Infrastructural Changes in Berlin Author(S): Richard L
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Infrastructural Changes in Berlin Author(s): Richard L. Merritt Source: Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 63, No. 1 (Mar., 1973), pp. 58-70 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Association of American Geographers Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2561950 Accessed: 23-01-2020 10:01 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Taylor & Francis, Ltd., Association of American Geographers are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Annals of the Association of American Geographers This content downloaded from 195.113.6.100 on Thu, 23 Jan 2020 10:01:39 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms INFRASTRUCTURAL CHANGES IN BERLIN* RICHARD L. MERRITT ABSTRACT. Political decisions divided postwar Berlin and isolated West Berlin politically from its immediate environment of East Germany and spatially from West Germany. These political circumstances have had a permanent impact upon the city's locational infrastructure. The growing peripherality of West Berlin to West German life has reduced the scope of activity in the city's public and private sectors. In Berlin itself the separation of east from west required the construction of new municipal facilities in both. The split, together with wartime damage and postwar dismantling, sharply reduced the functions of its old core area, located in what is now East Berlin near the West Berlin border. In its place have emerged separate core areas in West and East Berlin, as revealed by patterns of construction, land use, traffic, and population movement. Planners in the two Berlins are no longer able to coordinate their activities to work toward a reunified city. KEY WORDS: Ber- lin, City planning, Core area, Infrastructural change, Integration, Political division. DOLITICAL decisions have multifarious ef-dismantling, and growing cold war hostility lead- fects upon the spatial organization of a ing up to the Berlin blockade of mid-1948- community. The decision to locate a town upon that culminated in the city's political division. the banks of a river or the side of a hill carries Since November 1948 there have been separate with it certain implications for the way in which and inimical governments in the Soviet sector its citizens lay out their streets, locate their cen- on the one hand and, on the other, the three tral business district, organize their sanitation western sectors. This process of division re- facilities, or plan for the town's growth. The in- ceived its capstone in August 1961 when the frastructural consequences are well known from East Germans built a wall of concrete and historical studies of urban life. Similarly, we barbed wire between the two halves of the city, have some notion of what happens after a de- and in September 1971 when quadripartite cision to relocate a large manufacturing com- agreements paved the way for stabilizing the pany from the center of a city into the suburbs, new status quo. construct a major highway through some portion of the city, or plan for the redevelopment of its THE LOSS OF CORE AREA FUNCTIONS "inner city." A political consequence of the occupation An analogous situation occurs when politi- and division of Greater Berlin was its loss of cal decisions split a community into separate the central importance that it once had for Ger- parts with severely limited possibilities for in- many as a whole. This is less true for East than teraction. The city of Berlin is such a case. for West Berlin. The Soviet Union maintains World War II and its aftermath produced three occupation rights, but East Berlin is the capital disruptive waves-wartime destruction, postwar of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or Deutsche Demokratische Republik). For Accepted for publication 8 June 1972. more than two decades, but particularly since the construction of the wall in 1961, it has Dr. Merritt is Professor of Political Science at the served an organizing function for East German University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, IL life. The American, British, and French hold 61801. occupation rights in the western sectors, even after the quadripartite accords of September * For financial support I am indebted to the Social Science Research Council, the Fulbright Commission, 1971. They blocked West German efforts in the Stimson Fund of Yale University, and, at the Uni- 1949 to integrate West Berlin formally into the versity of Illinois, the Institute of Communications Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, or Bun- Research, the Center for International Comparative desrepublik Deutschland) as a full-fledged state. Studies, and the Graduate Research Board; for assist- In all but name, however, West Berlin has at- ance in organizing data on Berlin to Gernot Koehler; and for cartography to Leslie R. Lewis. tained that status. West Germany's communi- ANNALS OF THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN GEOGRAPHERS Vol. 63, No. 1, March 1973 ? 1973 by the Association of American Geographers. Printed in U.S.A. 58 This content downloaded from 195.113.6.100 on Thu, 23 Jan 2020 10:01:39 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 1973 BERLIN 59 cation, social, economic, and organizational pat- When life began to assume more normal pro- terns extend to the island-city. Unless the portions in the FRG, and especially as its econ- occupying powers exercise their veto right, laws omy began to boom, West Germans began to adopted by the federal parliament semiautomat- construct new patterns that did not center on ically become part of West Berlin's legal code. Berlin. Rather than wait until a reunited Ger- Political decisions thus turned West Berlin many could move forward together, West Ger- into an exclave.' More than 2.1 million people mans chose to move ahead without their former inhabit its 185 square miles (480 kM2). Over capital city in the hope that political conditions half (fifty-six percent) is built-up, twenty-two would someday enable Berlin to catch up and percent comprises forests, lakes, and waterways, possibly assume the lead once again.2 and fourteen percent is devoted to agriculture West Berlin's geographic isolation and its and gardening. Around its 100-mile perimeter, constant exposure to harassment from the East beyond solid walls and armed guards, lies the made it risky to stress its centrality to German German Democratic Republic, to which West reconstruction. Few really felt that the city Berliners have only restricted access. The FRG would fall wholly into the hands of the GDR. lies more than a hundred miles to the West. More real were the ever-present danger of a Highway, rail, canal, and airlines routes con- new blockade, periodic hindrances to the flow necting West Berlin with West Germany pass of people and goods along the main highways through the GDR, requiring, except in the case connecting West Germany and West Berlin, and of air travel, more or less extensive checks by the simple nuisance of being so far away from East German border guards. Agreements con- other centers of West German economic activ- cluded in early 1972 between the two Germa- ity. Symbolic and financial considerations made nies should make access and transit easier, but maintaining a foothold in West Berlin worth- without mitigating essentially the physical iso- while, but few business firms relished the lation of West Berlin. thought of tying their own fortunes too closely These political and locational circumstances to those of West Berlin. have had a dramatic effect upon the life of post- West Berlin, the larger part of the city that war West Berlin. Of particular importance at had once been the very heart of Germany, soon the outset was the part played by the Western found itself at the periphery of West German occupying powers. The combination of decen- life. It had been the main arena for prewar Ger- tralizing policies in the first months of the occu- many's largest banks. Their postwar successors, pation, and the subsequent refusal to accept any however, have located in West Germany, creat- measure that could jeopardize the principle of ing West Berlin subsidiaries that "are important four-power responsibility for the whole of Ber- only within the money and credit system of lin, meant an initial delay in recreating those West Berlin, not that of the rest of Germany."3 economic and other patterns of prewar Ger- Advertising moved to Frankfurt, Hamburg, many that had Berlin as their central node. and, more recently, DUsseldorf, which is rapidly becoming the FRG's "Madison Avenue."4 Once 1 On the geography of postwar Berlin, see G. W. S. the source of national newspapers, West Berlin Robinson, "West Berlin: The Geography of an Ex- with its increasingly provincial press has given clave," The Geographical Review, Vol. 43 (1953), pp. 540-57; Peter Sch6ller, "Stadtgeographische Prob- leme des geteilten Berlin," Erdkunde, Vol. 7 (1953), 2 The selection of Bonn as the "provisional" capital pp. 1-11; Hans-Georg Schindler, "Die Sektorengrenze of the nascent Federal Republic rested, among other und ihre Auswirkung auf das Stadtbild," Geographische things, upon its insignificance as a major center with Rundschau, Vol. 7 (1955), pp. 308-12; G. W. S. strong regional interests. The sleepy university town Robinson, "Exclaves," Annials, The Association of on the Rhine River did not pose the threat to Berlin's American Geographers, Vol.