Paper short abstract:

Civil society actors fight increasingly for political changes, participation and the control of public spaces in Berlin. The Tempelhofer Field is an example of such negotiation processes between civil and governmental stakeholders that try to find out: Who's actually the master of the urban plan?

Paper long abstract:

The dissertation "Conflict or cooperation? Urban development and civil society in Berlin" examines the transformation of practices of urban planning with regard to cooperations between civil society and governmental stakeholders in urban planning projects of Berlin. The aim is to explore strategic negotiation-processes, representations and activations of 'local knowledge' as civic science towards political and administrational representatives by self-organized civil associations. A transformation of established urban planning modes - a new way of thinking and creating space - will be analyzed and critically examined as a cooperating city-planning-process.

This process is illustrated by the Tempelhofer Field - a huge parc in Berlin, where civil society actors mobilized against the masterplan of the municipality from 2012 to 2014. Their main arguments were the fear of the loss of the public space, an intransparent participation process and the mistrust about the construction of affordable housing. This civil activation resulted in 2014 in the Tempelhofer Field-law that now regulates the use of this urban space. Recently, there has been a tempered discussion about the accommodation of refugees and therefore the temporarily change of the through civil activation invented law by the Senate of Berlin. Dwelling is one of the key questions in this research field. Therefore, the main arguments against dwelling, housing and the underlining moralizations that affect former and current participation processes by the administration and politicians will be discussed. Or to put it in other words: In the end it's important to know 'Who's got the plan and who's the master of it?'