A chat with Berlin’s leading gentrification specialist about a book that tracks some of the city’s post-Wende urban development… 

The Berlin Reader is an anthology of socio-political writings about Berlin that were (mostly) previously published in German and has now translated into English for the first time.

Edited by Matthias Bernt (senior researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Development and Structural Planning in Erkner), Britta Grell (political scientist, lecturer and author based in Berlin) and sociologist and leading gentrification specialist Andrej Holm (Department of Urban and Regional Sociology at Berlin’s Humboldt University), the essays and articles in the book cover a wide range of issues, from tourism and protest to housing and the local economy.

Whether you’re a resident, tourist, scholar or activist, the anthology provides many invaluable insights into the city’s urban development since the fall of the Wall…

What was the original idea behind publishing The Reader Berlin? 

AH: There are a lot of texts on these subjects in German, but none in English, so we thought it was relevant.

Was the book originally conceived for academics, or did you specifically compile it for a wider audience?

AH: Urban sociology is close to public discourse; that’s what sets it apart from other social sciences. So even though the book is academic, it’s also accessible. Everyone can read it. In fact it’s my first book that’s available in the big bookshops. The German ones I have written are all hidden away in academic libraries.

People tend to see Berlin as a uniquely free and tolerant city, but your book tends to rip away that veil.

AH: Yes, when you look at what has been going on at a political level, it isn’t so easy to call Berlin a ‘city of freedom’. There are still special area with rules that allow police forces to control people without concrete permits or authorization. In fact Berlin has more than 20 such areas, which are unknown to most. The U8 and U7 lines are still regarded as Danger Zones, even though they were created as such in the 1990s. Helmholtzplatz and Mauerpark too. Although they ‘cleaned up’ the problems, the zones and special powers remain.

How is Berlin compared to cities London or New York in terms of gentrification.

AH: Berlin has developed in a different way. Rising housing costs are actually higher than London and Paris, which is shocking. Gentrification has traditionally been a neighbourhood issue in the other cities, but in Berlin in the last five or six years, the issue is spreading through most parts of the innercity, which is new. It’s also interesting here, because Berlin has a longer history of poorer people living in these innercity zones. If you look at Paris or London, the poorer people have traditionally lived outside the centre, but here in Berlin the innercity is actually home to some of the lowest incomes. In Neukölln, for example, more than 70% of children are living on some kind of social benefit, which is a shocking statistic. You will also find such neighbourhoods in other cities, but never right in the middle of the city.

The issue of gentrification in Berlin is quite unique in that it presumably harks…