# 4 Context

In order to contextualize my case study, I will give a brief overview of housing policy in Germany and then move on to a periodization of urban politics and public land policy in Berlin since 1990, where I am going to trace the recent urban history in conjucture with crises and contestation by urban social movements. I distinguish four phases: The 1990s capital city speculation; the post-2001 austerity and stagnation; rising contention, boom & affordability crisis since 2008; and, since 2014, attempts at taming the market.
Against the backdrop of urban social movements actively fighting the consequences of a rapidly heating real estate market with rising rents and displacement, I am going to show how the current land scarcity is in part a direct consequence of the austerity-driven sale of public land and otherwise a consequence of capital speculating with land and housing as “property”.

## Housing and Land Policy in Germany

Germany is a somewhat special case in Europe, having the lowest share of homeownership among the EU member states (46.5% in 2018). The majority of housing is rented (53.5% in 2018), but the numbers differ regionally, with homeownership rates from 64.7% in Saarland to 34.6% in Saxonia (city-states left aside). Much higher shares of rental housing (on average 73.2%) can be found in large cities[^grossstadt]. Berlin, with 82.6% of housing units not owned by their occupiers, is Germany’s ultimate “tenant city” [@bpb2021, 262].


_Fig. XX: Share of rental housing in Germany and Berlin. Data: [@bpb2021]_

[^grossstadt]: _Kreisfreie Großstädte_ = district-free cities of more than 100,000 inhabitants. In the seven largest cities (Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt/Main, Stuttgart and Duesseldorf) the share is even higher (77.8%) [@bpb2021, 262].

(West-)Germany has been characterized as a conservative, or corporatist welfare state [@esping-andersen1990]. As opposed to liberal welfare states like the UK with a “dual” housing market, there is a unitary housing market tradition, notably in cities. A dual housing market consists of, on the one hand, individual homeownership as the norm, and on the other hand the provision of “residual” rental social housing for marginalized groups. A unitary housing market by contrast is characterized by competition between cost rental systems (with public social housing generally accessible to a broad range of the population) and for-profit rental housing that is regulated to some extent; the indefinite rent contracts then can form a rather attractive alternative to home ownership. [@kemeny1995; @stephens2016] [@schonig2020]

Housing provision in Germany is generally market-based (leaving Eastern Germany until 1990 aside), with only temporary state intervention in times of crisis, as for reconstruction after the Second World War [@aalbers2008]. There are two different forms of social housing that can be distinguished: public housing, which is the stock of housing that is in public ownership (usually on municipal or State level), and rent-controlled “social housing”. The latter system is a German pecularity, as subsidies for its construction are open to both private for-profit as well as non-profit housing providers (irrespective of the legal form). In return, they provide the social housing units that are allocated to eligible residents under a certain income threshold. After at most 30 years, the price restriction of the housing units is lifted, however. Housing studies have therefore described the system as a “promotion of private investment in rental housing with social interim use” [@donner2000, 200; cited in @holm2016, 48, own translation].

Embedded in the post-fordist restructuring of the welfare regime since the 1980s, there has been, along with the reduction of social housing subsidies, a shift towards residual social housing, paralleled by the devolution of housing policy to the States _(Länder)_ and municipalities. Housing became increasingly dominated by market logics: through the abolition of nonprofit housing tax exemptions in 1989[^gemein1] and large-scale privatizations. The “alternate fincancialization” of housing in Germany [@wijburg2017] meant a “financialized privatization” of many public housing companies that were bought by private equity firms and hedge funds and, after the 2007–08 global financial crisis, the increasing importance of stock market listed real estate companies like Deutsche Wohnen. These developments have led to a new housing crisis in the larger prospering cities as well as in many smaller university towns [@schonigNeueWohnungsfrage2013].

Since then, [Baulandmobilisierungsgesetz] efforts have been undertaken mostly to boost new construction, including new housing subsidies and the project to (re-)introduce the _New Public Utility of Housing_, which has made it into the current coalition agreement of the new federal post-Merkel coalition of SPD, Greens and Free Democrats [@holm2015; @holm2017; @gruene2020; ][@coa2022].

[^gemein1]: _Gemeinnützigkeit_ was a legal concept of a non-profit status for housing providers. It translates literally to “the quality of operating in favor of the common good” @balmer2015, 189), or “public utility”.

[^gemein2]: The law could mean to give a tax relief to those companies that subscribe to the purpose of a permanently social housing provision. Any company would be eligible for the tax relief that subscribes to the following five priciples: profits restricted to a maximum of 4 percent; letting primarily and permanently to below-average income households and special needs groups who cannot provide for themselves on the market; permanent rent and occupancy commitments; earmarking of the generated surpluses to the objectives of the New Public Utility of Housing; and the extension of opportunities for tenants to participate in decision-making through the establishment of tenants' councils [@holm2017].

We will now zoom in on Berlin, first on the urban development trajectory since the Fall of the Wall, the development of the housing and real estate markets and urban protests and contestations that have paralleled the developments.

## 4.1 Contested Berlin: from ‘reunification’ to austerity to boom and housing expropriation votum

---
<!-- box -->
> **Land price explosion**

>While construction prices have increased by almost 30%, prices for developable land have increased by 87% nation-wide between 2009 and 2019. [@bpb2021] In Berlin, this dynamic is even much more pronounced, as inner city land prices have increased by 658% in the same period. The land prices depend on the location (the centrality and proximity to public transport for instance) and the permitted buidling density according to urban planning. In high-density areas (within the inner railway ring), {standard land prices} had doubled within 10 years in 2015 and in 2020 they had increased almost tenfold, with average prices reaching 3874 EUR/m². medium-density land prices have merely increased fivefold in the same period.

> 

> _Fig. XX: Development of the average standard land value for undeveloped plots in EUR / m², (dotted: FAR 0.2–0.4 = single family homes; dashed: FAR 1.0–1.5 = medium density areas; red: FAR 2.0–2.5 = high density city, inner railway ring) Source: [@gutachterausschuss2021, 90; @gutachterausschuss2017, 89]_

---

Since the Fall of the Wall, Berlin has sold 21 million square metres of land [@schuschke2020], an area as large as the whole municipality of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg . Different reasons in different phases lead to continuous privatization in the last decades, a policy that was slowly altered only from 2012 on. This came at a point in time where most real estate and land assets owned by the state of Berlin that were deemed dispensable were already sold off while the need for land for public (state) use such as schools was growing again with the population number.

[](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/rJz1IwS_9.png)

_Fig. XX: Timeline of Berlin's housing and property policy since 1990._

### 1990s: Capital city speculation

With the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the hastily taken path of German reunification in the course of the year 1990, it was clear that both for East Berlin, the capital of the imploding GDR and West Berlin, the heavily subsidized and walled-in outpost of the Western World would change significantly. The German Parliament’s decision in 1991 to make Berlin the new (old) capital of Germany was the kick-off for a first wave of real estate speculation. At the same time, city officials sought to boost the city’s economy which was in downturn. Rapid de-industrialization took place, especially in the East in face of the “shock therapy” of the immediately adopted “hard” currency Deutsche Mark [@bernt2014, 11-21].

Actors of the highest political level of the Berlin State and the Bund formed the “Coalition Committee for Inner City Investment” (Koordinierungsausschuss für innerstädtische Investitionen, KOAI) that was active between 1991 and 1993 in order to attract private real estate investors by selling inner city filet plots of the former capital of the socialist GDR, notably in Friedrichstrasse. These important decisions were taken without any public discussion in a “black box”, while public debates concerning the future of the newly reunited city were taking place elsewhere [@lenhart-rothBlackboxAlsMacht2020]. However, the real estate boom of the early 1990s was followed by a bust in 1994 [@kraetke2014, 146-148].

In the east, many plots of land changed ownership (“re-commodification” [@bernt2014a, 110]), not least due to the higher-level decision to favour restition, instead of compensating for expropriations that took place from 1933–45 and in the post-war, socialist era. Additionally, the 1993 Law on Assistance with Old Debts mandated the privatization of 15% of East-German public housing stock [@kitzmann2017, 2]. _Cautious urban renewal_ (Behutsame Stadterneurerung) was applied as a guiding principle to the neglected _gründerzeit_ quarters of East Berlin, paired with tax incentives for private investors to buy and renovate buildings (_Sonder-AFA_).

The demand for single-family homes in conjuncture with surrounding municipalities’ zoning led to significant “catch-up suburbanization”[^burb] [@bluth2004]. This prompted city officials, concerned about the development of the city’s tax base, to use public land to cater to middle class families, e.g. by supporting new, formerly uncommon typologies like owner-occupied town houses[@strieder1998], amidst narratives of urban decline doomism [@steglich1997;]. In general, Berlin was still considered a tenant’s market, due to large amounts of vacancies and a large supply of housing in different market segments. The (temporal) absence of strong market forces and the abundance of space  —  be it disused factory lofts, unrenovated residential buildings or voids left by bombs of the Second World War — made a fertile ground for all kinds of alternative, cultural, housing and other projects, often of a temporary, ephemeral nature. Public utility services were at least partially privatized at the end of the decade already, hinting at the enclosure that was about to come.

[^burb]: This could not happen before, as West Berlin was a walled-off enclave while the GDR’s central spatial planning did not encourage single-family home suburbanisation.

### Post-2001: Austerity and stagnation

In 2001, the so-called Berlin banking scandal shook the city and developed into a fiscal crisis. The majority state-owned bank holding Bankengesellschaft Berlin (BgB) had been engaging in a speculative fund business with public assets as securities. The beneficiaries of the risky and spectacularly lossy real estate deals involved executive elites, high-ranking officials and politicians. Despite the CDU mayor stepping down after a vote of no confidence, the bank was bailed out by the subsequent government, socializing the losses and liabilities of the bank amounting to more than 20 billion Euros [@rose2003; @ugartechacon2012; @lebuhn2015;].

While the Senate tried to appeal for a federal debt assistance as a bailout by declaring an “extreme budget emergency” ([Senat 2001 XY]), the Bund declined. The appealed federal court ruled that Berlin has to reduce spending and could “improve the income situation” by privatizing municipal housing for the end of a significant “consolidation potential” [@bundesverfassungsgericht2006]. Since 2001, a balanced budget has been “the highest political aim for Berlin […], independently of current political power and government coalitions” [@bernt2014, 16-17]. This was achieved through _austerity urbanism_ [@peck2012], playing out as severe budget cuts in administration as well as the accelerated privatization of public infrastructure assets, such as the municipal housing company GSW with 64,000 housing units. It was aquired in 2004 by Goldman Sachs, which set off a “herd-like movement of international investment firms” to Berlin's housing market [@kitzmann2017, 2; original citation?]. The GSW stocks later ended up in Deutsche Wohnen/Vonovia’s portfolio.


_Meme XX: biblical memes, yay!_

In the 2000s, Berlin was increasingly marketed as a _creative city_, being “poor but sexy”, as then mayor Wowereit postulated it, with culture being used as a location factor. Indeed, creative and precarious interim uses had emerged in derelict inner city industrial sites, with various art spaces, small companies, night clubs etc. finding their niches, often rather ignored by state power. These were now becoming part of official city marketing narratives in order to attract companies, investors and workers in the “knowledge-based industries” [@colombPushingUrbanFrontier2012, 144], while more and more quarters underwent gentrification in the course of state-initiated “cautious” urban renewal, as in Prenzlauer Berg and Mitte in the 2000s [@bernt2014a].

> #### Current ownership structure

> As data about the ownership of land and housing is — unlike in other countries — not publicly available in Germany, there is only a rough estimate about the ownership structure, especially concerning flats that are owned by private corporations and individuals. The recent _Who Owns Berlin?_ study about Berlin’s housing units comes to the conclusion that “almost half of the city is owned by a few thousand real estate multi-millionaires who often remain anonymous to date” [@trautvetter2020, 5]. It dispells the myth that a large share of flats is owned by “small-scale” private landlords, as most private proprietors own more than five flats [@trautvetter2020, 27].

> Out of the about 1.9 million flats, 330,000 are owned by financial market and stock exchange actors, including both the “big five” (the listed real estate companies like Deutsche Wohnen/Vonovia) as well as smaller private equity firms, asset managers and institutional investors. A quarter of the housing stock is owned by (local) private housing companies and especially large-scale personal owners (often via a firm), who own more than five flats. About a third is owned by small-scale private landlords owning no more than five flats and owner-occupiers. Almost 30% of the city’s housing stock is owned by coops and nonprofits or one of the six public housing companies. If the socialization of large housing companies as proposed by the DWE referendum campaign would be enacted, 240,000 housing units (or about 13% of Berlins housing stock) could change ownership to be added to the public housing stock.

> Taking the owner-occupiers out of the equation, it can be assumed that for about two thirds of the rental market, profit motives are the dominant logic.

> 
> 
> _Fig. XX: Owners of Berlin’s housing units. Estimations from [@trautvetter2020], based on Census 2011 and Micro-Census 2018 data. Author’s representation._

:::info
#### _Capitalizing_ state property

Already in 2000, the Berlin Parliament had decided to found an outsourced, professionalized private property management company “for the capitalization _[Aktivierung]_ of State property” [@senatvonberlin2000]. The Liegenschaftsfonds Berlin GmbH & Co. KG (LiFo), literally “property fund”, soon started selling public land, as the political will was the reduction of debt and the consolidation of the Berlin State’s budget. The dominating view of property as a fiscal asset lead to the practice of selling to the highest bidder, as a general rule [@silomon-pflug2013, 194].

The privatization of property was “reduced to a technocratic and seemingly transparent act”, with the legal form of a private company as a strategic choice to keep the steering of the company as distant from politics as possible [@silomon-pflug2013, 195].
With the introduction of business management efficiency criteria in the municipalities _(Bezirke)_ like cost-service-calculations _(KLR)_, “budget-ineffective costs” like unused buildings or land were disincentivized, [@schuschke2020, 80; @lebuhn2007] while the privatization of such assets was incentivized through a share of 20 to 25% of the revenue going to the municipalities [@senatvonberlin2000].

This interplay of new management instruments by the local administrations and the Liegenschaftsfonds’ market-oriented sale of public land have subordinated the use of public real estate under competition and market principles, making its strategic use an “instrument” of neoliberal reordering of urban administrations [@silomon-pflug2013, 197].

While the agency was incredibly effective in reducing the state-owned land stock to about 44% of what it owned in 1990 [@schuschke2020, 79], the budgetary effect was neglegible, considering the timing and volume of the sales when land prices were low. The total revenue generated with public land amounts to 5 bn. Euros, 18% of Berlin’s annual budget of 28 billion in 2017 or 9% of the 57 billion Euros of debt that Berlin still had in 2018 [@schuschke2020, 85]. Apart from the losses of the land value increment, the city has also “deprived itself permanently of the possibility to influence the developments in the city” [@schuschke2020, 82, own translation].

:::

### Since 2008: Contention, boom & affordability crisis

The urban entrepreneurialism paired with austerity measures did not remain unchallenged, however, as the dynamic of resistance and protests against privatizations increased. For example, a successful referendum demanded the city to publish the contracts for the privatization of the water supply (2011) and two initiatives partly successfully fought for the re-municipalization of (respectively coop participation in) the energy grid operator [@becker2015]. The real estate investor-driven riverbank development project MediaSpree was (rather unsuccessfully) opposed by the Sink MediaSpree coalition [cf. @novyStrugglingRightCreative2013; @vollmerBerlinerMieterInnenbewegung2015, 54]; a citizen initiative demanded to open the inner-city airport Tempelhof as a free space for all when it closed in 2008 and four years later a legislative referendum obliged the city to keep it free from construction — opposing among other things the plan to privatize parts of the valuable inner-city land.

In the meantime, the housing market situation quickly became more dramatic. Berlin's population increased steadily with increasing population influx from other regions of Germany, Europe and the world and a tendency of re-urbanisation since the mid-2000s. Especially in the wake of the 2007-08 global financial crisis with the subsequent low-interest phase, investments in real estate and land increased dramatically and supposedly “undervalued” Berlin became a top destination not only for tourists, but especially for capital. With land prices rising even faster than new rental and purchase prices — independant and dissociated from rather low incomes —Berlin is suffering from “speculation on future profit expectations” [@holm2016, 22-23]. With increasing rents, increasing displacement of renters and a worsening housing shortage, the tenants’ movement gained momentum [@vollmerBerlinerMieterInnenbewegung2015].

:::info
#### Land Policy Criticism, “reorientation” and goal conflicts

At the end of the 2000s, criticism of the sole use of property for fiscal consolidation grew. It was voiced by urban protests[^mediaspree], by urban development experts [@beckmann2009], and even the Senate Administration for Urban Development. In 2010, the Parliament passed a resolution for the “reorientation of Berlin’s land policy”, which was not about turning away from land sales, but still about giving more consideration to other public interests concerning land — be it cultural, economic or urban development policy, besides fiscal policy [@abgeordnetenhausberlin2010].

Inertia from the side of the finance administration (SenFin) to implement the resolution as well as continued land sales by the Liegenschaftsfonds to the highest bidder led to confrontation with the local level and the formation of the initiative _StadtNeudenken_ in 2011 (see {section 5}). With an open letter to the Senate, the Property Fund and the top candidates in the Berlin elections, they demanded a moratorium of property sales until the “reorientation” of property policy is enacted, to not reduce the stock of state property any further [@krause2011; @isn2011]. Since 2012, sales of public land were gradually reduced and with a 2013 revision of the State Budget Ordinance (_Landeshaushaltsordnung,_ LHO), parliamentary control over land sales was increased.

##### “Transparent Property Policy”

In 2012/13 finally, the Senate (a great coalition of SPD and CDU at the time) revised its property policy. With the new _Concept of Transparent Property Policy_ worked out by SenFin, the primary objective of selling land was toned down and besides fiscal policy other interests (of cultural, economic or urban development policy) in land use were admitted. The land sales pipeline was taken as a blueprint for a new process: the categorization of state property according to its future use, called “clustering”, where privatization at market value became only one of several options.

To implement the Transparent Property Policy, the LiFo was charged with working out the details of the clustering process. The stated aim was a “future-oriented inventory and price-oriented review of the portfolio”, a “critical, owner-driven evaluation of state assets” and an “assessment and structuring of the portfolio from a real estate perspective” [@senfin2012, 2].

Since then, plots of land could be directly awarded to either senate departments responsible for public services or public housing companies for housing construction, or to private (decommodified) housing developers in {municipal land allocations} – but only if the use is justified by an “urban revenue” (_Stadtrendite_), a calculated added value for the city (be it a social, economic or cultural benefit) [@senatvonberlin2019, 2]. For uses according to the aforementioned concept, the “potential market price” could be reduced to {appraised market value} (Verkehrswert). Silomon-Pflug and Heeg point out that the view of land as a fiscal asset was deepened as all other claims (driven by cultural, economic or urban development policy goals) need to be justified by numbers [-@silomon-pflug2013].


_Meme XX: probably not going to make it into the final draft. :(_

SenFin does not specify what exactly they mean by “transparent” but they suggest that the other departments’ claims need more “satisfactory, transparent criteria” [@senfin2012, 2]. Such criteria are then constructed to calculate the _urban added value_. It was therefore made more “transparent”, why it is justifiable for certain plots to be exempt from market-level valuation — when they are directly awarded to senate departments responsible for public services, or public housing companies for housing construction, or to private (decommodified) housing developers in municipal land allocations. “Transparency” as it is used by SenFin thus concerns the market-efficient use of public land.

The public “portfolio” that is reviewed in the clustering process comes from several sources, or state asset categories. It includes municipality assets (including department/administrative assets _[Fachvermögen]_ and financial assets), the LiFo trust assets (_Treuhandvermögen Liegenschaftsfonds — THV_) that survived the privatization phase as well as the _SILB_, the administrative assets of the State of Berlin that are managed by the BIM. Since 2019, also assets of Berlin’s state-owned companies and land owned by other public bodies, like the railway services (DB AG) or the federal state, were included in the examination [@senatvonberlin2019, 7].

#### LiFo — BIM

The Liegenschaftsfonds was liquidated in 2015 by merging it with the Berliner Immobilien Management GmbH (BIM). It is a large state-owned company that manages Berlin’s public real estate, reaching from fire stations to opera houses (but not schools, as these are under the management of the _bezirke_). The BIM’s scope of tasks has expanded significantly since it was founded in 2003 as the company is now responsible for the facility management of public, Berlin State buildings (special asset fund _SILB_ as well as some rented office spaces), for the management of public land and real estate (in the “strategic” special asset fund _SODA_) and the process of clustering public property, as well as the strategic purchase of land for public purposes. The company is controlled solely by the Senate Administration for Finances (SenFin), which is why the latter is seen as the most powerful actor in urban development [@ID6, l. 214]. See also {chapter 4.2} for the land and housing initiatives’ criticism concerning the BIM.

:::

### Since 2014: attempts at taming the market

With the new centre-left coalition government of social democrats, left party and greens, a more active role of the state was on the horizon. The ambitious coalition agreement promised a more sustainable urban development and land policy, more protection for tenants and more participation [@spdberlin2016;].

Municipalities were increasingly making use of {pre-emptive purchase rights}, i.e. to enter in private sales contracts instead of the buyer under certain conditions (→2.X), in order to secure renters in existing (private) buildings from speculation and gentrification. This practice was spearheaded by the municipality of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg under Schmidt, a former activist who became building counsellor. This legal opportunity to resist the private speculation with housing has helped to grow a movement of many “cases” of renters of a building fighting for their long-term securitization from market forces outpricing and displacing them. A federal court rule in November 2021, however, has declared the current practice (on the grounds of assuming rising rents) illegal [@bverwg2021]. Currently this important tenant protection measure cannot be applied until the Building Code (BauGB) is updated by federal legislation.

In 2020, the Senate passed a (later nullified) Rent Cap Law that would freeze rents for the next five years, even for new contracts. This measure, introduced by the Left Party’s Housing and City Development Department had widespread support among the predominantly renting population but was heavily opposed by conservatives, liberals and the private real estate industry, but also by some large, conservative housing cooperatives that disliked the interference in their domain [@genossenschaftlerinnen2021, 53-54]. Hopes were that the regulation could also send a discouraging signal to private capital flowing into the city[^rentcap]. The highest German court ruled that the regulation of rents is only in the jurisdiction of the federal state, nullifying the Berlin State regulation going beyond federal rental restrictions [@bverfg2021][^rentcap2].


_Meme XX: probably not going to make it into the final draft. :(_

Consequently, a majority of 56.4% of Berliners (eligible to vote) voted in favour of the demand to _expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co._ in September 2021. The campaign Deutsche Wohnen & Co. enteignen (DWE) demands the Senate to draft a law to socialise private real estate owners with 3000 housing units and above in Berlin — an object amounting to 240,000 housing units in the existing stock (cf. fig. XX). The demand is causing major political tensions in the re-elected centre-left (“red-green-red”) coalition, led by Franziska Giffey, the new conservative SPD mayor. (See {5.XX} for more on the DWE campaign.)

Giffey’s project, conversely, is an “Alliance for New Construction” including the private real estate sector to boost new housing construction (20,000 units per year) to improve housing supply, with half of that in the “non-profit and affordable sector” [@spdberlin2021, 12]. For housing construction, the city has been favouring their state-owned housing companies in the allocation of larger plots of land to quickly produce whole new residential neighbourhoods. The predominant focus on the number of finished units more often than not left questions of urban design, mobility and ecological quality insufficently answered, not least due to the location of these housing projects predominantly in barely developed peripheral areas (STEP Wohnen 2030). At the same time, the private non-profit housing providers that are willing to build, like cooperatives, are unable to do so due to the lack of affordable land. These alternative developers (gemwoXX) have been demanding a more effective and quantitatively impactful supply of land to provide newly-built, long-term affordable housing [@bjg2017], see also 4.XX.

[^DW]: As a reaction to the growing referendum campaign, the company was aquired by its competitor Vonovia that tries to prevent the socialization by making minor concessions to social goals.

[^rentcap]: First market analyses confirmed a cooling effect, but it also minimized rental flats on offer, as many landlords were waiting and seeing.

[^rentcap2]: While this is a severe setback for the Left Party and the tenants’ movement, the court did not rule that the regulation of the private market is unlawful per se, opening a slight chance for a similar law on the federal level.

:::info

#### From property to land policy? – managing shortage, holding and shifting land

With the new centre-left coalition government of social democrats, left party and greens, a new dynamic was introduced with an ambitious coalition agreement and the respective property policy concept of 2019 [@spdberlin2016; @senatvonberlin2019]. It included a profound policy shift towards holding public land and awarding {hereditary building rights} instead of selling land to private developers [@senatvonberlin2019]. Property policy was now referred to as “an instrument of public service provision” [@spdberlin2016, 21]. First steps were made towards the promise to build a strategic land reserve in 2017: the foundation of the “special asset fund for services of general interest and non-essential real estate”[^soda] (SODA). Additionally, a fund for public infrastructure investments (SIWANA) was expanded, funds that are used both for public real estate renovations and construction, but also strategic acquisitions using {pre-emptive purchase rights}. The latter were most prominently used for existing housing stock, but their use for productive spaces was envisioned as well [@senatvonberlin2019, 8]. The coalition agreement also promised the “the promotion of civic projects” through “low-threshold access” to land for non-profit institutions and cooperatives through the awarding of heritable building rights in {municipal land allocations}. To account for the rise in land prices, {ground lease rates} were halved for a period of 20 years[^price]. Another stated goal was to increase transparency and participation of civil society in land policy [@spdberlin2016, 21-22, 76-78].

[^price]: The resulting ground rents are still a heavy burden, considering the almost tenfold increase in land prices in dense inner-city areas.

In early 2019, a motion was submitted by the governing parties to urge the Senate to pursue an “active acquisition policy to build up a strategic land reservoir” and to “create the procedural and instrumental prerequisites” [@spdberlin2019]. These long-term-oriented acquisitions are supposed to be “independent of short-term needs of the departments” and to serve all uses relevant to urban development, including for instance housing, administration offices, commercial and green spaces. The land is supposed to be stockpiled in the aforementioned SODA fund. To this end, a credit-financed extra budget of 290 million Euros was allowed for a newly-founded land purchase agency, the Berliner Bodenfonds GmbH (BBF), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BIM [@senatvonberlin2020; @mohring2020]. It will buy plots on the market that are deemed suitable by the finance and the urban development administration and subsequently give ground leases to the public special asset funds SILB or SODA. A closer look at the finance administration’s report reveals that only 70 million, about a quarter of the budget, are allocated for strategic acquisistions, while “priority is given to the purchase of plots with already defined ideas of use to cover the short-term need” [@senatvonberlin2021; @senatvonberlin2021a]. In practise then, these funds are mainly used to secure land for the core tasks of the state by buying at {standard appraisal value} from other public bodies (such as the federal state or the railway services) or even companies that are owned by the State of Berlin. Unlike the intention of the parliamentarian motion, land banking or purchases beyond the acute need are not taking place at scale as of now, let alone a remunicipalization of privately owned land. (See also: Chapter 4.2 on the criticism of housing/land initiatives concerning Berlin’s property policy)

A Land Safeguarding Law (_Bodensicherungsgesetz_) that prohibits future sales of land is supposed to secure the current policy legally — a project for the current legislative period, originating in a proposal of the left party. It could also entail an advisory council for land management [@dielinke.berlin2019; @spdberlin2021, 138].

[^soda]: _Sondervermögen Daseinsvorsorge und nicht betriebsnotwendige Bestandsgrundstücke des Landes Berlin_ (SODA)

:::

## Interim conclusion

As I have shown, Berlin’s urban development policy has undergone different phases since 1990. Starting from a divided city with substantial provision of public services, shielded from globalized capital, the post-Cold-War transformation was severe, with de-industrialization and megalomaniac speculation. After the uncovering of the banking scandal, the city woke up to crisis mode with severe austerity-induced cutbacks and privatizations. Faced with a considerable influx of first people and capital shortly thereafter, the state has been prompted to find a response. The rate of change has spurred various well-organized urban protests and movements who have been struggling to turn the tide on the enclosure of the resources of urban life.

Land policy in Berlin has changed considerably within the last 30 years, and with that, the stock of land in public ownership. The use and problem of land remained under the radar in the 1990s due to an abundance of land and the absence of a hot market. Austerity policy in the wake of the 2001 Berlin banking crisis turned public land (as well as other urban infrastructure) into nothing but a marketable asset to be sold to the highest bidder, for the sake of budget consolidation. This policy was watered down only in 2013, when low central bank interest rates after the global financial crisis already led to increasing speculation with real estate and land. At the same time, the infrastructure and construction needs of the once-again growing city could not be ignored anymore. However, other administrative or non-profit uses now had to be justified with an _urban added value_, engraining the public real estate efficiency paradigm further. The untransparent privatization process was finally halted in 2015. Notwithstanding the large area that was sold off, the effect on the overall debt volume was negligible — in contrast to the city’s difficulties in obtaining enough land even for immediate public interest uses (such as schools) in recent years. Steps have been taken towards keeping land in public ownership (through awarding heritable building rights instead of selling property) since 2019. The city is purchasing land again to fulfil immediate public needs and to build a strategic public land reserve, but the decision comes at a time when land prices are at an all-time high due to speculation. The purchases and land banking are supposed to be facilitated by the successor of the state-owned company that was once in charge of privatization. The decisions behind the described land management processes (like clustering or the definition of criteria for {municipal land allocations}) are taken in opaque committees in the state apparatus (in the government–administration nexus), without consulting existing civil society expert committees. Public land is managed in an expertocratic way, with limited accountability towards the public. Despite the demand from civil society and promises by the government, the city has failed to support decommodified developments for housing and other uses by third parties such as cooperatives through the provision of land on a significant scale.