The room is crowded, the light glaring, the air stuffy. Ice-cold winter air draws in through the open window. In the urban planning committee of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district, the tension presses dents into the 1970s ceiling. One project after another is presented. And destined for resubmission. The spokespeople of the various political groups come up with even more derisive recommendations for the presenters, who are allowed to pack up their tattered projects like supplicants. Experts can hardly make themselves heard with evidence of their expertise. Why make strenuous decisions when you can polemicize so beautifully?
Who hasn’t experienced it when the will to understand is lost and opportunism becomes the measure of political action? Divergent interests clash with force and have to be negotiated over and over again in lengthy procedures. How our cities develop, which will manifests itself in structural substance, concerns many. Long gone are the days when Werner landowners and Rainer mayors could make decisions almost on their own. The city also belongs to Selim from SO 36, which is why it is crucial for long-term success that different groups get involved and have sufficient opportunity to contribute.
That’s why new things must always be renegotiated. Open, inclusive societies take an active approach to this process.
While the first decades of the Federal Republic were characterized by a small number of interest groups, most of which were organized in political parties, the situation today is much less clear. The lines are blurred. Thousands of lobbyists, associations and citizens’ initiatives fight for their interests and try to gain influence at all political levels. Higher demands and clearly diverging needs are leading to increasingly protracted decision-making processes. However, as the economists and political scientists Daron Acemoğlu and James A. Robinson show in their book ‘Why Nations Fail’ using many examples from the history of civilization, it is precisely the degree to which different social groups are included in economic and political decisions that drives innovation and sets in motion a spiral towards good, better and even better things. This ensures that the status quo is constantly called into question and innovations are implemented.
This is why the competition between different social interests leads to precisely the kind of dynamic that constantly strives for better and more balanced solutions.
The increase in the quality of life in many cities over the last 25 years is also due to the fact that more and more people are getting involved in the urban planning process. Since the mid-1990s, for example, the number of municipal plebiscites has tripled. Citizen participation has become a powerful movement that hardly any politician can ignore.
At some point, this will certainly also happen in the urban planning committee of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg.