[blurrywh]

Berlin goes through--I would say--a normal gentrification process. Before 2010 Berlin hadn't have any significant industry and just few jobs. Since then companies, jobs, everything is sky-rocketing and rents get obviously much more expensive. But Berlin is still far below London or Paris. I think we haven't even reached the level of Eastern European capitals price-wise, such as Warsaw.

But the actual problem is that the city is super slow in building skyscrapers and rather tries to avoid them 'because they aren't Berlin's DNA'. Skyscrapers offer a much higher density and now is the time to really plan for a couple of them. They are just two new small skyscrapers planned for the next 5-10 years. But it's a very tedious process: everybody is fighting with each other, the city wants guarantees that the real estate funds build and operate schools and other public facilities in those districts, the funds don't want of course. Then there is the subway operator BVG which is kind of blackmailing the funds: They say that the skyscrapers are so heavy and they need money to stabilize the subway tunnels underneath. BTW, they do this with every bigger real estate project (recently with a huge mall).

In general, the city's council has a very good feeling about how to plan and build the city, they are really good compared to other cities. Infrastructure is great and you have many small city centers while Berlin-Mitte where the government resides is the busiest and most expensive one (no surprise). They are just lacking one important skill and this is managing large scale projects. Just an example: our new airport which was planned to open 2010 hasn't been opened yet. The new airport seems to be ready but doesn't get the approvals and it seems that it will never get the approvals and has to be shut down again (news from last week). Germany's general overregulation might also play in here. The city currently operates just two small airports.

However, they really need to plan proper skyscraper districts which seamlessly integrate with the rest of the city, complement Berlin's DNA and which should have also a good mix of business, leisure and living. So you don't face dead districts at night. The Potsdamer Platz which was created 20 years ago is an ok place which pairs all of those + two tiny skyscrapers.

[brapse]

Berlin is built on a swamp. It's the reason neighbourhoods with ongoing construction have streets lined with "large pink pipes" [1]. I would imagine this would make building skyscrapers difficult and was apparently one of the factors which condemned the famous Volkshalle to fiction[2].

The airport is a disaster. Are you sure it's fair to attribute the delays to regulation? The problems seems to stem from bad design with the effect of being unable to put out fires [3]. It might not be accurate to call it "ready".

#1: https://viveberlin.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/011.jpg #2: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Volkshalle #3: https://www.thelocal.de/20160427/berlins-new-airport-may-nev...

[tormeh]

It's not just atrocious design. It's also a supervisory board that managed to change the plans so often it confused everyone (leading to bad planning) and a bureaucracy that didn't actually check if contractors did what they were supposed to do.

I think the final blame lies with the SPD politicians that have effectively been in charge of this. The buck stops at the top. Sure, a lot of heads have rolled, but it seems like the Berlin SPD's culture isn't compatible with managing this kind of thing. I mean, when Wowereit was pushed if they could have razed the airport, started from scratch and executed as originally planned that would still have been cheaper than the current situation. This clearly indicates that the people in charge kept fucking up long after Wowereit and perhaps they are still doing so. Why the fuck does the federal government (which pays for part of it) go along with this?

[pimeys]

This seems to be a trend in Germany when you look at the projects to build a railway station in Stuttgart or a music hall in Hamburg. Hell, even the subway extension in Helsinki is a good example how a project can be screwed up.

[ptaipale]

I think a lot of it has to do with the way politicians make decisions. They are not professional project managers, they primarily manage their own career and advance their ideologies and political ambitions. If a public project is expensive, there is debate over whether it should be done or not. So the budget is tightened and there is haggling here and there, some things are left outside the project scope, etc. Then, in the course of the work, it will be noticed that of course those mandatory parts that were left out of scope are still mandatory. So the scope increases, budget increases, and the schedule slips.

But there is huge pressure to keep the schedule. Managers of various sub-projects see the situation of their peers and often they can safely deduct that even though they are late, someone else will be even more late, so that other sub-project can be the fall guy. Thus, each sub-project reports "everything in control, on schedule" regardless of actual problems.

All the sub-projects are optimistic about their own situation and think someone else will draw the "Schwarzer Peter" card (the game is known as Old Maid in English) and be blamed for the final delay. Thus, the overall project manager gets all green sub-project reports and scorecards that yes, we're opening in schedule in June 2012. Since the project manager is not a professional in construction projects, he's unable to assess the actual situation. He also thinks that his political power is enough to override things like fire safety regulations, should these become a nuisance.

Then, a few days before the planned opening, the actual situation is revealed, and the recurring delays begin.

Here in Helsinki region there's indeed a similar situation with the western metro line extension. The fire protection systems were not ready, but the top project management simply did not believe it. Then came the actual tests, with actual fire experts insisting that the systems must work and it must be tested. Poof, the opening is delayed by some months. Then by some more months. Now it looks like it's at least a year.

This seems to be common with public transit projects. In Finnish city of Tampere, there's a counter-example of a tunnel project that got ready in time, in budget. This was a tunnel for car traffic, and the project was intensely challenged by left-wing and green politicians. Thus the accepted plan got a lot of scrutiny. But once approved, the contract model worked. It's now been in use for a few months.

Public transit projects are "good", so if you question the plans, you're a bad person. I think this is one reason we the projects keep failing: if you've ideologically decided it must be built, the plans and budget will not be reviewed critically enough.

[tormeh]

Very interesting. Cool to get some insight, but there's something that bothers me:

>Poof, the opening is delayed by some months. Then by some more months. Now it looks like it's at least a year

BER should have opened in 2011. It's now among one of the most expensive airports in the world, and it hasn't opened yet and it may yet end up costing much more. Its peers in terms of cost take more than double the traffic it will be able to take. BER is just abnormally awful.

[ptaipale]

True. BER is in a class of its own.

[smcl]

BTW for anyone curious for more info about the new Berlin airport fiasco Bloomberg did a nice writeup: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-07-23/how-berli...

[ptaipale]

And this site reports the current status:

http://istderberschonfertig.de/

Latest updates are that the new manager mentioned in Bloomberg article, Karsten Mühlenfeld, has fired technical director Jörg Marks, and that right after that Mühlenfeld himself had to go due to deep disagreements with the governing board. He will be replaced by an SPD politician, Lütke Daldrup.

[martinald]

Very cool site. I fly to Berlin a lot (mainly SXF) and it is such a pain this airport is still not open.

SXF is a horrendous airport. Not enough seating and i know of two plug sockets in the whole airport. Recent passenger growth combined with the appalling layout means it is horrendously congested.

[ptaipale]

The description applies very much to TXL as well.

[maze-le]

Holger Klein has done some very good in-depth interviews with Martin Delius (part of the parlamentary inquiry) about this issue. Sorry it's only in german, but is definitly worth listening if you can overcome the language barrier.

[0]: http://www.wrint.de/die-ber-gespraeche/

[endymi0n]

Sorry, but that makes no sense. Skyscrapers are a stopgap measure that shortly lowers prices, which only serves to get more people into town if demand stays the same (and creating more demand: everyone needs a hairdresser, a school, a supermarket). In that way, it only increases people density, which is the main fuel of gentrification.

Point in case: Look at the cities with the highest skyscraper density (New York, Tokio, ...) - are they the cheapest cities or the most expensive? Heck, even Frankfurt (nicknamed Mainhattan for its skyline) is more expensive than Berlin.

On top, infrastructure can't keep up with the vertical stacking of people, so you grind to a halt in public transport and on the streets.

Berlin gets it totally right. Prices will increase either way and lead to a nash equilibrium. If I'd want to live in a concrete hellhole, I'd move somewhere else.

[archytech]

Sorry, but that makes no sense.

You set up some weird strawman about skyscrapers, do you have anything to back up your claims?

Housing units, population, jobs, and desirability of the area is what drives housing unit prices. Increasing the supply will always ease affordability.

Restrictions on development, and NIMBYism is what destroys the cost of living and development in cities.

  But these cities still aren't building to the pace of 
  their population growth. To achieve price reductions, 
  these cities would need to implement an open market, 
  deregulating land so that housing supply can meet demand. 
  Assuming that urbanites view this as some crackpot 
  right-wing solution--'Reaganomics', according to one San 
  Francisco politician--they should look at Tokyo, where 
  it's actually being tried.


    In Minato ward — a desirable 20 sq km slice of central 
  Tokyo — the population is up 66 per cent over the past 20 
  years, from 145,000 to 241,000, an increase of about 
  100,000 residents. In the 121 sq km of San Francisco, the 
  population grew by about the same number over 20 years, 
  from 746,000 to 865,000 — a rise of 16 per cent. Yet 
  whereas the price of a home in San Francisco and London   
  has increased 231 per cent and 441 per cent respectively, 
  Minato ward has absorbed its population boom with price 
  rises of just 45 per cent.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottbeyer/2016/08/12/tokyos-af...

[the_mitsuhiko]

> Housing units, population, jobs, and desirability of the area is what drives housing unit prices. Increasing the supply will always ease affordability.

Within that price range. Skyscraper flats in many European cities are at such a high starting price that they might put a downwards pressure on really expensive flats but do nothing for the average person. The cost of building a flat in a Skyscraper are significantly higher than the cost of a flat in a 7 story building.

[kjksf]

I used to live in Seattle in 20-something story building, paying $1250/month for 1 bedroom apt.

In San Francisco, a similar apt. is $3000+.

Clearly, the cost of building the skyscraper is such that the developer can earn their money at $1250/month. Not cheap but most standards but also not insanely expensive as SF.

The issue in SF is not that we're building 7 story buildings instead of 30 story buildings but that it's hard to get approval for 4 story building unless you promise to sell 125% of capacity for below-market rates and even if you do, there will be neighborhood organization bad mouthing every project at best and suing you under any pretext they can at worst. Even if they eventually loose the lawsuit, they'll successfully delay construction.

[the_mitsuhiko]

> Clearly, the cost of building the skyscraper is such that the developer can earn their money at $1250/month.

I can't talk about your house obviously but the vast majority of Skyscraper in Europe have economics where the bulk of the investment cost is carried by expensive flats and not cheap ones. So yes, some people might have cheap flats but that does not mean that you can take the unit count of the Skyscraper and say "N cheap flats".

If you take the Triiiple in Vienna for instance the current quoted costs are 3500 euro per square meter purchasing price for the cheapest flats going up to 9000 euro per square meter for higher up floors. And the Triiiple is considered one of the more affordable projects.

[archytech]

  Skyscraper flats ... are at such a high starting price that they might put a downwards pressure on really expensive flats but do nothing for the average person.

False.

Without new units, the occupants of the (unbuilt) new luxury units would simply be driving out the occupants of other (more affordable) spaces in older units.

[the_mitsuhiko]

You left out a crucial part which is "Europe" and there it's undoubtably true in areas where I know how buildings are financied and what the costs are (central Europe).

[endymi0n]

Why back up my claims if you do it for me? :)

> Housing units, population, jobs, and desirability of the area is what drives housing unit prices.

Well, if anything is driving up population density, it's increasing the number of inhabitants per square meter, just like skyscrapers do.

The real strawman here is "But these cities still aren't building to the pace of their population growth."

If they were, what good does it do for anyone? It's putting more gasoline to the fire instead of letting it burn out. Any effect from building more housing has only short-term positive (and long-time negative) effects on gentrification if the original desirability of the area doesn't change.

The only proven ways to decrease desirability of the area are getting rid of the original jobs (like Detroit) or increasing prices to so absurd levels that people seriously question if they should go there (London, Bay Area).

[ido]

Well we don't want to actually reduce the desirability of the city...that the city is growing is a good thing. And Berlin is actually sorrounded by a lot of empty space.

You can build high density (4-8 stories not skyscrapers) apartment buildings to house a million more people (and required infrastructure) around berlin and there will still be plenty of space to continue growing.

Do you think that if the supply of new apartment suddenly increased dramatically it will have no effect on rents rising?

[stale2002]

Why would you want to decrease desirability?

Basically your argument is that skyscrapers make cities TOO AWESOME.

I don't care if you don't like concrete jungles. If prices go up because of skyscrapers, you are being outvoted! Let the market decide.

Skyscrapers are a double benefit. They make the city more awesome AND allow more people to share in that awesomeness, via density.

[wbl]

They are. NYC has massive cheap apartment blocks built with public funds. The suburbs of Long Island and Weschester use land much less efficiently and are more expensive. Notice how Soviet Russia made apartment blocks: per unit construction costs might be higher, but transit and land gets used more effectively.

[k__]

Luckily they're a state and not part of one. So they can do pretty muchvas they please.