Subverting “Creative Placemaking:” How a Berlin Art Stunt Turned into a Model for Democratic Urban Development

by Sebastian Olma and Renée Van Oploo December 16th, 2025

Introduction

Creative placemaking is a form of cultural policy in which art and culture are employed to activate, renew, and improve urban space. It is also supposed to strengthen communities in ways that make them more responsive to any local issues and social needs that may arise during processes of urban development. Similarly, stronger communities are assumed to be more resilient in the face of future social challenges. Placemaking is therefore often seen as an inclusive practice that can serve as a model for equitable urban development.

Despite all of these good intentions, critics argue that creative placemaking comes down to a functionalisation of the arts within regeneration agendas. This essentially means using artists and creatives to “revitalise” neighbourhoods, thereby displacing anyone for whom this kind of revitalisation is unaffordable.¹ While creative placemaking is presented as a strategy that can generate both financial and social capital, analyses of the actual impact of creative placemaking primarily reveal gentrification effects. This has led critics to view creative placemaking as being part and parcel of the extractive neoliberal policy agenda.

This longform takes the critique of creative placemaking seriously and sets out to explore a potentially different approach. Our specific focus will be on the so-called Modellprojekt Haus der Statistik (HdS)² that lives on the edges of the former East Berlin’s Alexanderplatz. What sets this project apart from the conventional creative placemaking formula is that it was initiated by artists and activists, rather than property developers, housing associations, or the city’s municipality. As a result, artists are proper stakeholders in the project. These artists’ involvement is motivated by a desire to contribute to the common good of their city (over mere self-interest). If this isn’t just another creative-city project, then what is it?

We are taking a closer look at HdS as a new form of participatory, democratic urban development, in which art and culture play a role that may be surprising to some readers.³ We’re going to discuss the question of what it could mean to salvage the notion of creative placemaking from its current harmful practices and turn it into something that serves the common good in a meaningful way. However, what counts as the common good is as contentious today as it was when Antonio Gramsci wrote about it in the beginning of the last century. So, part of our analysis will also be to figure out how such a notion can be practically filled with life today and how artists and creatives can contribute to such a practice. We also pose the question of why the case of HdS happened in Berlin and what other cities may be able to learn from it.

Currently a huge construction site. View in 2019 during Berlin Art Week, Haus der Statistik on Alexanderplatz, Berlin © ZUsammenKUNFT e.G.

Placemaking: From a Strategy for a Liveable City to a Marketing Racket

Placemaking has its roots in the 1960s, when it emerged as a response to the limitations of traditional, top-down urban planning that promoted scale and functionality over human-centred design. Urban thinkers such as Jane Jacobs, and later William Whyte, emphasised that the city should not merely be a place to dwell and work, but also a living environment for its citizens. This brought the importance of public space into view as an essential aspect of how a city is experienced and utilised. Placemaking emerged in this context as a collaborative process, in which residents co-design public spaces to enhance their physical, cultural, and social value and where communal life can manifest itself. As an alternative planning strategy, placemaking set out to empower civil society by enabling residents to effectively shape urban life according to local needs.

Placemaking in the 2020s is a different story altogether, even though it continues to be promoted as a remedy for growing segregation and social fragmentation, grounded in values such as openness and inclusivity. A case in point is STIPO – a self-identified “public developer and contractor” and “multi-disciplinary consultancy team for urban strategy and city development” operating in the Netherlands (where the authors are based). They frame placemaking as an “indispensable tool to bring together the various goals and disciplines that can make our cities safer (especially for women and girls), healthier, more sustainable, more resilient, and fairer.”⁴ Who wouldn’t want that at a time when the urban landscape is increasingly dominated by the non-places of consumer culture and the banalities of spreadsheet architecture? The neoliberal urban policies of past decades have led to an increase in urban spaces dedicated to tourism and shopping that offer homogeneous, generic experiences. These places attract large numbers of visitors for the purpose of spending time and, above all, money. In this context, consultancies such as STIPO can sell placemaking as a broad-spectrum remedy for complex urban challenges to developers, construction companies, and public officials. They can continue with their lucrative practices that destroy civic vivacity, while creative placemakers cover them up with a cheap layer of branding. As a result, the marketing brochure reads “vibrant communities,” “liveable neighbourhoods,” and “distinctive districts.”⁵ Everyone is happy, except for those who had to leave or who must live there.

A fitting animation from the website of Synchroon, another Dutch “placemaking” developer and STIPO contemporary

Not everybody is drinking this Kool-Aid of course. As critics point out, creative placemaking à la STIPO is dangerously anti-democratic as it profits from camouflaging those forms of urban development and planning that accentuate social inequity, injustice, and polarisation. The narratives of inclusion, diversity and participation, ring hollow throughout our unaffordable, relentlessly selective cities unless one is generously paid to believe in them.⁶ Artistic or other “creative” interventions in these contexts focus on what one of us has called elsewhere the gymnastics of changeless change rather than nurturing the potentially rich tapestry of urban life. They certainly don’t deliver on promises of promoting social engagement or community activities in any meaningful or sustained fashion. It is obvious that today’s placemaking is just another tool in the strategy of accumulation through dispossession and gentrification that is eroding the civic fabric of our cities. Rather than asserting the right to the city, creative placemaking facilitates the transfer of the city to the creative elite, or more precisely, to those who own its real estate.

Looking at the creative side of creative placemaking, one could thus say that it is a strategy for bad faith recruitment of artists and creatives in the well-known processes of gentrification. This is a tragic situation as art and artists certainly have the potential of being powerful allies in social movements or, indeed, in countering the above tendencies. Stephen Pritchard, a fierce critic of creative placemaking, suggests what he calls place guarding, as a worthwhile alternative strategy to placemaking. Place guarding refers to collective actions designed to protect inhabitants and places from the effects of gentrification. It highlights the potential of art and creativity as instruments for social change and the preservation of diversity and inclusivity in urban spaces, rather than artists as decorators for cities whose primary purpose is to serve the interests of investment capital.

First performance of “CHOR der STATISTIK”, HdS, Berlin, Germany, 2019. Photo: raumlabor © Victoria Tomaschko

A Different Kind of Placemaking?

The Haus der Statistik (HdS) covers an area of 104,000 square metres, consisting of three interconnected building complexes. The largest building has 11 floors and forms part of a group of three medium-height, interlinked buildings, supplemented by some smaller structures. The imposing concrete building of the original House of Statistics itself was completed in 1970 as part of a major post-war urban renewal initiative by the young German Democratic Republic (GDR). It served as the headquarters of the Central Office for Statistics where population data was collected. After the German reunification in 1990, the complex came under the ownership of the German federal authorities but has sat vacant since 2008.

HdS is located on the borders of Alexanderplatz, the central square of the former East Berlin, which today is one of Berlin's major public/commercial areas centred around a public transportation hub that features shopping centres, the TV tower and department stores, hang-outs and large retail spaces. The area is shaped by international real-estate investors with many high-rises and commercial projects, surrounded by enormous Stalinist housing projects. Originally, the Stalinist Plattenbau was considered unsellable and slated for demolition to make way for a new residential tower.

'Aktion – Hier entsteht Raum für Kunst, Kultur und Soziales', Photo by AbBA

The real story of HdS began in September 2015, when a group of artists and activists used the Berlin Art Week to draw attention to the vacant former Haus der Statistik. Their intervention was organised by AbBA: Allianz bedrohter Berliner Atelierhäuser (Alliance of Endangered Berlin Art Studios), an initiative by artists and activists who were, at the time, scanning the city for vacant buildings. Due in part to its location, on the northeastern side of Alexanderplatz, AbBA chose this specific building as their target.⁷

“Allesandersplatz: Hier entstehen für Berlin – Räume für Kunst, Kultur und Soziales. Zur Erhaltung der innerstädtischen kulturellen und sozialen Infrastruktur werden hier Arbeits-, Atelier- und Projekträume für Kulturschaffende und soziale Projekte bereitgestellt.
Gefordert von Berlin, der EU und der Bundesregierung.”

(Everythingdifferentsquare: Here, spaces for art, culture, and social life are being created for Berlin. To preserve the urban cultural and social infrastructure, work, studio, and project spaces are being made available for cultural creators and social projects.
Demanded by Berlin, the EU, and the German government)

This message briefly appeared on a giant banner hanging from the building site, styled as though it was an official government notice. The collective AbBA renamed the area Allesandersplatz (which translates to Everythingdifferentsquare – note the phonetic similarity to Alexanderplatz) to highlight their vision of a radically different approach to urban planning: an urban space shaped by and for Berliners through a collaborative and open development process. They signed the banner with “demanded by Berlin, the EU, and the German government,” which was another play on the similarity in the German language of the words gefördert (supported) and gefordert (demanded). The banner was unveiled like a formal public event that included speeches and performative singing. Once the authorities realised the event was a stunt, the State Office for Criminal Prosecution filed charges and swiftly removed the banner.

With this intervention, AbBA wanted to draw attention to the increasing lack of affordable space in a city that just a few years prior was priding itself on being the cultural capital of the world. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in the 1990s, Berlin quickly gained a reputation as a city teeming with opportunities for adventurers, offering a unique blend of creative freedom, cultural experimentation, and urban reinvention. Additionally, a large wave of migration to West Germany, unclear property relations in East Berlin, and a significant amount of municipal housing made the German capital a bastion of affordable living. Cultural workers and artists have been pioneers in this historical development, playing a crucial role in shaping the city's image as a sanctuary for creativity. However, particularly since the mid-2000s, Berlin's then-social-democratic government couldn’t resist the neoliberal zeitgeist and began to sell off large swaths of public housing to international investors. The Berlin that had previously been characterised by predominantly public housing became the epicentre of privatisation due to decisions by both national and local policymakers. We will come back to this point later in our discussion.

"Stop Leaving Buildings Empty - Flats For All - Affordable Rents"
A banner captured in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg neighbourhood during the 1990s anti-gentrification movement. Source unknown.

The privatisation of housing resulted in rising rents and the decimation of cultural infrastructure. Many working-class residents and tenants with precarious contracts had to leave the centre of the city for the periphery, as did artists and creatives. This shift is symptomatic of the well-known gentrification paradox, whereby artists and cultural workers first raise the value of an urban area to then be priced out of this area themselves. In this approach, the cultural infrastructure of a city is used as a means for economic extraction, without consideration of culture’s proper value for urban life. Once developers and investors have cashed in and culture has vanished, it is usually time to call in those creative placemakers.

The AbBA intervention was originally intended to be symbolic—an effort to highlight some of these issues since the demolition of the building complex had long been approved. However, it quickly sparked a serious discussion on questions such as: “Who should this building serve in the future? Who are the project’s initiators, and do they have the capability to construct and manage it?"⁸ As this discussion progressed, AbBA took on an increasingly practical role. They quickly drew up a development concept, lobbied politicians and got a resolution approved by the Berlin-Mitte district administration (BVV), announced at a joint press conference in December 2015. This resolution, widely supported by all parties, aimed at implementing the HdS development plan and obtaining support from the Berlin Senate. In early 2016, the first major “network councils” were held, leading to an enormous mobilisation throughout the city: hundreds of representatives from associations, initiatives, and institutions from across Berlin joined the project.⁹ This enabled the initiative to grow, and funding applications were submitted for various educational and artistic projects.

AbBA itself involved various architectural collectives in the project, including the ZK/U: Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik (Centre for Art and Urbanistics), Raumlabor, the Berlin Chamber of Architects, and a broad alliance of NGOs working on migration issues, among other innovative planners. In April 2016, a new non-profit corporation, ZUsammenKUNFT Berlin eG (ZKB) was founded, employing a wordplay that combines “together” and “future” in its name. This coalition of independent artist studios and organisations united, partly in response to the growing threat of eviction by profit-driven speculators. ZKB acted as the legal representative of HdS initiative and formulated a financial proposal to encourage the State of Berlin to acquire HdS and co-develop the project with civil society. At this point, it was clear that the initial building site poster had become a self-fulfilling prophecy, putting AbBA at the helm of a new kind of urban development project.

At the same time, a core group was established to form a legal entity capable of purchasing and managing the HdS building. The aim was to prevent the sale to the highest bidder and to gain support from the Berlin Senator of Finance. In the Summer of 2016, the ZKB Academy was launched as a pilot project, aiming to attract independent artists, university seminar groups, initiatives, and associations dealing with issues such as refugee rights, urban development, education, and the arts. In addition, ZKB was set up at the location of refugee emergency accommodation near the Berlin parliament building as a project satellite exploring the cultural and artistic exchange between established and newcomer Berliners. These activities contributed to the further development and realisation of the project as we know it today: a model for community-driven, co-produced urban development.¹⁰

The concept proposed by the initiators for HdS was mentioned in the 2018 coalition agreement. In it, the centre-left parties agreed to declare HdS a Modellprojekt that should be made possible through new collaborations and broad participation of urban society.¹¹ By the end of 2017 the state of Berlin had purchased the relevant buildings from the Bundesanstalt für Immobilienaufgaben (BImA; Federal Real Estate Institute), paving the way for the implementation of the community-oriented project. It was agreed that the existing area of 40,000 square metres plus a new construction of 65,000 m², would provide space for art, culture, social projects and facilities, education, and affordable housing, as well as a new district town hall for Mitte and other administrative functions.¹² This prevented the sale and demolition of the building. In search of an appropriate organisational framework for the further development of the project, the ZKB, the SenSBW (Senate Department for Urban Development, Construction, and Housing, n.d.), the district of Berlin-Mitte, WBM (Housing Association Berlin-Mitte), and BIM (Berlin Real Estate Management) established Koop5 in January 2018 as a partnership between the five parties working on the community-oriented redevelopment of HdS, a cooperative for participatory and creative urban development.

Public-Civic Partnership

The Modellprojekt Haus der Statistik is widely described as an experiment in urban development oriented toward the common good (gemeinwohlorientierte Stadtentwicklung), explicitly grounded in the principles of the New Leipzig Charter adopted by the EU in 2020. Within this framework, the project is organised as a Public-Civic Partnership (PCP), a governance model that structures cooperation between public authorities and civil society actors. PCP represents a hybrid form of institutional arrangement that links the democratic agency of citizens to the institutional stability of administrative entities. This model underscores co-production, where stakeholders such as public initiatives, investors, banks, residents, municipalities, and creatives work together for the common good and the improvement of living conditions. PCP offers an alternative to traditional Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), which tend to rely more heavily on private investors and have a history of sidelining public interests for private gain. Instead, PCP advocates for greater equality and sustainability, demanding increased public oversight and protection of the common good. It is an act of redistributing and reconfiguring governance in a bottom-up way.

PCP is not a fixed institutional form but rather a set of principles and processes that must be designed and implemented on a case-by-case basis, allowing stakeholders to gather knowledge from long-term experimental urban development processes to then integrate it into a self-expanding cycle. This approach addresses major urban challenges—such as unaffordable housing, vacancy of commercial real estate in city centres, social polarisation, and the loss of space for accessible art and culture—in a manner tailored to local needs and capabilities.¹³

Collaboration within PCP is challenging. We have already mentioned the fact that the common good is an embattled concept that might mean different things for art activists than it does for real estate managers. There are also differences in organisational structures and motivations across the participating parties. Government agencies often have to deal with bureaucratic constraints imposed by legislation and internal processes that limit their flexibility.¹⁴ By contrast, an initiative such as ZKB aims for the aforementioned bottom-up and more basis-democratic approach, where artistry and activism are prioritised.¹⁵ In addition, public administration relies on contracts with external service providers, such as engineers and construction firms, which increases costs and timelines, while ZKB focuses on a participatory and community-oriented model. In short, there is plenty of potential for friction.

The parties involved in Koop5 made trust-building a priority from the outset in order to deal with these challenges. They realised early on that their lack of alignment regarding approaches and methodologies, as well as communication styles, was something they needed to confront head on: bridging these diverse approaches requires mutual learning, understanding each other's needs, and developing procedures that accommodate both bottom-up practices and more bureaucratic institutional processes.¹⁶ Despite such a high degree of mutual awareness, working together in Koop5 remains challenging. Understanding and acceptance of fundamental differences in each other’s approaches and working methods is, essentially, a work-in-progress.

An important concern for everyone involved in the project’s governance is its completion and sustainability. A key requirement is that partners such as BIM and VBM, who intend to relocate their offices to the site, construct their buildings in time and establish a sustained presence. This is seen as crucial to facilitate further development of the area.¹⁷ Another concern is the accessibility and affordability of the different housing and office spaces at such a prime real estate location. Achieving this would send an important political signal beyond Alexanderplatz and, potentially, beyond the German capital as well.¹⁸ Crucial in this context is the willingness of municipal institutions to broaden their collaboration beyond standard agencies and (transactional) tenants to include a wide range of community stakeholders. Once the construction of HdS is completed, communal policies for using and maintaining the public spaces along the streets and in the courtyards need to be developed as well.¹⁹

Due to the diverse dynamics and the protracted nature of the project, coupled with the fluctuating political climate, moving along this road remains a precarious process. According to members of the cooperative ZKB, one of the biggest challenges is convincing politicians to share control over the HdS site for a long period, ideally up to 100 years. Politicians are reluctant to relinquish this authority, which makes such long-term commitments difficult to achieve.²⁰ Regrettable setbacks aside, the project is actively being developed and has already seen different phases of usage.

Getting Things Going at a Building Site

In the summer of 2019, spaces opened in the HdS for various so-called pioneer users. The goal was to “activate” the site, promoting the development of a vibrant, diverse, and inclusive neighbourhood as early as possible.²¹ Despite the ground-floor spaces lacking heating and being minimally equipped in terms of electricity, over 700 projects applied for the first open call for pioneer usage, showing that there is high demand for affordable experimental spaces in the city. By 2021, approximately 6,600 m² of space had been revitalised, both indoors and outdoors, with over 500 distinct actors utilising these areas. To ensure a fair and transparent allocation of spaces in pioneer areas, a council was established that consists of members from Koop5, relevant institutions, and community organisations. This council was responsible for developing criteria and coordinating the programming and activation of the shared ground floor and open spaces.

Pioneers at the 9th co-market // Raquel Gómez Delgado

An example of such pioneer usage was the placement of containers, repurposed from the refugee crisis of 2015, in different locations around the current HdS construction site. Initially, ZKB moved in, but potential future residents of the HdS were also able to apply to occupy these containers. The intention here was to generate vibrancy from the outset, flavouring the abstraction of a building site with a colourful premonition of things to come.²² Hence the involvement of potential future tenants and users. These plans were initially met with concern from the administrative parties within Koop5 who feared that the poor condition of the available spaces would limit interest.²³ Any worries evaporated quickly once the call went out and the project was swamped with applications. The very low rent was certainly an important factor. Since 2015, more than 1,000 short- and long-term projects have been involved. Installing those containers helped to establish a concrete presence around a rather unattractive building site. It avoided the temporary, interim status that projects of this kind often must go for in exchange for a sustained presence.

Another early activity of the initiative had been codified in Koop5’s collaboration agreement: an integrated workshop series between September 2018 and March 2019 named WERKSTATT Haus der Statistik that had the goal of collectively producing the design for the entire HdS complex. It was located on the ground floor in a former bicycle shop and served as a centre for start-ups, information, and practical development of the area. Its large display windows facing the street facilitated ongoing communication about the process, enabling questions and interactions with passersby and locals who weren’t part of the formal participation structures. To ensure widespread participation, many workshops and informal gatherings were held at the WERKSTATT. It also included the public presentation of the work of the design teams, followed by feedback from residents and the parties of Koop5, with all parties participating in the selection process of the winning design.

WERKSTATT Haus der Statistik // Raquel Gómez Delgado

WERKSTATT Haus der Statistik // ZKB eG

Then there is the House of Materialization (HdM), which was situated in the backyard of the complex and adjacent to the more residential neighbourhood until recently. This former archive building has functioned as a centre for the circular economy since 2019, bringing together various initiatives and organisations from throughout Berlin. The HdM represents a collaboration between different local initiatives and institutions engaged in research and practical applications in sustainable economic practices and climate-friendly resource utilisation. Prototypical sustainable practices are tested at the HdM, which will be integrated into neighbourhood planning in the future. It provides open collaborative workshops for textiles, metal and wood, urban gardens, as well as workshop and seminar spaces for self-organised work. Additionally, the HdM offers opportunities for individuals to represent their interests and develop business models. The stakeholders at the HdM are self-organised, operate as freelancers, or are (partly) funded within various associations and business models.²⁴ After its temporary departure due to demolition in late 2024, HdM will return (planned 2028-2030) as part of a tryptic of ecologically built houses of experimentation that have the ambition of structurally integrating conversations on sustainable urban future and the development of relevant practices into the project.

Finally, the temporal spaces ‘Alexis,’ ‘Karla,’ and ‘Otto’ have been in use since the renovation of 2022. These spaces are available for rent and can be used for various purposes: exhibitions, (communal) cooking, conferences, club meetings, performances, and theatrical productions, alongside other cultural or social events. Rent for these spaces is based on solidarity pricing (meaning that non-subsidised actors pay less than established institutions, for example). The ambition is to provide many of these initiatives—alongside the yet-to-be-developed activities—with long-term accommodation after the renovation.

Thus, various forms of usage have been and continue to be explored during the planning phase. It’s essential for the project's future success that pioneers and stakeholders are involved early in the development of plans, with spaces open for diverse activities such as theatre, workshops, and lectures. This way, early users help elevate the democratic aspects of the project: moving from passive involvement through expression of opinion to active co-ownership. All these activities help shape the future of the project as they explore collective formats, recreational facilities, alternative business systems, and circular solidarity economies that emerge straight out of the ongoing planning process.²⁵

Although the planning team of ZKB was primarily composed of white, able-bodied, and highly-educated individuals, early users and residents brought an immense diversity to the project.²⁶ In contrast to conventional forms of urban development, ZKB opted for a collaborative approach that promotes cooperation and helps avoid the usual problems associated with individual studio use in urban centres. This approach can be seen as a form of prefigurative politics, where those involved embody the changes they wish to see in the world. The emphasis is placed on process, resources, participation, and dialogue rather than on achieving targets. It is a form of direct action whereby citizens are not seen as passive users, consumers, or spectators, but have an active role in shaping their environment.

Overview of the spaces and areas that make up Haus der Statistik as of 2025

Unlearning Neoliberalism - Rediscovering the Common Good

Like many other European cities, Berlin grapples with the negative consequences of gentrification. What makes HdS such an exciting case is its attempt to defy the zeitgeist by practically proving that urban development can be more democratic and participatory. By adopting the notion of the common good, or, indeed, Gemeinwohl, as their practical horizon, HdS demonstrates that urban development can be more than gentrification. It’s not exactly rocket science either: enabling sustainable relationships between people and their environment, with a focus on social bonds and collective responsibility, can generate the shared resources and collective behaviours that bring cities (back) to life.

HdS’ early development was marked by transformative actions that turned a building into a playground and experimentation site for a desirable urban future. PCP provided the initiative with a suitable organisational form, in which the municipal administration and bottom-up initiatives could find modes of mutual toleration between constructive cooperation and recurrent frustration. This seems to work if the administration makes the effort to act as a partner instead of initiator or regulator and ZKB is willing to compromise. This give-and-take is seldom balanced and fair but seems to be the condition under which a realistic form of participation can be achieved – even today.

HdS has the intention of feeding the experience it generates back into other cooperative processes of community-oriented urban development. For ZKB, this naturally implies an open-source approach, not just regarding Berlin but also internationally. Members of ZKB are actively engaged in sharing knowledge with other initiatives that aim to create alternative urban spaces or develop new approaches to urban planning. This is seen as essential for moving beyond mere campaigning towards effecting change in urban planning processes, since alternative projects are often one-off and lack continuity.

Without the initial intervention of the art collective AbBA, none of this would have happened. Their performative shenanigans that initially aimed at highlighting the shortage of studio spaces for artists, quickly turned into a much broader and more serious urban development project. What is remarkable, certainly from a Dutch perspective, is that the creative professionals’ self-interests seem to have taken a backseat as the project progressed. HdS could not be further from the failed creative industries approach that many European cities had the misfortune to be subjected to until a few years ago. Berlin’s cultural scene has always been a bit more reluctant than other European capitals to fall for the ideological gymnastics of the likes of Richard Florida or Charles Landry. This might be one of the reasons why AbBA’s early art activism could mature into a more sensible and sustainable approach, i.e., one where creatives use their talent to actively reshape urban development for the common good, which we can now define as a pushback against neoliberal city planning in favour of principles such as democratic participation, affordability, collectivity, and, perhaps even communal luxury. One of the tropes that was recurrent throughout our interviews was the desire to give something back to the city.²⁷

Such an attitude might be difficult to fathom for anyone whose sole system of reference is the creative class politics of Florida, Landry, and their admirers within the municipal administrations around Europe. It articulates a fundamental civic orientation that runs counter to the extremist entrepreneurial individualism that has taken hold of much of Europe’s creative scenes. In Amsterdam, the neoliberal indoctrination of the past decades has left its mark on the very structure of the municipal administration: here, civil servants seem to be so ashamed of their civic functions that ten years ago they adopted corporate (Silicon Valley sounding) job titles such as Chief Technology Officer or Chief Science Officer.

For the common good, HdS in action // Illustration: Maria Garcia

Haunted by the Spectre of a World Which Could Be Free

If neoliberal individuation runs, perhaps, somewhat less deep in Berlin, this could be due to a historical anomaly. As mentioned earlier, the years following 1989 turned Berlin into a global magnet for a young generation with (sub)cultural aspirations. There was a short period in which a singular relationship between real estate, culture and politics emerged, which have only scarcely been researched and documented, an omission that is now at least partly remedied by Florian Opitz’s excellent 5-part documentary series Capital B (2023) and the accompanying book (2025). What Opitz’s work makes clear is that this flourishing of art and culture in the old and new German Hauptstadt, had everything to do with capital flows being largely cut off from entering East-Berlin. The reason for this was the absence of legal infrastructure and the often-unclear property relations for much of East-German real estate. There was also substantial migration from East to West-Germany which made housing in the East unusually cheap and abundantly available. Combined with an increasing amount of dilapidated industrial infrastructure, this created the conditions that mayor Wowereit described as “poor but sexy.” With this quote, he unwittingly captured the essence of a situation in which Berlin became, for a limited time, the global culture capital, precisely because capital flows were blocked off from the city.

This is not to say that this time was free of repression. As early as November 1990, the brutal eviction of Mainzer Strasse was a harbinger of things to come and a reminder that the material interests of (real estate) capital could not be written off that easily. However, while the political architects of the German unification did everything they could to reconstruct legal “normalcy,” the challenges were complex enough to keep the influx of capital viscous for a few more years. In those years, the genie was let out of the bottle: a collectively lived experience of a culture that could be (relatively) freely shared and whose abundance only grew through this act of collective sharing. Institutions such as the Love Parade and clubs like Bunker and Tresor were landmarks of that period, but in reality, there was a heterogeneous and dynamic subcultural fabric woven across the entire city that made Berlin a very unique place for a short time: a developed capitalist city where capital flows were highly “regulated” due to the absence of the necessary legal infrastructure.

Still from Capital B: Who Owns Berlin? (2023)

The experience of a few years of relative freedom from the oppression of capital led to a process of collective subject formation: a “therapeutic” process by which subjectivity was drawn out of its individualist shell and replaced by the subjectivity of the city itself.²⁸ It created an understanding of culture as an inherently public good within large parts of Berlin’s cultural scene: something that simultaneously belongs to everyone and no-one. Even more importantly, the lived experience of relative cultural freedom thanks to capital’s legal restraints and the sudden loss of this freedom once these restraints were gone, made it clear to an entire generation of cultural makers and creatives that culture needs to be defended against the destructive force of capital.

From the late eighties to the mid-nineties, what the late Mark Fisher called “the spectre of a world which could be free” (with a nod to Herbert Marcuse) was summoned by an emergent collective cultural subjectivity that formed outside the boundaries and limitations usually imposed on the cultural life of a city by neoliberal capital. Once capital flows returned to the city and tried to re-domesticise this collective subject, a substantial part of the cultural scene transformed their experience of cultural freedom into political activism. As a result, the civic narrative around urban culture in Berlin was charged with an ethos of a broadly inclusive aesthetic practice. This is significant, not least because it allowed the local cultural scene in the 2000s and 2010s to push back (relatively speaking) against the commercialisation of culture that took hold across Europe under the banner of creative industries policies. At a moment of intense ideological pressure on European policymakers to replace cultural policy with creative entrepreneurship, the embodied memory of that moment of collective experience in which a rigorously public form of culture had locally flourished was able to at least break some of the powerful waves of creative industries ideology. This is how Andreas Krüger, co-founder of the ZKB, puts this in another context:

“[. . .] I think the interests and motivations of the self-styled creative entrepreneurs tended to always be coupled with the ones of those who wanted to fight for the purposes of social equality and access to the marginalised from marginalised groups, and so on. It was always strong, socio-political, and not one-sidedly ideological. There was a fundamental agreement that you can’t just leave the city to the powerful.”

While the sentiment that Krüger expresses here might be virulent in other cities as well, the collective subjectivity to effectively materialise it was endemic to Berlin’s specific historical context. Why it never manifested in Amsterdam with its great history of rebellion merits its own analysis. Part of the answer may lie in Amsterdam’s more intimate and much more substantial relationship with the flows of international capital. Another factor might be found in a certain lack of ideological resilience regarding its subculture. By contrast, in the German capital, a dynamic network of grassroots and DIY institutions continues to exist that perpetuates the untimely ethos of culture as a public good. This ethos finds its structural manifestation in organisations across the entire cultural spectrum from the Berlin Clubcommission to the Centre for Art and Urbanistics with the RAW terrain somewhere in the middle. Today, this network provides the Übungsraum or training ground where artists and creatives can unlearn the neoliberal contortions of their subjectivities to find within themselves the desire to “give something back to the city.”

Pioneers usage pilot at HdS where the former canteen in Haus D was refurbished with new, used or found materials. Making Futures Summer School, 2019 // Photo: Lena Giovanazzi

Conclusion: What Is Creative Placemaking, Really?

Having successfully put this notion of “giving something back to the city” into practice is what makes HdS, in our view, a case of creative placemaking that deserves the positive connotation of what the notion is supposed to convey. A group of artistically inclined activists are making place not for themselves or their individual or collective gain but for a desirable urban future. In doing so, they consciously try to reverse the destructive logic of capital which, if unchecked, will always extract as much as possible, regardless of the psychic, social or environmental costs. In contradistinction, creative placemaking as it is reinvented by HdS has as its goal the dynamic circulation of the abundance of urban life. This should be a matter of course but, as we all know, it isn’t as long as we continue to allow capital to siphon off that very abundance by turning our cities into playgrounds for financial speculation.

An important factor in the project’s unlikely survival was that the artists who initiated HdS remain actively involved, keeping the original ideals alive. They act as guardians who ensure that potentially vacuous concepts such as “fostering community,” “empowering users,” “reclaiming public spaces,” or “promoting culturally vibrant environments” are imbibed with meaningful practice. In doing so, they live up to what commercial placemakers only promise: transforming a conventional urban development into a vibrant neighbourhood; into a place where people are part of the urban vivacity they constantly co-create. Who would have the audacity to sell back to Berliners, Amsterdammers or Londoners the liveliness of their very own city? And yet, this is exactly what creative placemaking agencies do.

The kind of creative placemaking that HdS engages in is of a totally different kind. It had its roots in the manifestation of a collective cultural subjectivity, initiated by a temporal malfunction in the workings of financial extraction. Not unlike N.K. Jemisin’s New York “avatar” in The City We Became (2020), Berlin became culturally sentient to defend itself against the eeriest of entities, that is, against capital. Having experienced the spectre of a city that could be free, this collective cultural subjectivity instilled the city with a powerful sense of possibility, of an existence beyond the suffocating extractivism of today’s finance capital.

HdS is neither witchcraft nor rocket science. In fact, the city officials we spoke to saw it as a promising, if challenging, way to deal with the current urban crisis. The challenge begins by departing from the dogmas of the past 30 years of neoliberalism that have instilled in us the idea that something like a common good does not exist, that there is no alternative to hyperindividualism and market competition. The case of HdS exposes the wealth of alternatives hidden underneath the vulgar aesthetics of decorative gentrification.

Since this project is still in development, we are yet to see how it pans out. We conducted our interviews at the end of 2023, with regular check-ins throughout 2024 and 2025. Over the course of this period, the project has remained precarious. All eyes are on this initiative, increasing the pressure to succeed and complicating the space for (artistic) experimentation. What’s more, such projects are always subject to political fluctuations and contexts. There is ongoing discussion within Koop5 aimed at exploring innovative strategies to address these challenges.

One thing is clear: it is high time we expose the creative industries model that the Dutch cultural sector and specifically Amsterdam remains hostage to, even though there is absolutely no confidence in it, not even at the policy level. If we want artists and creatives to step out of the vicious circle of self-interest and functionalisation (for gentrification, etc.), public administrations must rediscover their civic pride. Here, new approaches developed in the field of heterodox economy could possibly provide a basis for a reappraisal of the role of art and creativity within urban development.²⁹ Kate Raworth’s Donut needs to become more than the mere marketing racket it has been for Amsterdam’s “brand” for the past few years. It may sound boring but one of the questions that need to be explored within municipal administrations is how to “price in” the contributions of artistic and creative civic activism. Retaining citizen participation and activist involvement in such large, complicated, long-term projects represents an enormous challenge. How can a sufficient level of democratic participation be sustained for a decade or longer if this is expected to happen on a voluntary basis without remuneration? Years and years of procedures, loads of architectural designs and financial proposals, experts who scrutinise everything, political change present challenges that tend to put social movements on the backfoot. Famous Christiania in Copenhagen has been struggling with these and related issues for quite a few years. What should be clear is that if we are committed to making place for the common good of a living and liveable city for the many, not the few, then our public budgets should go to such democratic initiatives rather than those who are complicit in sucking the life out of it.

Abbreviations

AbBA Allianz bedrohter Berliner Atelierhäuser
BIM                 Berliner Immobilienmanagement GmbH
DDR              Deutsche Demokratische Republik
HdS                 Haus der Statistik
HdM Haus der Materialisierung
KOOP5 Kooperation von fünf Partnern
PCP Public-Civic Partnership
PPP Public Private Partnership
SenSBW Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung, Bauen und Wohnen
WBM Wohnungsbaugesellschaft Berlin-Mitte mbH
ZKB ZUsammenKUNFT Berlin eG

This article is partly based on a series of interviews conducted in December 2023, along with additional and systematic theoretical research carried out between December 2023 and June 2024. One of the authors conducted in-depth interviews with individuals who are directly or indirectly involved with the project: Daniela Brahm (ExRotaprint Berlin), Konrad Braun (ZUsammenKUNFT Berlin), Christiane Droste (ZUsammenKUNFT Berlin), Tim Edler (Flussbad Berlin), Mona Gennies (Montag Stiftung Urbane Räume), Lisa Hahn (Montag Stiftung Urbane Räume), Manfred Kühne (Senate Department for Urban Development and Housing), Andreas Krüger (ZUsammenKUNFT & Belius Berlin), Tim Lührmann (Berlin Real Estate Management GmbH), Ute Margerete Meyer (Hochschule Biberach), Harry Sachs (ZUsammenKUNFT Berlin); Lennart Siebert (Studio Commissioner Berlin), Simon Wöhr (Urban Tactics). These interviews have been anonymised in their extractions that are referred to numerically throughout the text.

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