A Spree Tour on Upgrading, Displacement and Resistance
For years, Berlin’s Spree embankment between Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain has been the scene of diverse social conflicts. It is a prime example of the current conflicts over gentrification and displacement and the transformation from the great adventure playground of the 1990s and the noughties to the investor’s dream of today. Where, after the fall of the Wall, mainly left-wing subculture and the club scene occupied the free spaces gained in the middle of the city, today the last wastlands are closing for luxury residential towers and high-priced office buildings.
But even though the Mediaspree investor project was not sank, there is still protest and resistance against the commercial exploitation of the Spree embankment and the sellout of the city. Partial successes such as the prevention of the Google Campus show that resistance is worthwhile. And the last available plots of land offer the possibility and hope for a public welfare-oriented use and the preservation of natural and free spaces.
Together with the Freimeuters of the Anarche, we will go on this city tour from the water in search of traces of past and present conflicts over space along the Spree and the adjacent neighborhoods. In doing so, we do not understand urban development and the urban policy responsible for it as a given, but as a consequence of certain economic and political interests. In addition to a look at alternative urban development models, those active in urban politics report on their successes and failures, as well as strategies and possibilities for action for the enforcement of a right to the city for all.
