Greening Berlin: The Co-Production of Science, Politics, and Urban Nature

Introduction

Introduction In May of 2000, the German capital of Berlin witnessed the festive opening of a “nature park” at the Südgelände, a former railroad yard in the densely populated district of Schöneberg. The yard had been severely damaged during World War II and had been abandoned after the political division of the city. Although material relics from the railway past gave the site some significance, that was not the main reason for the park’s creation. Since about 1980, nature conservationists, ecologists, and activists in West Berlin (which was still walled in) had opposed plans for rebuilding the site and instead called for preservation of the abundant flora and fauna that had settled there. Indeed, the area had become a remarkable piece of urban nature. Since 1948, when the railroad yard was abandoned, it had become overgrown with a dense plant cover, which had accrued into an impressive wood-like wilderness. Ecological surveys revealed that species diversity was extremely high at the site and that it contained plant and animal species that were threatened or had been extinguished elsewhere in the region. For many years the Südgelände remained a bone of contention among traffic planners and promoters of the nature park. It was only after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent reunification of the city in 1990 that the campaign for the nature park progressively achieved success. Partly a nature reserve, partly a green space with artfully designed pathways, the new nature park has allowed citizens to experience a wide amplitude of wildlife in the midst of their city. Only a few decades earlier, an abandoned lot in the midst of a large metropolis would hardly have become a target of a campaign for nature protection. Traditional nature conservation had focused almost exclusively on the countryside or the outskirts of the city, and on protection of pastoral landscapes and their original flora and fauna. Attempts to “green” a city by creating conventional parks and other open spaces had been more concerned with the shaping of aesthetically pleasing spaces and recreation 2 Introduction facilities than with promoting species diversity and natural ecosystems. Sites such as the Südgelände and the “nature” that abounded there generally had been considered “wastelands,” and the plant species that settled there “weeds.” In the 1970s, however, protection of urban wildlife species and their biotopes (meaning their natural living spaces) began to figure increasingly on the public agenda of West Berlin and other cities in Germany and elsewhere. In the former West Berlin this was due in part to the rich tradition of ecological fieldwork that had thrived there after World War II. Attracted by the flora and partly also the fauna that had flourished in the empty spaces throughout the city left by the war, and, at the same time being fenced off by the wall from the adjacent countryside, field ecologists began to focus on their own city as their main research object. Notably through the work of the botanist Herbert Sukopp and a group of researchers around him, Berlin soon became widely acknowledged as one of the world’s leading centers of urban ecology. Far from being purely academic researchers, these ecologists also ventured into urban politics, confronting traditional planning practices and promoting their own visions of a more harmonious development of city and nature. Earlier and probably more consequentially in Berlin than in other European cities, this ecological vision of the city had also found resonance among planning practitioners and significant segments of the urban public. By 1980, conflicts over urban land-use planning in West Berlin had become fundamentally ecologized. As with the Südgelände, the impacts of urban development projects on wildlife species, on biotopes, and on other aspects of the “household of nature” had become major concerns of civic activists. Such impacts were probed and evaluated in numerous professional reports, and, as a result, projects sometimes were canceled or modified. At the same time, the Berlin authorities were busy developing a comprehensive master plan that would complement traditional urban planning schemes with a systematic policy of species protection. Although the far-reaching wishes of its advocates were only partly realized, biotope protection has occupied a stable place in Berlin’s planning system ever since and has affected the material form of the city in a variety of ways. This book is an account of how species protection has emerged as a common focus of scientific and political concern in Berlin...