History, Architecture
Ian Roderick
Berlin's Oldest Street

Archaeologists have unearthed Berlin’s oldest street, and it is actually pretty cool. Even though it was likely built in the 13th century, the wooden planks look surprisingly fresh.

Berlin's Oldest Street
Ian Roderick
Berlin’s Mietskasernen

From the 1860s through the Second World War, Berlin was notoriously crowded, with many of its working-class residents packed into suffocating Mietskasernen (“Rental Barracks”).

Berlin’s Mietskasernen
Ian Roderick
The Mainzer Straße Evictions

On November 14, 1990, approximately 3000 police from across Germany forcibly evicted several hundred mostly young squatters from 13 buildings along Mainzer Straße, in the eastern district of Friedrichshain.

It was one of the largest street battles in Berlin since the (failed) revolution of 1953, and had repercussions that continue to be felt.

The Mainzer Straße Evictions
Architecture, History
Ian Roderick
Containerbahnhof Frankfurter Allee

If, like me, you’ve spent a lot of time traveling Berlin’s S-Bahn ring, you might have noticed the large empty space directly to the east of the Frankfurter Allee S-Bahn station. It looks like any number of former industrial sites in the city: run-down, abandoned, with a few remnants here and there.

I was surprised to learn that this particular space wasn’t just a random factory: it was a so-called “Containerbahnhof,” where shipping containers could be on- and off-loaded to and from railcars.

Containerbahnhof Frankfurter Allee
Transport
Ian Roderick
Berlin's Radschnellverbindungen (Express Bike ...

Berlin has committed itself to building 100 kilometers of express bike lanes (Radschnellverbindungen) in the next 5 years or so. I made a deep-dive into one section of that network: the route from the Tiergarten to Alexanderplatz and beyond. What I found is very exciting, but construction is still a long way off.

Berlin's Radschnellverbindungen (Express Bike Lanes)

The Government's Refugee Plan

The German Government has agreed on a set of measures that they will undertake to address the huge number of refugees arriving in the country. The Federal Government will spend at least 6 billion euros over the next year to register, feed, house, and process asylum applications.

 

Beyond the funds, the government also calls on the EU to develop a comprehensive and unified plan to process asylum seekers, as well as an international alliance to fight the sources of the current refugee crisis, e.g. the civil war in Syria and continued instability elsewhere.

Berlin's Medieval City Wall

Berlin's Medieval Wall was constructed around 1250, and was only around 6 feet high. It was built because the relatively new city (the first permanent settlement began sometime in the late 1100s) needed a way to defend itself. There aren't any hills in the area on which to build a fortress, so the best that the people at the time could do was throw together whatever stones and bricks they could find.

The Grexit Draws Nearer

“Greece has been the recipient over the past five years of an unprecedented level of European solidarity” – German Chancellor Angela Merkel

“The reduction initiatives of the last years have led to nothing other than problem-deepening recession” – Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras

How do you resolve a crisis about whose origins you disagree? Europe is trying to figure it out.

The Future of Urban Innovation

I’ll be attending this week here in Berlin called “Future of Innovation Laboratories and Urban Innovation Strategies.” The idea is to find solutions to the world's most pressing urban problems. Will it succeed? Certainly not definitively, but hopefully I'll gain some interesting insight as to how policymakers are thinking about some of the most pressing issues of the 21st century.