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1 Traditions of Urban Greening Since the late nineteenth century, Berlin has witnessed continuous efforts to promote nature and greeneries in the city. This included not only the creation of parks, the planting of trees and other forms of urban horticulture , but also the preservation of extraordinary pieces of the natural landscape in its suburbs and direct surroundings. As I will show, it has been a constant motive of these policies that nature or green (the two terms were often used interchangeably) was needed as compensation for the negative sides of the modern metropolis. By providing fresh air, light, aesthetic experiences, and quiet recreation ground, urban green spaces were meant to remedy the most pressing of these problems. At the same time, it will be shown that nature had no stable meaning throughout this period. Promoters of urban greening considered different features or qualities of the urban landscape as natural, and hence also cherished different models for the shaping of a more livable city. On this basis I distinguish four distinct nature regimes that preceded the regime of biotope protection. These regimes should be considered as ideal types. As we will see, in practice they often blended into one another. The first two regimes had their roots in the Kaiserreich and in the Weimar years. The regime of green planning aimed at the creation of public parks and greeneries and in the Weimar period developed to a systemic program of open-space provision. The regime of classical nature conservation revolved around the concept of natural-monument care and sought to preserve parcels of nature at the fringe of the city. The other two regimes gained momentum in the postwar period. Motives from the earlier regimes continued to exist, but they became joined with two more comprehensive ways of organizing urban space. The regime of organic urbanism considered the creation of urban green spaces as a means to create comprehensive organic cities or urban landscapes. At the same time, the regime of Landschaftspflege (landscape care) complemented the traditional style of monument 20 Chapter 1 conservation. These two new regimes embodied conservative ideas of an organic community and had roots in the period of National Socialism. It was only during the postwar reconstruction of the city that this approach gained practical momentum. Berlin planners took inspiration from, and contributed to, broader specialist discourses among urban green planners, nature conservationists, and promoters of landscape care. As I will show at the end of the chapter, the programmatic framings of Berlin green planners came under increasing pressure in the 1960s and the 1970s, when they clashed with a forceful policy of urban development in West Berlin. The regime of urban biotope protection that will be analyzed in the subsequent chapters both drew upon and went beyond the discourse and practices of these previous regimes. First, planners were faced with the material manifestations of these policies that they framed in new terms; second, it merged understandings and guiding values of earlier regimes and incorporated them into new problem claims; and third, the new regime developed partly in the framework of the organizational infrastructures that had developed around earlier regimes. Islands in the Sea of Buildings: Urban Green Planning As Brian Ladd has pointed out in his study of the evolution of urban planning in Germany, the creation of parks had still been rather exceptional in the first half of the early nineteenth century. It was either a luxury granted to the city by the nobility or the result of contingent efforts of local beautification societies (Ladd 1990: 68). In the subsequent decades, however, planners and urban elites alike began to see the provision of green space as a public necessity and a crucial element of urban policy and social reform. As with the provision of waterworks, sewers, roads, and electricity, as well as with the laying down of general development plans, the creation of parks and other greeneries became an important target of the public involvement of public authorities in city planning. The formation of the regime of green-space planning was a direct response to the rapid growth that German cities experienced in this period and to its perceived impact on the quality of urban life. From the middle of the nineteenth century on, public health organizations emphasized the importance of “light and air” and called for the restriction of the development density of inner city districts. They also advocated the creation of parks and the planting of trees, which they supposed acted as...

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