Focus on: Spreefeld Berlin
UpdatedA registered German cooperative created to democratically build and manage mixed-use housing projects
Every week, the CoHabitat Network introduces you to a collaborative housing project documented on the cohabitat.io database.
Before and after the German reunification in 1990, Berlin has been the scene of a vibrant self-managed housing provision by squatting movements, Baugruppen (construction groups), and Housing Cooperatives, among others.
Over 500 community-led housing projects appeared in Berlin in the last decades. The Spreefeld housing cooperative, downtown Berlin, is one of them.
It was built between 2012 and 2014, on a plot of land of 7 000 m² along the Spree River and includes 60 flats (around 140 residents), as well as 10 commercial and service areas (with over 70 workers). Nevertheless, by the time the residents could move in, gentrification and financialization processes had started all over Berlin. The value of land increased by 16 times since they could buy it, generating divisions in the cooperative and making it difficult for other new affordable housing projects to emerge without public subsidies.
On the planning stage, in order to stand against privatisation of the riverfront, the group wanted to design an open landscape, not another gated community. The car-free public space from the waterfront is connected to the private spaces around the cooperative, which most people think are public - therefore benefitting the whole community and ensuring public access to the riverbanks.
Spreefeld, a case study in our publication on access to land and finance for community-led housing
This short publication reviews some of the winning projects of the regional CLH Award by focusing on how they managed to secure land and accessed funding to plan and build, refurbish or improve, their living environment. It is our belief that, despite the diversity of their local contexts and particularities, these practices can inspire other people who are trying to conceive or strengthen CLH projects, especially given that access to affordable finance and land tend to be some of the main obstacles for developing CLH all over the world.
▶ Download here (PDF, 8.3 MB)