. Example: cosmos, crank or metropolis.

Secure use instead of wrecking ball

Development plans and contracts could help to secure uses instead of over-planning existing cultural institutions – as in the case of the Rieck halls at Hamburger Bahnhof – and thus even abandoning them to demolition in favor of new building plans that are foreign to culture.

These cultural sites will not always be economically viable. The state can and must step in there. Or do we want to make cinemas like the International, the Zoo Palast or the Babylon disappear? Berghain would also be available after Corona if it did not, unlike most clubs, already belong to the operators.

This can usually not be regulated through grants. Rent increases are often greater than the increase in donations to the affected houses in the Berlin household. Venues such as the Sophiensäle or Ballhaus Ost know what is being talked about. With the radial system, they acted accordingly and took over the house from the private owner. Precisely because Berlin is growing, the city also needs new places where culture can develop.

Especially where culture is organized in small parts, i.e. in rehearsal, project rooms, galleries and studios, displacement through gentrification often cannot be avoided. Proven models of cooperative building land development could be used to compensate for this. When designating residential areas, it has long been recognized that the investor should be charged with infrastructure costs.

Investors should also pay for cultural infrastructure

The canon of duties to be borne by him can easily be extended to cultural institutions, studios and rehearsal rooms. The prerequisite is that a need is specifically proven and that it is appropriate. But wherever Berlin creates additional building permits, the state can hold the owner responsible. The RAW site in Friedrichshain or the Uferhallen in Wedding show that the owners are ready for this.

When new neighborhoods are planned, education, security, health and even religion are automatically taken into account in urban development. From a certain number of people who settle, new daycare centers and schools, fire brigade and police stations, and hospitals are required.

Of course, the production and exposure areas for culture could also be planned. In this way, soulless and lifeless quarters such as the Mercedes-Benz area can be prevented. Especially in times of online trading and desolate ground floor areas, mandatory cultural areas could even be part of the solution in a double sense.

New alliances in the digital space

Since Corona at the latest, we have known that culture is increasingly taking place in the digital space. “Hope at Home”, “United We Stream” and a lot from the ARD and ZDF media libraries got us through the lockdowns. The media are also a matter for the federal states, so it is up to them to create safe spaces for digital culture. So far, the culture has been dependent on commercial platforms, mostly of American or Chinese origin.

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It would be easy to merge the public service offers and open them to third party content. Preferably even on a European level. This could create an alternative YouTube that gives cultural workers the opportunity to publish without submitting to an algorithm geared towards data acquisition and commercialization.

A cultural policy that defines itself more through spaces than content would be a paradigm shift. So far, people prefer to promote content. This means that those who have mastered the nature of project applications are particularly successful. On the other hand, it is difficult for the state to promote resistant art – because it is also directed against it. Literally creating free space here through spatial policy could simplify cultural policy. When we ramp up culture again after Corona, urban development must see itself as its extended arm.

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