[eigenvector]

The mutual exclusivity is valid. Being able to do stuff that requires a lot of time and doesn't make a lot of money (i.e. art) requires a low cost of living. Adding a bunch of people making $200k+ into a neighbourhood does the opposite of that, very rapidly and very predictably.

[jkaplowitz]

Most people working for tech startups (as opposed to for Google itself) don't make anywhere near that salary, especially not outside the major US tech hubs. This campus would have been a startup incubator, not a regular Google office.

That said, yes it would have still contributed to gentrification in a less extreme way than a true Google office.

[ehnto]

A low cost of living is also a benefit to bootstrapped software/web companies (small blogs, niche publishers, other online content creators).

But gentrification still happens without big dollar companies showing up. It's often a side effect of the success of the arts in the area. As the wealthy kids move in to be hip and cool, and the businesses that enjoy their money move in afterward, rents go up and creators are pushed out.

[xapata]

If you want to be a professional artist, you need people to buy your art -- patrons. In cities without a large number of wealthy people (passing through, if not resident), there aren't many art galleries.

Artists often live in different districts or even different cities than their gallerists, but they tend to appreciate their patrons.

[amanaplanacanal]

This may not be relevant, but the great majority of artists will never be professional. Most do their art because they love it, and if they can make some money from it, that is just frosting.

[xapata]

Not relevant, I think, because we're talking about professional artists. Anyone can be a hobbyist, including the gentrifiers.

[rumcajz]

As being from an artistic community and a programmer at the same time, I can empathize with both sides.

However, it should be pointed out that there are really two different programmer cultures. There the corporate one, and then there's, for lack of the better word, "open source" one. The latter is very close to artistic culture but very different from corporate culture. The people are working on what they love, they don't have much money, often they are in precarious situations. I've seen them sharing working space with artists, I've been at parties that mixed hackers and artists without any friction. I've seen self-help institutions meant to help the artists going out of their way to host some kind of strange hacking event.

[mercer]

One of the things I like (and sometimes hate) about HN is that it has a decent number of people from both those camps.

[sonnyblarney]

Berlin is big, and Germany is much bigger, and there are tons of places for artists. Even in Berlin.

[VonGallifrey]

The issue is that Google wanted to go to the very specific and small space in Berlin where tons of artists are. Berlin is "big" (although not as big as you might think), so why would Google need to be in Kreuzberg when it can be ANYWHERE else.

[mercer]

The main issue is that all the programmers want to live in Kreuzberg too...

[derEitel]

I'm doing a PhD in Berlin, living in Kreuzberg and I can tell you far from all of the programmers that I know want to live here!

What makes Kreuzberg attractive for startups and a Google campus is that it's central and perfectly connected infrastructurewise. Most other regions like Schöneberg, parts of Friedrichshain, Prenzlauer Berg and maybe Moabit, are all harder to reach from some other regions, even though more start-up employees live there. You can see on the maps of rental e-scooters like Coup how during the day there is a lot of activity towards Kreuzberg whereas after work the district is basically empty of their scooters. Imho kreuzberg is too dirty for most startupers. I guess they don't want to see the heroin junkies of Kotti when they do their grocery shopping.

In general I liked the sentiment of the activists against placing a Campus in Kreuzberg. Nevertheless I didn't like much of their public attitude ("bullets for google") and some arguments seemed superficial ("other Google campuses have increased rents" idk about the causality and factor here). I wouldve liked a Google campus in Schöneberg for example, just as I liked the Google campus in Madrid. In Madrid it offered a nice environment for work, some interesting talks and I didn't feel like it was in an artsy district that suddenly gentrified and turned hip. This could've added something to Berlin, but meddling with the activist scene in Kreuzberg was a poor choice.