We looked into data published by Mit Vergnügen a website that promotes publicly the most sought after spaces. Discussing this, we recognized quickly how hard this topic is to grasp and how shallow and subjective the dialogue gets. As we were concerned with the typical perspective of a student, trying to protect everything from investors, we decided to see it from another perspective and embraced the sell-out. What if we could not only sell this city but also export it? Is it all a joke or is there some truth to it?
Research
As a first step, we ran a workshop with a group of Berlin inhabitants who did not originate from the city. Generally described as Zugezogene — a German term to disclose the relationship of the objectified to the city of Berlin as not original or foreign. We were focussing on an influx in population triggered by an earlier development at a point of time where current development is already impacting bespoke triggers. After relating our personal motivations and backgrounds, we defined a frame of questions, centered around 'why they moved to Berlin', 'what keeps them here' and 'what they would take back home if they could'. After a two-hour session, we put our workshop participants into the position of city planners and asked them to create their ideal cities. Our research exposed several mostly historically defined situations that are unique to Berlin. We then decided to relate these phenomena as a 'fully-aware' practice to develop any other city and adopted a joking manner to indulge our reader in further reading.
Inspiration
We were heavily influenced by Copenhagenize, an agency which consults cities around the globe to make them more bicycle-friendly.
