I sometimes hear people make fun of the fact that Berlin has a huge empty field right in its core area where Tempelhof airport used to operate which is now a public park and left almost entirely unchanged, runways and all.
They talk about it as if it's an example of the city's inability to do something "useful" with this land. And what they mean is build stuff on it.
But just the way it is, it is hugely popular among the people of Berlin, it's a unique space where the sheer size of it enables anyone to basically do whatever without annoying anyone else. Even at peak times like Saturday afternoon, it still doesn't feel crowded and the further away from the edges you go the emptier it gets.
It refuses any commercial "usefulness" and instead gives people space to use how they see fit. It's absolutely beautiful.
Tempelhof airfield is on of my favourite places, ever. It holds a very special spot in my heart.
It's also pretty much the only place in Berlin where you can have long unobstructed lines of sight in all directions from the ground. I lived in mountainous regions for most of my life so far and long lines of sight are very normal there, you just walk up a hill and then you can look over everything. In a flat city like Berlin, your line of sight almost always hits a building nearby.
It took me a long time to realise that this was something I missed and the airfield gives me at least some of that back.
@esther I love the fact that Tempelhof is considered valid in itself, without that need for development, even to put in more traditional parkland. It says that you can just enjoy openness, having a place to walk, a few allotments, a less crowded vision. Things can simply be.
It might become something like that and you will be glad to have it in the future. Tempelhofer Feld is "just" 300ha compared to the 200ha of Bürgerpark, but Bremen is way smaller.
Hope the city manages to preserve a nice spot for its citizens.
@esther Tempelhof is pretty much just a parc and that alone is very useful (probably even for businesses).
IIRC the weird thing is more the lack of trees ~everywhere so it feels a bit like a countryside grass field in the middle of a city.
@esther As someone also from a more mountainous region I also suggest visiting the nearby Victoria Park. It is what I would call a hill and flatlanders call a mountain with a park build around it and a nice sightseeing spot on the top... and an artificial waterfall.
@sarahroth yeah, I sometimes go there and it's a nice park overall but it doesn't really tickle that nerve for me. I really like the little creek there though
@esther It's a treeless parade. I went there once; I had to go through two 1.5 liter bottles of water just to cross in summer, because there's no shade. Turn that shit into housing and throw your consumer politics in the garbage where it belongs. I knew the Berlin Greens lost it when, as the new coalition was announced, Green political advisors were more annoyed that it would build some housing on the parade and expand the U-Bahn than that it would expand A100 or that CDU runs on homophobia.
@Alon if you don’t like it, don’t go there. There’s plenty of parks with shade in berlin. But maybe think about why people botes to keep it as it is. This has nothing to do with “consumer culture”. It’s a public good that a lot of people use. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not good to have.
@esther What if, like the majority of Berliners, I like having 14,000 new housing units within the Ring more than having a giant amount of city center space used as bad recreation? Berlin doesn't have a shortage of parks; there are parks with actual trees right next to it.
@esther Tell your reply gallery to get my pronouns right. And office space is good too, it creates jobs. The alternatives are unemployment, or job creation in the suburbs where people will drive.
@Alon@esther They're not mutually exclusive. The proposal was to build on the fringes where access to public transit is convenient. Leaving most of Tempelhofer Feld untouched.
@erispoe Yeah, but even the sight of new housing for new Berliners offends the NIMBYs. Same as when the Amazon tower, on land that was not being used, still gets complaints from same NIMBYs about how it would destroy the character of Friedrichshain.
@esther thats an interesting take on the subject. Sounds like a nice space to experiment in many ways. Those who like parks with trees have Tiergarten to enjoy.
@esther Yes, although with the current housing market in Berlin, I think at least some of it should have flats built on it. Still leave most of it as is, but people need to live somewhere, too.
@Katharina it’s not a lack of housing but greedy landlords and speculators pricing out people from being able to afford it. Building more doesn’t fix that, it just creates more objects of speculation.
@Katharina yet somehow the city allows endless office buildings to be built for rich tech companies and even existing housing to be converted into office space, displacing residents in the process. Maybe we should stop that nonsense before sacrificing unique pieces of public space that are impossible to recreate once they are gone.
@esther@Katharina The profiteering is made possible because there's not enough housing to go around. When there's not enough you either get high rents or long waiting lists, or both as we have in Berlin.
I feel like what someone thinks of Tempelhofer Feld says so much about them. There is something luxurious about so much unstructured car-free space to the public
Thanks for sharing this. I looked up Berlin to find a map showing the city and saw the huge park you wrote about. I zoomed in on the map, changed to satellite view, and browsed from one end to the other.
That's a wonderful treasure for people and visitors.
Do you know if it is larger than Central Park in New York City?
@esther It's easy to fail to recognize how few big empty spaces there are that you can use. Most people don't think about it, but then you come up with some unusual activity that would require hundreds of meters of space and realize that it's just not available to you. I know it came as something of a shock when it dawned on me as I had just never really given it much thought.
@acowley ive recently seen a group of people setting up cricket matches in one part of the airfield and you probably couldn’t do this anywhere else in berlin without interfering significantly with other people who also want to use the space.
@esther Great example of something innocuous many people assume they could do if they chose to! Sometimes you encounter this trouble even outside of cities, where there may be open space, but it is privately owned and trespassers are not welcome.
@esther Miami had a beach like that. Not Miami Beach, that's not a beach, that's a city to the east of Miami built on a barrier island named Miami Beach.
They built a basketball arena on the beach.
Now Miami has ZERO beaches on its mainland.
What beaches Miami does have are on a human built spit of land a few feet from a major road and Virginia Beach on Virginia Key that they want to turn into condos despite it being historically huge. https://virginiakeybeachpark.net/our-history/
@esther how can open public space be considered ‘useless’? Oh, wait….. It doesn’t generate wealth for businesses! That fact that it generates health seems to be secondary in most ‘civilised’ societies……..😏
quite a similar process was happening in königsberg/kaliningrad: there was a giant DOM SOVIETOV(house of soviets), which was a ruin (it had been built for some 20 years, but not finished since ussr collapsed first✨). dom sovietov was built really close to königsberg castle, so it was a double ruin for 40 years
@esther I live in a small rural town (pop about 1100) hilly and forested with lots of pastures and fields. We have an old unused short asphalt runway that was used once for cropdusters. It's the only long flat paved place for people to walk, about 1 mile long, helpful for those with some disability by age or surgery. You can drive up to it, park and walk yourself or dogs. It's surrounded by hay fields. It's also a clear place to watch celestial events. 👍
@esther Went to it on most, if not all, of my visits to Berlin. It's great.
Now, if only all that huge building was freely accessible, I'd visit even more.
Maybe if it all was made into some public space with shops/cafes/community spaces...
@esther I have similar thoughts about the "Red Zone" here in Christchurch, a long section along our main river that saw so much damage in the big quakes over a decade ago (because of being built on soil that was basically river mud), that most residents were paid to move out, houses knocked down, and the place grown wild. Lots of native birds living there, and abandoned fruit trees that everyone can pick from. https://interactives.stuff.co.nz/2019/09/christchurch-red-zone-to-green/
Add comment