Love Parade 1996: Techno Playworlds and the Neoliberalization of Post-Wall Berlin

An analysis of the Love Parade, the famous Berlin techno music festival, illuminates the city's cultural history and political economy in the 1990s. The article reconstructs the techno playworld built by fans around music, dance, and drugs, yet suggests that this underground scene ultimately contributed to official efforts to promote a "New Berlin" in the 1990s. City boosters, inspired by neoliberal urban development policies, appropriated the festival in ways that concretized Berlin's global reputation as Europe's "party capital" and helped resolve the city's post-reunification economic crisis, albeit in ways that did little to address gentrification or income inequality.