The Berlin Senate’s new social report, “Monitoring of Social Urban Development 2025”, examines how issues like unemployment and child poverty affect the city’s population. While the findings present a slight increase in unemployment over the years and a slight decrease in child poverty, what is most striking is the changing geographic distribution of social pressures: the concentration of social problems is clearly moving away towards the city’s outskirts. Twelve areas of the city were added to the dozens already classified as “requiring special attention”, with
five removed from the list. Along with the traditionally poorer Kreuzberg, Neukölln and Gesundbrunnen, these areas now include such places as Staaken, Neu-Hohenschönhausen, Marzahn, Hellersdorf and Reinickendorf, especially the Märkisches Viertel. According to Berliner Morgenpost’s interview with Talja Blokland, Professor of Urban Sociology at Humboldt University, the shifting of poverty to the city’s outskirts is a Europe-wide trend. The main reason for this is the rapidly rising rent index and the gentrification this entails, which is further fueled by Berliners being pushed out of the
inner city by increasing numbers of Airbnb listings and the construction of offices instead of apartments. Poorer people simply cannot afford to live in the centre anymore and are pushed out to the housing estates in zone B. Inequality is then only reinforced as poorer people mingle less with those better off; poverty becomes cemented in communities as social mobility dissipates and the gap between the rich and the poor widens. According to the sociologist, the primary tools needed to address this state of affairs
are better social housing policies and educational reforms that would prevent children from reproducing the cycle of poverty. She points to the examples of Vienna and the Netherlands respectively as places where these matters are better organised. Furthermore, more residential participation in designing and maintaining public spaces, such as community gardens in New York, can help with decreasing inequalities among people. Populist law-and-order policies focusing strictly on improving cleanliness, like the ones championed by the current Berlin government, are a short-sighted approach which will not
magically improve social cohesion.
Berlin Senate, Monitoring of Social Urban Development 2025, social report, unemployment, child poverty, gentrification, rents, Airbnb, Kreuzberg, Neukölln, Gesundbrunnen, Staaken, Märkisches Viertel, zone B, Talja Blokland, Humboldt University, social housing, education reform, Vienna, Netherlands, community gardens, New York, law-and-order policies