It is an ambiguous housing war that is currently taking place in major German cities. Time and again, social alliances are forming to oppose the demolition of supposedly or actually dilapidated buildings for the purpose of real estate development. The protest is justified rationally: the building fabric is not that bad. Demolition would waste taxpayers’ money. These arguments can possibly be invalidated in specific cases. But that doesn’t make the fight obsolete. Because in reality, it’s about something else. Namely, whether existing buildings that have not yet been renovated for luxury could not be used to create a greater social mix. This in turn raises the question of what degree of heterogeneity we are willing to accept for ourselves and our inner cities and what degree of – even painful – diversity we want to create.
Strollers were given an impression of this struggle yesterday in Munich’s Gärtnerplatz district. A rally organized by the “Bellevue de Monaco” alliance took place there. With short readings and music, an interestingly heterogeneous crowd protested against the demolition and the presumed selling off of the valuable property by the city of Munich. Their idea: the property could be used for refugee housing. The activists included social workers, architects and prominent journalists such as Axel Hacke (guest in the next Baumeister architecture quartet). There was also some nice music.
There was a lot of talk about what they didn’t want. For example, the gentrified standardization of our cities. And these inner city zones of tasteful consumer terror are really dull. Inevitably, there was also a lot of stereotyping. The fact that today you only need to drop the term “latte macchiato” to reap joyful cackling doesn’t make the no-brainer of the soulless high earner any more interesting. Much smarter is the positive vision that was actually at issue. The demand for a district – and therefore a society – that is much more open to immigrants and gives them a presence in the city. This is a real issue for the future. And not just because we urgently need hours of multicultural dance festivals on Gärtnerplatz, as one speaker wished. No, it is simply about the resilience of European societies. We know that our population is ageing. To counteract this, we need more immigration. A social system must also be able to cope with this culturally. And living together with refugees can be the perfect training for this, especially in upscale neighborhoods.
In Augsburg, the “Grandhotel Cosmopolis” has been receiving a lot of support from a progressive public for months. And rightly so. This unconventional hospitality initiative, which brings together refugees, hotel guests and creative people, shows how spatial heterogeneity can be productive. A project like this would be good for Gärtnerplatz and other affluent German mono-zones. It would create a path of tolerance and understanding. Gentrification drivers would be shown how poorer classes live. And at the same time, the critics of commerce would be taken out of their comfort zone – through confrontation with the devilish macchiato drinkers.