City, Culture and Society xxx (2016) 1e7

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City, Culture and Society

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Kiezkulturnetz vs. Kreativquartier: Social innovation and economic

development in two neighbourhoods of Berlin*
Marc Pradel-Miquel
Universitat de Barcelona, Spain

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Local economic development in European cities has been based on the strengthening of innovation and
Received 25 February 2015 creativity through culture-based urban renewal. Nevertheless, artists and creators have often played a
Received in revised form residual role in the denition of these processes. This article analyses the role of artists in urban renewal
2 May 2016
through the analysis of two socially innovative initiatives oriented to the economic development and
Accepted 10 May 2016
social inclusion in the city of Berlin. Social innovation is understood here as a way to ght social exclusion
Available online xxx
providing resources and empowerment to communities, and promoting new ways of participation. The
paper analyses two neighbourhoods in the districts of Wedding and Kreuzberg in Berlin, showing how
Keywords:
Social innovation
apart from being early gentriers artists can develop socially innovative processes with the rest of the
Urban governance neighbourhood to empower the whole community and to redene the urban renewal processes taking
Berlin place in the city. This role is better understood if we take into consideration the local governance system
Creative sectors and the long history of counter-culture of Berlin.
Urban renewal 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction projects in gentrication and often depicting artists as early gen-

This article analyses the role of artists and creators in the
conguration of the creative city, focusing on the case of Berlin.
More specically, it focuses on the role of artists in neighbourhood
regeneration initiatives, and their autonomy to intervene in the
development of creative neighbourhoods. In the last 20 years,
culture, creativity and innovation have become key elements for
economic regeneration in cities, as they are considered the cor-
nerstones of economic growth once the industrial production has
been partially delocalised to other parts of the world. This has
brought the emergence of culture-based initiatives for economic
development in industrial cities and neighbourhoods, encouraging
the generation of new economic activities and providing measures
for social cohesion (for instance in the elds of education and
employment) in order to ensure quality of life. These initiatives are
often criticized as cornerstones for urban renewal leading to
gentrication. The role of artists and cultural policies in the shaping
of the creative city has been widely analysed (Jakob, 2010; Zukin,
1995; Zukin & Braslow, 2011) stressing the role of culture-led
triers. However, artists are far from being a homogeneous group.
Recent literature shows that artists, as vulnerable actors in the
process of city development, can use arts, culture and their creative
profession as tools for social change, becoming involved with wider
communities (Mart-Costa & Pradel, 2012; Novy & Colomb, 2012;
Tremblay & Pilati, 2013). Working with cultural dimensions, these
actors want to redene the identity of the urban system, reinforcing
social identity and the sense of belonging, which can bring
empowerment to communities and individuals.
This article focuses on the role of artists in two different
neighbourhood regeneration projects in Berlin. As part of the
overall strategy of the city, neighbourhood regeneration strategies
are relying on arts and creativity to reshape the image of deprived
neighbourhoods and to boost their economies. The comparison
focuses on how artists t in these projects and how can they
develop their own views, often against the normative idea of the
creative city. The research, based on participatory observation and
interviews with key actors1, seeks to understand how arts and
culture are articulated and their potential for questioning the cre-
ative city, and promoting other forms of urban regeneration with

*
This article is the result of a six months visiting research to the Center for
Metropolitan Studies in the Technische Universitat Berlin, between September 2012
and February 2013. I would like to thank Dorothee Brantz and all CMS members for
their support in my research during that time.
E-mail address: marcpradel@ub.edu.
1
The eldwork consisted on six interviews to representatives of the associations,
Quartiersmanagement staff of the two neighbourhoods and other actors involved in
the two projects. This was complemented with participant observation of events
and assemblies in both projects.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ccs.2016.05.001
1877-9166/ 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article in press as: Pradel-Miquel, M., Kiezkulturnetz vs. Kreativquartier: Social innovation and economic development in two
neighbourhoods of Berlin, City, Culture and Society (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ccs.2016.05.001
2 M. Pradel-Miquel / City, Culture and Society xxx (2016) 1e7
the involvement of neighbourhood actors.
The article develops as follows. The rst part analyses the role of
artists and the transformation of cities. The second section focuses
on how the idea of the creative city has been shaped and how is
being deployed in Berlin, stressing how alternative forms of inno-
vation and creativity are used in different ways to promote eco-
nomic growth. Section three analyses the initiatives in the
neighbourhoods of Sdliche Friedrichstadt and Soldiner Kiez,
focusing on the role of artists and creators and the possibilities for
neighbourhood regeneration. Finally some conclusions are drawn
on neighbourhood policies based on culture and creativity as a
motor for economic and social changes, and their consequences.
2. The creative city and social innovation
The conception of the creative city and the emergence of cul-
ture and creativity as cornerstones of the new economy must be
framed in wider economic development policies oriented to the
creation of the correct conditions or environments for economic
growth. These approaches aim to reinforce endogenous growth
creating spaces that foster social relations and trust, elements
considered as a precondition for innovation. For that reason, urban
centres have re-gained relevance as economic spaces as they entail
density, diversity and proximity, the basic conditions to create
networking and agglomeration (Scott, 2008). To revitalise these
centres, culture-based initiatives have become central, trying to
make them attractive to qualied middle-classes. These policies are
based on the idea that jobs follow people (Florida, 2002) even
though this idea is controversial and facts seem to show the con-
trary (Storper, 2013; Storper & Manville, 2006). Behind the creative
city idea lies the promise of resurgent and cohesive cities in which
skilled middle classes develop creative and innovative jobs and
enjoy the cultural atmosphere, what attract new people that want
to join this creative environment.
Nevertheless, these approaches have brought increasing urban
segregation, as differences between old industrial working class
neighbourhoods and refurbished city centres grows and neigh-
bours are expelled from renewed neighbourhoods through pro-
cesses of gentrication. This processes must be framed in a context
of increasing lack of consensus with residents on the trans-
formation of the neighbourhood. In coherence with the consoli-
dation of new multi-level governance arrangements (Jessop, 2002,
2004), cities have increasingly involved non-state actors in
decision-making, with the introduction of private actors in eco-
nomic development policies as well as the involvement of (certain)
civil society actors in the promotion of policies for social inclusion.
However, this openness hasnt been neutral: it has legitimised
some actors over others and has limited the scope and possibility of
local policy-making, relying largely on the role of private actors
(Mayer, 2003a,b; Swyngedouw, 2005).
In order to ensure the involvement of civil society, national and
supranational governments are promoting the concept of social
innovation (Murray, Caulier-Grice, & Mulgan, 2010) as a way to face
social problems without questioning the neoliberal agenda2. The
idea is that in some arenas, communities can organise themselves
to provide new answers to social problems without a central role of
public administration. As opposed to this normative view, a line of
research understands social innovation as sets of practices linked to
certain forms of social justice and the transformation of existing
power relations (Moulaert, MacCallum, Medmood, & Hamdouch,
2
From an analytical point of view this concept lacks a precise denition and is
being used from different perspectives and sectors, becoming a trendy concept with
multiple meanings (Oosterlynck, Kazepov, Novy, & Cools, 2013).
Please cite this article in press as: Pradel-Miquel, M., Kiezkulturnetz vs. Kreativquartier: Social innovation and economic development in two
neighbourhoods of Berlin, City, Culture and Society (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ccs.2016.05.001
2013; page 17). Following this, the concept is related to the provi-
sion of needs, but also to the transformation of social relations and
the provision of empowerment. Consequently, it is understood as a
process that is embedded in the local context and thus, relative,
even though it takes place in a multi-level governance context that
frames possible action of local actors (Pradel, Garca, & Eizaguirre,
2013).
In fact, despite general trends towards the generalisation of
neoliberal models for city growth, empirical analysis shows that in
some cases marginalised local actors are able to create counter-
hegemonic consensus and alternative projects for city develop-
ment, that seek for some forms of social justice and empowerment
(Gonz alez & Healey, 2005; Moulaert, 2009). These actors often
create forms of collective organisation oriented towards providing
new forms to conceive and tackle social problems and creating
mechanisms for social justice. These socially innovative practices
(Moulaert et al., 2013) focus on the provision of material and
immaterial resources to a part of the population that cannot pro-
vide it through the market or the state approaches. Contrary to
mainstream uses of social innovation as collective solutions from
civil society that do not necessarily question the current status quo
(Murray et al., 2010), this understanding of social innovation entails
pushing for a more just city, that is, balancing relations of power
through fostering diversity, equity and democracy (Fainstein, 2010).
As residents in cities and neighbourhoods, artists can contribute
to these counter-hegemonic practices as individual members or as
a group in a neighbourhood or city. This is the case of many protest
movements such as Mediaspree Versenken in Berlin (Novy &
Colomb, 2012) or Salvem Can Ricart in Barcelona (Mart-Costa &
Pradel, 2012) amongst others. As the case studies will reect, art-
ists can play different roles: they participate directly or indirectly in
gentrication processes, but they can oppose to such dynamics
opening the debate for desirable urban development and
rethinking models for growth, aligning themselves with local
communities.
3. Berlin urban development model relying on creativity and
(social) innovation
Since the fall of the wall in 1989, the city of Berlin is relying
increasingly on innovation and creativity in order to revamp its
economic growth model and to tackle increasing social segregation.
Soon after its reunication, Berlin became one of the poorest Lands
of Germany, and the one receiving more funds from the rest3. Since
1989 the city saw a rapid economic transformation towards de-
industrialisation and unemployment. The collapse of the political
and economic system of the DDR and the end of subsidies to
companies in West Berlin brought the closure or relocation of
companies to other parts of the country or in the neighbouring
Land of Brandenburg4. The national project for the city was to
3
Berlin and Hamburg are the only cities in Germany that are also states (Lander)
within the German federal system, having the regional and local levels merged into
a single senate. In Berlin, the Land has a legislative power in the senate and an
executive power shared by the mayor (direct election) and members of the senate.
This structure is complemented with the district councils, with direct elections and
some attributions, for instance in urban planning or local social policies. As Strom
(2001) and Colomb (2012) show, this has allowed the development of local policies
in the districts and the promotion of practices for citizens participation.
4
In former East Berlin the industrial jobs declined rapidly as formerly public
companies were unable to compete in the private market whereas the integration
of public administration into the federal republic of Germany brought a decline in
the number of personnel, as most of the state apparatus of the GDR was concen-
ussermann and Kapphan (2004) be-
trated in Berlin. Following calculations by Ha
tween 1990 and 1992 80 per cent of the employment in East Berlin had
disappeared.
 M. Pradel-Miquel / City, Culture and Society xxx (2016) 1e7
transform it into a global capital, what created great expectations
for the future of the city and its economic development (Colomb,
2012; Ha ussermann & Colomb, 2008; Kra tke, 2004; Mayer,
2003a). Former East Berlin was massively reprivatised and there
was a boom of the real estate sector sustained by expectations of
rising demand for ofces and housing in the new capital of Ger-
many as well as the enactment of tax allowance policies for real
estate companies to encourage investments. The resulting specu-
lative bubble of 2001 brought the increase of public debt as the city-
state had to rescue banks who had funded the private investors. A
new leftist government elected the same year was forced to apply
cuts and to perform an administrative reform.
In this framework of lack of investments the economic strategy
for the city since 2000s is being based on the attraction of artists,
creators, designers, and professionals of the creative industries to
participate in the atmosphere of the city (Colomb, 2012). In 2006
the department of Economy, Technology and Women (Sen-
atsverwaltung fr Wirtschaft, Technologie und Frauen) together with
the department of economy, development and culture (Sen-
atsverwaltung fr Wirtschaft, Forschung and Kultur) published a
report on the creative economy in the city, underlining the rele-
vance of cultural industries in the strategy for economic growth,
not only to support sectors such as tourism but as a sector by itself
(Merkel, 2009). The report detected eight creative sectors consid-
ered key for economic growth: publishing, audiovisual activities,
arts, software development, music, advertising, architecture and
performing arts. Besides the report underlined the strategy of the
city for growth, including four main measures: networking creative
sectors, marketing creative products, promotion of culture and
knowledge and development of companies in the creative sectors.
The promotion of culture and knowledge includes not only the
creation of new cultural facilities but also the creation of the
legislation for temporal spaces for artists and other small facilities
in order to promote creative sectors at neighbourhood level
(Merkel, 2009).
This strategy is coherent with the historical development of the
city, in which cultural and creative activities have played a role
since 19455. During the second half of the 20th century Berlin was a
pole attracting cultural and artistic activities in the context of the
cold war. The city had a considerable proportion of empty spaces of
all kind including factories, transport infrastructures, dwellings and
ofces, which were used both in west and east by residents to
promote informal uses. In West Berlin the district of Kreuzberg
became a central point for social movements linked to anarchism,
with a strong counter-cultural scene (Duspohl, 2009) whereas in
East Berlin there was a much more discrete use of spaces in districts
like Prenzlauer Berg by dissidents and marginalised people (Levine,
2004).
Thus, the stimulation of these sectors has been based on
combining investments to support private activity of large com-
panies with policies to maintain the underground and creative
environment of Berlin, giving autonomy to artists and creators to
develop their own projects and initiatives. This approach has
strengthened the role of civil society actors in the use of abandoned
spaces for social and artistic purposes, yielding unused commercial
ofces or the temporal transformation of certain spaces for public
use, for instance the creation of urban beaches, community gar-
dens, or urban parks, or the celebration of artistic workshops and
festivals. Besides, this approach is combined with an increase of
5
The analysis of Berlins economy developed by Kra tke (2011) shows that
different creative sectors very relevant for local economic growth, such as audio-
visual, art, design, architecture, or publishing are spatially distributed following
historical patterns of location.
Please cite this article in press as: Pradel-Miquel, M., Kiezkulturnetz vs. Kreativquartier: Social innovation and economic development in two
neighbourhoods of Berlin, City, Culture and Society (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ccs.2016.05.001
3
tourism as a relevant economic activity thanks to the improvement
of connectivity through low cost airlines, making Berlin the third
most visited city in Europe after Paris and London (Colomb, 2012).
This has meant the growth in the number of hotel beds and is the
result of a growing attention to the sector by Berlin authorities. The
promotion of tourism has been based on the ofcial support to
informal practices and counter-cultural spaces in the city, creating
an identity of Berlin as a destiny for creative people.
Thus, local authorities have fostered informal activities in
abandoned spaces as a strategy to ll the city and to generate
economic activity. The creation of infrastructures and equipment
based on community involvement has been also behind social
policies taking place in the city. Rosol (2010, 2012) understands this
approach as a roll out of neoliberal approaches as it means the
withdrawal of the state in the management of public space and the
translation of the responsibility to associations and groups of the
civil society working on a voluntary basis. Nevertheless, as we will
see they can have also potential for social change. In fact, this
approach is connected with the dominant logic of social innovation
as a mechanism to solve social problems.
The Quartiersmanagement program is an example of how social
policies are increasingly oriented towards citizens involvement in
problem solving. In order to tackle the consequences of increasing
social fragmentation and growth of spatial inequalities in the city
(Haussermann & Kapphan, 2004; Mayer, 2003a), the senate of
Berlin has launched a program at neighbourhood scale for eco-
nomic regeneration. This program involves the district councils and
the senate of Berlin and consists on the improvement of the
physical and social conditions of impoverished neighbourhoods
with the involvement of neighbours, who decide on the type of
interventions. Quartiersmanagement is a multi-level policy devel-
opment based on the federal social program Soziale Stadt e stadt-
teile mit besonderen Entwicklungsbedarf (Social city, city areas with
special needs of development) with the objective of improving
poorer neighbourhoods of German cities with a combination of
urban intervention and social policies at neighbourhood scale.
The implementation of such program falls within the compe-
tences of Lands, which means, in the case of Berlin, that the city
senate has direct responsibility on its development. In its rst
round, the program covered 29 neighbourhoods (Semm, 2011). The
program is based in micro-interventions, assigning resources to
neighbourhoods or kiez6 for the development of social policies in
three areas: education, active employment policies and ethnic and
social integration. Neighbours participate in the assignation of re-
sources to specic programs through a neighbourhood council
(Quartiersamt) created ad hoc for the program, while technical staff
implements the measures and manages the running of the pro-
gram. Every neighbourhood participating in the program has a
Quartiersmanagement ofce ruled by technical staff where neigh-
bourhood councils meet to decide the allocation of funds to
projects.
The program includes also a follow-up of the situation of
poverty and unemployment, classifying neighbourhoods and
monitoring their evolution through the application of policies. The
program classies neighbourhoods in four categories through in-
dicators on integration, socio-economics and demographics. Re-
sources are allocated to neighbourhoods depending on their
performing following these indicators. The resulting classication
includes highly problematic neighbourhoods, intermediate neigh-
bourhoods, unproblematic neighbourhoods and good progress
6
The Kiez refers to a small neighbourhood formed often by a group of adjacent
streets and they are the result of social and cultural facts rather than any ofcial
administrative division.
4 M. Pradel-Miquel / City, Culture and Society xxx (2016) 1e7
neighbourhoods. Neighbourhoods in this last group are excluded of
the program after a period if they maintain their characteristics.
Quartiersmanagement allocates resources to problematic neigh-
bourhoods but at the same time generates forms of stigmatization
creating classication of neighbourhoods depending on its mar-
ginality. Furthermore, the possibilities for local programs including
only three main lines, limits the possibilities for action. But despite
all its limitations, the program creates a framework for neigh-
bourhood actors to intervene in policies for regeneration, and the
Quartiersmanagement ofces have become key actors in the
development of neighbourhood regeneration projects, as a source
of funds and legitimation, as we will see in the case-studies.
Following the strategy of the whole city, artistic initiatives have
played a relevant role in Quartiersmanagement initiatives, especially
in those oriented to change the identity and perceptions of
neighbourhoods. As we shall see, such initiatives give a limited
framework for artists to intervene in neighbourhoods, as the ini-
tiatives foresee their role in identity-building.
4. Artistic interventions in two deprived neighbourhoods:
sdliche friedrichstadt and Soldiner Kiez
Soldiner Kiez and Sdliche Friedrichstadt -settled in the former
districts of Wedding and Kreuzberg respectively7-have similar
historical roots as former industrial neighbourhoods heavily hit by
allied bombings during Second World War. After 1961 Wedding
and Kreuzberg became part of the peripheral area of West Berlin,
whose authorities created a new city centre in the neighbourhood
of Charlottenburg. As peripheral districts, Kreuzberg and Wedding
were reconstructed as residential areas with social housing that
attracted migrants from Eastern Europe and Near East looking for
employment in the industrial sector. Thus, Soldiner Kiez and
Sdliche Friedrichstadt, became diverse neighbourhoods based on
social housing.
After reunication and deindustrialisation, both neighbour-
hoods face similar social problems, unemployment and lack of
social and ethnic integration, being two neighbourhoods partici-
pating in the Quartiersmanagement program since its inception.
Soldiner Kiez is in a worse situation than Sdliche Friedrichstadt
both in terms of unemployment and people receiving assistance,
and has a higher number of foreign origin population8. Map 1
shows the situation of the two neighbourhoods within their dis-
tricts and Berlin as a whole.
5. Sdliche Friedrichstadt: creative quarter without creators?
Sdliche Friedrichstadt is settled in the northern area of
Kreuzberg, limiting with the district of Mitte. The centre of the
neighbourhood is the Mehring square (Merhringplatz), from which
the main streets of the neighbourhood emerge to the north.
7
Since 2001Berlin has a new administrative map in which the district of Wed-
ding was integrated into the Mitte district and Kreuzberg was integrated into the
Friedrichschain-Kreuzberg district, creating greater administrations. Whereas
Kreuzberg has maintained its own identity with the merging, Wedding has been
integrated into the dynamics of Mitte, and local actors feel the district authority
farther and they have to compete for attention with other relevant areas of the city.
Moreover, the district of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg is ruled by the Green party,
whereas the district of Mitte is ruled by the SPD, who is governing the whole city.
That means that often Friedrischain-Kreuzberg district council oppose to decisions
taken in the senate of Berlin.
8 drichstrasse report promoted by Form Berufsbildung with funding of the Senate of
Unemployment rate in Berlin is 9,4 per cent, whereas it raises to 15.6 in the case
of Sdliche Friedrichstadt and 18.2 in Soldiner Kiez. Migration is also concentrated
as 80.4 per cent of minors in Soldiner Kiez and 90.5 in Sdliche Friedrichstadt are
from foreign origin (Monitoring Soziale Stadtentwicklung 2011 www.
stadtentwicklung.berlin.de, Senatsverwaltung fr Stadtentwicklung Berlin).
Please cite this article in press as: Pradel-Miquel, M., Kiezkulturnetz vs. Kreativquartier: Social innovation and economic development in two
neighbourhoods of Berlin, City, Culture and Society (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ccs.2016.05.001
Currently the square is a gardened pedestrian area in form of two
concentric rings of social housing buildings. The main axis of the
neighbourhood is the southern part of Friedrichstrasse, which
connects with Mitte at the famous Checkpoint Charlie. Due to the
development of cultural and touristic industries in Berlin and the
proximity to the city centre, the neighbourhood has witnessed the
creation of different cultural equipments, amongst them the Jewish
museum, the Topographie des Terrors (museum of the crimes of
nazism settled in the former central ofce of Gestapo) or the wall
museum (Haus am Checkpoint Charlie). The neighbourhood has also
an emergent economic activity linked to creative activities,
including more than 350 companies, most of them small9. Social
housing, is concentrated around Mehringplatz and Friedrichstrasse
where there are also local shops such as coffee shops, Turkish
restaurants, gambling houses and pharmacies, all of them oriented
to the low income inhabitants of the neighbourhood.
In comparison to other areas of Kreuzberg, the neighbourhood
there is scarce counter-cultural or activist activity. Moreover, most
of the interviewees considered that the neighbourhood is a void, a
transition area between the life of Kreuzberg and the revitalised
city centre. The current morphology of the neighbourhood is the
result of the division of the city after the second world war, and
there are prospects for sewing the division between Mitte and
Kreuzberg through urban intervention in Sdliche Friedrichstadt,
that has become an in-between neighbourhood setting apart the
city centre (Friedrcihstrasse) from the most dynamic areas of
Kreuzberg in the context of the creative Berlin. This has brought to a
group of private and public actors organising a strategy to regen-
erate the neighbourhood to integrate it with the rest of the city (as
it emerges from an interview to technical staff of the project). The
Sdliche Friedrichstadt creative neighbourhood project aims to
change the collective negative image of the neighbourhood
through creative industries and arts and with the participation of
neighbours and artists (interview to technical staff of the project).
The actors supporting the project are the district council, the local
job training school Forums Berufsbildung, the public housing com-
pany GEBOWAG, a local urban planning consultancy (Urbanitas
Berlin Barcelona) and a network of art gallery owners.
Both private and public actors agree that the future of the
neighbourhood relies on creative and cultural industries, as they
are involved professionally in these sectors or they consider them
strategic in coherence with the city strategy10. In order to ensure a
social dimension, the local Quartiersmanagement ofce is also
involved and neighbours participate through its local council. As a
rst step the project included the development of a network of
creative actors in the neighbourhood, enabling digital tools for in-
ternal communication, the development of festivals and other so-
cial activities, and the organisation of an association of art galleries
in the neighbourhood. A second step is to involve these actors,
together with promoting private actors and neighbourhood council
in the decision to develop urban renewal measures to improve
sociability and generating city life. In summary, the project is
based on the construction of a network of actors for the economic,
social and cultural transformation of the neighbourhood11 that will
decide urban interventions. In parallel, actors promoting the
initiative have developed a document that has been accepted as
part of the urban renewal part of the area including different
9
Data extracted from the report on the project Kreativquartier Sdliche Frie-
Berlin and the European Social Funds.
10
For instance, Forums Berufsbildung, is specialised in training oriented to artistic
and cultural sectors.
11
http://kreativ-quartier-berlin.de/?qnode/47 seen on 10 september 2015.
 M. Pradel-Miquel / City, Culture and Society xxx (2016) 1e7
Map 1. Situation of cases studies within Berlin.
interventions12. The plan foresees physical intervention in the
public space and the creation of new spaces for the creative econ-
omy. Intervention in the public spaces seeks to promote sociability
and a new identity for the neighbourhood. Is in this eld that artists
and architects are called to play a role, participating in the design of
public space in the neighbourhood (for instance through the cre-
ation of a path connecting cultural institutions in the neighbour-
hood signalled with sculptures and other artistic elements). For the
creation of new spaces for the creative economy, the plan foresees a
new cultural centre linking all the spaces in the neighbourhood and
the creation of spaces for artistic pioneers, creating workshops for
artists that will be called to play a role in social integration, despite
the project does not dene clearly this role. The plan foresees also
to hire GEWOBAG business premises to businesses that activate the
public space, rejecting non-desired businesses (interview to proj-
ect technical staff). That has meant the end of contracts of busi-
nesses that do not t in the plan and the arrival of businesses linked
to the creative sectors. Following the criteria of the project, the
presence of social housing in the area avoids the danger of
gentrication, but there is an upgrading of retail in order to attract
other people to the neighbourhood.
This regeneration project seeks the transformation of the eco-
nomic life of the neighbourhood and its physical environment, but
the design of this transformation is being developed with weak
intervention of neighbours, and no intervention at all from artists.
In this regard, both groups are called to participate in imple-
mentation but cannot intervene in the design of the project:
Neighbours have a limited scope for participation through the
Quartiersmanagement, but this participation is strongly deter-
mined by origin, as population of foreign origin tends to participate
12
The document was developed by Urbanitas Berlin-Barcelona with the support
of GEBOWBAG and Forum Berufsbildung and the district council.
Please cite this article in press as: Pradel-Miquel, M., Kiezkulturnetz vs. Kreativquartier: Social innovation and economic development in two
neighbourhoods of Berlin, City, Culture and Society (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ccs.2016.05.001
5
less than German-born, which means the exclusion of lower-
income groups in participation.
Lack of involvement of neighbours and creation of a top-down
vision of a creative neighbourhood brings technical staff from
Quartiersmanagement to consider that the project does not t with
the social reality of the neighbourhood and that the developers do
not understand it (interview to technical staff Quartiersmanage-
ment). On their side, artists (who werent still settled in the
neighbourhood when this article was being nished) are consid-
ered as a tool to transform the neighbourhood without being
recognized as political subjects able to participate in collective
decision-making. Nevertheless, as the case in Soldiner Kiez will
show, once settled, artists can play such a political role, even op-
position to models of growth based on creativity.
6. Soldiner Kiez: settled artists creating networks to
transform the neighbourhood
As part of Wedding, Soldiner Kiez has a strong industrial and
working class past. During the nineteenth century growing indus-
trialisation and the concentration of working class brought the
creation of workers cultural and political institutions, including
trade unions and cultural centres, but all these institutions were
destroyed with the rise of national-socialism and the later physical
destruction of the neighbourhood by allied bombings. With the
construction of the wall Soldiner Kiez became a city limit but in
contrast to Sdliche Friedrichstadt, the neighbourhood was not a
gate to the entrance to East Berlin but a dead end, what deepened
the spatial and social function of the neighbourhood as a peripheral
area for social housing. During the eighties Wedding as a whole is
one of the poorest areas of West Berlin with a negative image linked
to drugs, street gangs and high criminality (Semm, 2011) and the
image is reinforced after the fall of the wall, particularly affecting
Soldiner Kiez, that becomes a no-go area for most of the Berlin
6 M. Pradel-Miquel / City, Culture and Society xxx (2016) 1e7
dwellers (Mayer, 2003a).
Despite the gentrication process in the neighbouring former
East Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg, Soldiner Kiez remains a poor
neighbourhood. As in Wedding as a whole, the existing abandoned
spaces and the proximity to the city centre has brought prospect for
economic growth and gentrication, but has received scarce
attention from private actors. In 2001 the Quartiersmanagement
Soldiner Kiez, together with the public housing company DEGEWO,
owner of the business premisses, launched a program to attract
artists to Wedding in order to foster urban renewal, in a similar vein
that the project in Sdliche Friedrichstadt. As Doreen Jakob has
analysed (2010, 2012), these attempts were focused to change the
image of the neighbourhood and to improve real state value,
generating gentrication and attracting middle classes to the
neighbourhood. Moreover, no specic role was planned for artists,
except their obligation to open the spaces to the neighbourhood
once a month. Nevertheless, after more than ten years of devel-
opment of the initiative, there have been no signicant signs of
gentrication in Soldiner Kiez13.
In order to remain autonomous, Wedding artists created the
cultural association Kolonie Wedding, developing their own activ-
ities and looking for funds in other institutions and levels. Part of
them have created Organ Kritischer Kunst (OKK, Critical Art Or-
ganism), an organisation which analyses the links between art and
political activism and discusses the role of art in urban develop-
ment in general and in Soldiner kiez in particular. Between 2012 and
2014 OKK launched the Kiezkulturnetz (Neighbourhood Network of
Culture). This network aims to include all cultural, artistic and
neighbourhood associations together with schools, small shops and
cultural public institutions, including the local public library, in
order to redene the identity of the neighbourhood through arts
and culture14. The senate of Berlin and the district council partici-
pated through the Quartiersmanagement program, which assigned
funds to this project granting the coverage of material needs.
The project includes four phases: a) artistic research on the role
of art in urban development, the historical development of the
neighbourhood, capturing sound landscapes and interviews with
inhabitants; b) theoretical workshops on political culture, urban
development, renewable energies, amongst others, and practical
workshops on photography, street art, literary art or drawing; c) the
consolidation of the network created with previous activities and
the formulation of a citizens participation model for the trans-
formation of public space in Soldiner Kiez; and d) the intervention
in the public space collecting all the elements developed in the
previous steps of the project15. These steps aim to produce a new
bottom-up collective identity and proposals for the intervention in
the public space. Artists involvement in the neighbourhood is based
on the critical art perspective which investigates the role of art in
social transformation and explores the past of the neighbourhood,
its revolutionary history as part of the Red Wedding and the role
that culture has played in the neighbourhood through history. Be-
sides, through their artistic work, artists have proposed intercul-
tural dialogue that can be translated into dialogue between
different cultural groups. The involvement of all associations and
entities in the neighbourhood in the project, including schools,
13
After 10 years of the Quartiersmanagement program, the neighbourhood re-
mains amongst the last in the list of deprived neighbourhoods, showing strong
unemployment and education problems, and no signicant investments can be
detected in the neighbourhood.
14
Information collected during eldwork observation and completed with in-
formation from the Kiezkulturnetz webiste http://www.kkn.kritische-kunst.org/
soldiner-kiez/ueber_das_projekt/last seen on 9th September 2015.
15
A digital version of the project is available at http://www.kkn.kritische-kunst.
org/soldiner-kiez/ueber_das_projekt/seen on 10th September 2015.
Please cite this article in press as: Pradel-Miquel, M., Kiezkulturnetz vs. Kreativquartier: Social innovation and economic development in two
neighbourhoods of Berlin, City, Culture and Society (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ccs.2016.05.001
libraries, and cultural and leisure associations allows them to
interact with the rest of the community showing them their views.
This project of identity building, based on multiculturalism does
not aim to generate direct economic growth in the neighbourhood,
but to empower its residents changing the image of Soldiner Kiez as
a no-go area. In contrast to Sdliche Friedrichstadt, the neigh-
bourhood is not in the agenda of private investors and neighbour-
hood administration, and there arent relevant private actors in the
neighbourhood pushing for its transformation. For that reason the
results of the project must be read mainly in terms of community
building and strengthening the network of actors in the neigh-
bourhood, without a clear material output in terms of urban
renewal. This networking and image building, however, questions
current trends on city development based on the creative city
proposing alternative views and methods to involve residents in
community improvement.
Against the support this project have from different institutions
in terms of funding, artists involved suffer from scarcity of re-
sources and the continuity of their action is in danger. They must
nd a balance between their professional activities and their
involvement with the community, and many artists are forced to
move because of the lack of funds or decide to move to other areas
of the city closer to creative and cultural industries. A local artist
stressed that this is weakening artists as a local community in the
neighbourhood as part of them are moving to other parts of the city.
The precarious situation of the artists and their focus on the
neighbourhood as an object of artistic research has brought to more
general critical positions on current city development and to the
development of an alternative project to shape the identity of the
neighbourhood.
7. Conclusions
The analysis presented in this article has shown the strong role
that artists and creative activities are gaining in the reshaping of
deprived neighbourhoods in Berlin through projects being funded
at different levels. These projects support artists and creators as
elements for economic change that strengthen the value and image
of the neighbourhood. Nevertheless, artists can play different roles
in neighbourhood renewal. In Sdliche Friedrichstadt public-
private actors understand creativity as an economic asset and the
neighbourhood as an empty canvass where to intervene, proposing
physical and social interventions to create an agglomeration of
creative industries. This top-down approach is pretty similar to
others happening not only in other parts of Berlin, but also in many
cities. The case of Soldiner Kiez shows that after a similar project in
2001, artists have become institutionalised in the neighbourhood
and have developed bottom-up initiatives to promote alternative,
participative and inclusive models for urban development that
propose a multi-cultural perspective involving the whole local
community. This proposal can be read as a reaction to the impo-
sition of the creative city and its contradictions, looking for an
integrative model.
Can these proposals be considered a form of social innovation
linked to the just city? That is, are they proposing alternatives and
contributing to construct a counter-hegemonic model for neigh-
bourhood development? In fact, the development of the kiezkul-
turnetz has brought mechanisms of participation and attempts to
change social relations within the neighbourhood, and at the same
time constructing a new common vision of the neighbourhood and
a project for urban renewal. But to understand what is the impact of
the project in terms of empowering neighbours we need a long-
term analysis showing to what extent it has reinforced the com-
munity or transformed the identity of the neighbourhood.
This article shows that, instead of simplistic views
 M. Pradel-Miquel / City, Culture and Society xxx (2016) 1e7
understanding artists as early gentriers, we have to gure out
what role artists decide to play in the local context and how they
are involved with other actors in the neighbourhood. As other
research has shown (dOvidio and Pradel, 2012; Mart-Costa &
Pradel, 2012; Tremblay & Pilati, 2013) artists are often collabo-
rating in community movements against gentrication and uneven
development. In other cases, they play a role as gentriers,
conscious or not. One of the elements that needs greater attention
in future research is to what extent artists and creators seek a
balance between being part of the community and their profes-
sional success in the artistic and creative markets. As the case in
Soldiner shows, artists, as many other professionals suffering the
conditions of the precariat (Standing, 2011), nd difcult to be
involved in this initiatives and at the same time consolidate their
professional careers. Besides, in the case of Berlin the embedded-
ness of artists to neighbourhoods and their sense of belonging to a
community is weakened by new opportunities for colonization of
new neighbourhoods that offer spaces and facilities for profes-
sionalization of artists (as we have seen in Sdliche Friedrichstadt).
If, as Evans (2009) states, the role of culture in urban regener-
ation can vary from a tool for aesthetization and intervention to a
structural part of strategic planning, how this role is shaped de-
pends not only on the decisions of policy-makers and private in-
vestors but also and to a great extent on the organisation of artists
and other actors promoting culture and their capacity to push for
more inclusive views in neighbourhood development in a context
of ongoing process of capitalist urban transformation.
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