Problems and perspectives of the current Berlin settlement

Since the implementation of the Quadripartite Agreement in June 1972, Berlin has entered a new phase in East-West relations. Once a city of perpetual crisis, it has now become accustomed to the pleasant effects of détente. Through the establishment of many practical improvements, the life of Berliners has become easier and the city has been defused of much of its explosive potential.Nevertheless, if Berlin no longer appears to serve as a major flash point of international tension, serious unresolved problems remain. It is the point of this investigation to examine the most important areas of conflict, showing what trends have developed and what actions and counteractions can be expected in the future. The major underlying hypothesis of this study is that one may be skeptical of any conclusion that we have seen the last of the Berlin crises.     

High-technology metals as emerging contaminants: Strong increase of anthropogenic gadolinium levels in tap water of Berlin,Germany, from 2009 to 2012

The distribution of rare earth elements (REE) in tap water sampled in December 2012 in Berlin, Germany, is characterized by anomalously high levels of gadolinium (Gd). While the western districts of the city show strong anthropogenic positive Gd anomalies in REE distribution patterns, the eastern districts are (almost) unaffected. This contamination with anthropogenic Gd results from Gd-based contrast agents used in Magnetic Resonance Imaging, that enter rivers, groundwater and eventually tap water via the clear water effluent from wastewater treatment plants. While the spatial distribution of anthropogenic Gd in 2012 confirms results of an earlier study in 2009 (Kulaksiz and Bau, 2011a), anthropogenic Gd concentrations have increased between 1.5- and 11.5-fold in just three years. This confirms predictions based upon the increase of anthropogenic Gd concentrations in the Havel River over the past two decades and the time it takes the water to migrate from the Havel River to the groundwater production wells. Anomalously high levels of anthropogenic Gd in tap water, which are not confined to Berlin but have also been observed in London, U.K., and in German cities in the Ruhr area and along the Rhine River, reveal that high-technology metals have become emerging contaminants. While non-toxic at the observed concentrations, the anthropogenic Gd is a microcontaminant that may be used as a conservative pseudo-natural tracer for wastewater-derived xenobiotics such as pharmaceuticals, food additives and personal care products. Our results suggest that monitoring the concentrations of such substances in Berlin’s drinking water can be restricted to a few central and western districts of the city, demonstrating that implementation of anthropogenic Gd as a tracer in monitoring programs can contribute to significant cost savings.     

From post-politics to a politics of possibility? Unravelling the privatization of the Berlin Water Company

This article explores the constraints and contingencies of contemporary urban governance, with reference to the partial privatization (1999) and partial remunicipalization (2012) of the Berlin Water Company (BWB). It outlines the processes through which this major shift in Berlin politics occurred, showing how the mainstream consensus on privatization was disrupted and alternatives to apparent neoliberal conformity emerged. Dynamics apparent in the BWB case – commercialization, privatization, re-regulation, public contestation and remunicipalization – are indicative of the challenges and opportunities of making policy in and beyond the global norms of neoliberalism. It is argued that this case is important because it reveals something about what we might call the “politics of possibility” within the paradigm of neoliberal urban governance: the continuing potential for change within the constraints of an urban governance configured to the logics and needs of markets. Given this, the paper concludes that local contingencies in urban governance problematize sweeping notions of a post-political condition. However observable post-political strategies and outcomes in Berlin and elsewhere are, researchers should not assume that they are inevitably dominant or universal.     

Stumbling upon history: collective memory and the urban landscape

Notable historical events are most commonly commemorated by state-sanctioned monumental structures designed as collective memorials. In contrast, this essay attends to Gunter Demnig’s Stumbling Stones, a countermemorial to the Holocaust, set in the vernacular landscape of cities throughout Europe. As participants in a trip sponsored by the German government, bringing American Jews to the capital city of Berlin, we reflect upon our experiences as we question the narrative differences between monumental memorials and countermemorials. This ethnographic study moves the reader through the crowded boulevards of Germany’s capital city, past historical sites and into museums where we share space and commune with the voices of the past that have come to define individual and collective memory in Berlin.     

Creative industries, creative class and competitiveness: Expert opinions critically appraised

In the debate on urban and regional competitiveness, it has become fashionable to stress the growing importance of creativity for economic development. Especially scientist-consultants with a keen eye for what politicians and business people want to hear have taken centre stage in this discussion. Each city and region in the advanced capitalist world seems to prefer a label as creative city or region, and all look after the same type of industries and try to produce the same set of conditions, while investing in higher education and research institutes, networking and lobbying institutions, and the promotion of spin-off companies. A vast number of leaders and spokesmen of local and regional (quasi) governments believe that a major thing to do is to become more attractive places to live for creative knowledge workers or the ‘creative class’, as it is euphemistically labelled.However, in academia there is a lot of scepticism with regard to the use of these concepts and their meaning for urban and regional competitiveness. Also citizen movements and NGOs, and some political parties, voice their concern about the extent to which policies that apply these concepts and ideas might only benefit an elite of higher educated, well- paid professionals while at the same time these policies might result in decline of other activities and in social polarisation and poverty as well.In this paper we contribute to the critical discussion through a critical appraisal of local experts’ views on developments in seven European city-regions, first with regard to policies towards the development of creative and knowledge-intensive industries; and secondly with regard to the impact the development of ‘creative knowledge regions’ may have in social and other respects. In contrast to the rather homogeneous yet dominant advice to facilitate ‘the creative class’, in this paper we will argue that a range of parameters related to the firms and regional institutional, geographical and historical contexts promote a much more diversified view on urban economic development.     

Conflicting rights to the city in New York's community gardens

In the mid-1990s, New York City initiated what would prove to be a long, highly visible struggle involving rights claims related to property, housing, and public space in the form of community gardens. The competing discourses of rights were part of a struggle over the kind of city that New York was to become, and more specifically, whether it would be one in which difference is accepted and in which access to the city and the public realm would be guaranteed. Using interviews with participants in the conflict over community gardens, we evaluate how the resolution to the gardens crisis, which in part occurred through the privatization of what are often taken to be public or community rights to land, transform not only the legal status of the gardens but also, potentially, their role as places where different `publics' can both exercise their right to the city and solidify that right in the landscape.     

The deep geothermal potential of the Berlin area

In this study, we model the geothermal potential of deep geological formations located in the Berlin region in Germany. Berlin is situated in a sedimentary geological setting (northeastern German basin), comprising low-enthalpic aquifers at horizons down to 4–5 km depth. In the Berlin region, the temperature increases almost linearly with depth by about 30 K per kilometer, thus allowing for direct heating from deep aquifer reservoirs in principle. Our model incorporates eight major sedimentary units (Jurassic, Keuper, Muschelkalk, Upper/Middle/Lower Buntsandstein, Zechstein Salt and Sedimentary Rotliegend). Owing to lack of available petro-physical rock data for the Berlin region, we have evaluated literature data for the larger northeastern German basin to develop a thermodynamic field model which regards depth-corrected equations of state within statistical intervals of confidence. Integration over the thicknesses of the respective structural units yields their “heat in place”—energy densities associated with the pore fluid and the rock matrix under local conditions in Joule per unit area at the surface. The model predicts that aquifers in the Middle Buntsandstein and in the Sedimentary Rotliegend may well exhibit energy densities about 10 GJ m^?2 for the pore fluids and 20 GJ m^?2 to 40 GJ m^?2 for the rock matrices on average. Referring these figures to the city area of Berlin (about 892 km²), a significant hydrothermal potential results, which however remained undeveloped until today for the reason of present development risks. The model accounts for these risks through statistical intervals of confidence which are in the order of ±60 to ±80 % of the trend figures. To minimize these uncertainties, scientific field explorations were required in order to assess the petro-physical aquifer properties locally.     

Excavating Lefebvre: The right to the city and its urban politics of the inhabitant

Much current activism and scholarship has raised concern that the various processes of neoliberal restructuring are threatening democracy. More specifically, researchers in geography and other social sciences have stressed that political and economic restructuring in cities is negatively affecting the enfranchisement of urban residents. Much recent research and writing has explored progressive responses to this perceived disenfranchisement in cities. One popular trend has been a fascination with the idea of the `right to the city' as a way to respond to neoliberal urbanism and better empower urban dwellers. I argue that the right to the city holds promise, but that in the literature the idea remains both theoretically and politically underdeveloped. It remains unclear (1) what the right to the city entails or (2) how it might address current problems of disenfranchisement. This paper examines the right to the city in greater depth. It does so by offering a close reading and analysis of the intellectual roots of the idea: the writings of Henri Lefebvre. I suggest that Lefebvre's right to the city is more radical, more problematic, and more indeterminate than the current literature makes it seem. The paper concludes by suggesting that the right to the city does offer distinct potential for resisting current threats to urban enfranchisement. However, the right to the city is not a panacea. It must be seen not as a completed solution to current problems, but as an opening to a new urban politics, what I call an urban politics of the inhabitant.     

Failure modes classification and failure mechanism research of ancient city wall

Many ancient city walls have stability problems such as internal damage, surface weathering and erosion, and even degradation of bearing capacity. The protection of ancient city wall has thus become a serious problem to be solved, and this study was carried out to provide specific protection recommendations. We identified and classified the failure modes of a number of ancient city walls and give specific protection recommendations for different kinds of failure modes. Based on numerical simulation, the analysis of the failure mechanism of an ancient city wall in Beijing has put forward. We found that the main failure mode of ancient city wall is rainstorms and that the rainfall degree, the duration of rainfall, and the presence of permeable channels in the wall all have a significant impact on the deformation of the wall, and there may have a bulging phenomenon in the lower part of the surface of the wall; in addition, the temperature has little effect on the deformation of the wall. Our classification method can be applied to identify the failure modes of similar ancient buildings and can provide suggestions for protective measures.     

Re-orientation of the city plan: Strategic planning and design competition in China

Rather than being abandoned along with the demise of the centrally planned economy, city planning as a profession is flourishing in China. New hybrid plans such as strategic development plans (concept plans) have been invented, and the planning procedure has become more flexible. Design competition and planning consultancy are widespread. This paper examines the development of new strategic development plans and design competition. It is argued that city planning has been re-orientated from a technical rationale, i.e. allocating state development projects to the city, to the imperative derived from market-oriented development, i.e. consolidating competitiveness during inter-city competition. The contradiction between market and planning is that while the status of city planning has been raised and its approach is becoming more strategic, the actual functionality of city planning has become more instrumental.     

Anthropogenic gadolinium as a microcontaminant in tap water used as drinking water in urban areas and megacities

Gadolinium chelates have been used since 1988 as contrast agents in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and produce positive anthropogenic Gd anomalies in rare earth element (REE) patterns of river and lake waters. These Gd compounds are not removed in wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) due to their high stabilities, and are transferred to surface waters with the clearwater discharge from WWTP. Through natural and induced bank filtration, the anthropogenic Gd is also transported into groundwater. To date, there are no related acute health risks known, but the potential long-term effects of exposure to low doses have not been studied.Here REE data is presented for tap water from the City of Berlin, Germany, a metropolitan area that is known for its anthropogenic Gd-rich rivers and groundwater. Natural and induced bank filtration play important roles in Berlin’s freshwater resource management. Therefore, the extent to which municipal tap water that is used as drinking water is affected by anthropogenic Gd was investigated. Large positive Gd anomalies were found in tap water samples from the western districts of Berlin, indicating the presence of up to 18 ng/L of anthropogenic Gd on top of a geogenic background of 0.54 ng/L. In marked contrast, the amount of anthropogenic Gd in tap water from the eastern districts of Berlin is negligible to minor (maximum of 0.18 ng/L on top of a geogenic background of 0.26 ng/L). This strong regional difference likely results from the specific historical situation of Berlin, where before the re-unification of Germany in 1990, natural and induced bank filtration were necessities in isolated West Berlin, but unimportant in East Berlin, a situation that has seen little change during the past 20 years. Thus, drinking water resources in the western part of Berlin are more strongly affected by anthropogenic Gd than those in the eastern part. The high anthropogenic Gd concentrations found in some tap waters in Berlin clearly show that the Gd initially used as contrast agent is removed neither during natural nor artificial water treatment. This is further evidence for the high stability and long environmental half-lives of these compounds. Considering that the amount of anthropogenic Gd in the Havel River in Berlin has increased more than 4-fold over the past 15 years and that water migration from the Havel River to the groundwater wells take years to decades, the amounts of anthropogenic Gd in West Berlin tap water will increase further over the next few years. Due to its presence in tap water that is consumed as drinking water, millions of people are exposed to low doses of these anthropogenic Gd chelates. Additional data for the City of London, UK, for example, indicate that this is not a local phenomenon confined to the City of Berlin, but rather a common feature of tap water in metropolitan areas and megacities in countries with highly developed health care systems. Hence, the REE distribution in tap waters used for human consumption should be monitored, especially since the anthropogenic Gd chelates can also be used as tracers for emerging microcontaminants such as steroids, pharmaceuticals and personal care products.     

河南省安阳市主要环境地质问题及其防治对策

安阳是国家级的历史文化名城,以钢铁、电子、轻纺为主,商贸旅游业繁荣的区域中心城市.由于城市社会经济的持续增长,城市化进程不断加快,资源能源的开发利用与消耗导致环境地质问题越来越显著,同时制约了经济的发展.根据近年来的环境地质监测资料和其它有关地质成果,指出安阳市目前存在的主要环境地质问题有地下水资源衰减与短缺、地下水污染、地质灾害、不良岩土体、垃圾排放等.安阳市今后的地质工作应以改善和保护地质环境为主要方向.根据地质条件不同将安阳市主要环境地质问题的防治划分为两个区,并提出了环境地质问题的防治措施.     

Residential segregation and housing in Berlin: changes since unification

This paper examines the spatial patterns and extent of residential segregation in Berlin at the time of unification, and also considers changes since that date. Residential segregation is differentiated into three components - demographic, socio-economic and ethnic. For all these dimensions, segregation depends on housing provision and the rules of admission to various segments of the housing market. The former differences in housing regulations in East and West Berlin are therefore of importance, as well as changes since unification. The paper shows that before unification demographic segregation was more prominent in East Berlin, whilst socio-economic segregation was more pronounced in West Berlin. Ethnic minority communities in West Berlin had developed from the immigration of guestworkers and their families, with moderate levels of segregation: however in East Berlin there were very few foreign contract workers present throughout the 1980s. In spite of the short time-period since unification, there are clear signs of convergence between the segregation patterns in the two parts of the city. Nevertheless, it is argued that population movements between East and West are still remarkably low, so that differences in the population patterns will continue to exist for some time to come. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Budapest's built environment in transition

The construction of major new buildings has been noticed in Budapest since the mid 1980s. New hotels, office blocks, housing projects and most recently shopping centres have become a prominent feature of the landscape in several districts of the city. The paper first outlines a conceptualisation of the `Transition' in terms of eastern Europe as a whole identifying internationalisation, Europeanisation and national government policies as key strands in a specific case of a process of change interpreted as the interaction of antecedent conditions and current processes. It then addresses the question of conceptualising the built environment in terms of the `Transition' and three `schools of thought' in geography stressing the urban morphogenesis approach. It thus poses the question of how radical a change has `occurred on the ground' since 1989–1990. Consequently the paper examines the transition in the built environment of Budapest under three principal headings: (a) the antecedent conditions of the built environment of Budapest by spatial structure, (b) the relationship between new buildings and current processes, (c) comparing models of the spatial structure of Budapest as a socialist city and as a post-socialist-(industrial) city or post-industrial (capitalist) city. It concludes that although the processes shaping the city's built environment have changed quite radically since 1990 the physical fabric of the city and its antecedent usage have strongly influenced the spatial impact of the current processes. Budapest is a post-socialist industrial city with capitalist forms fitted into it. The city is passing from socialist to capitalist processes in a way that suggests that morphological analysis has clear potential in theorising the relationship between the global and the local. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Long-distance traffic routes to and from Berlin

After the reunification of Germany on October, 3rd. 1990 Berlin becam a unified city again. Most of the ambitious plans of the pre-war time concerning the urban infrastructure could not be taken up again after fourty years of division. The article describes the long-distance traffic system in the former capital of the Reich, the division and duplication of the transportation facilities in the decades of division and gives an overview of concepts of reconstruction and new plans for the reunited Berlin and its hinterland.     

Making Manchester `flexible': competition and change in the temporary staffing industry

According to local economic and political commentators, Manchester's economy is booming. Employment is growing, investment is on the up, people are moving back into the city centre, and in 2002 the city hosted the largest multi-sporting event to be held in England since the 1948 Olympics. Local economic and political actors point to the wave of economic optimism that has accompanied the `entrepreneurial turn' performed in the late 1980s by the city's political institutions. As part of this, emphasis switched away from Manchester's industrial past and to its possible post-industrial futures. The city council stopped talking defensively--about `defending jobs'--and begun to talk about `making things happen'. New-style political strategies focused on raising the profile of the city, through sustained marketing strategies aimed at selling Manchester as a flexible, twenty-first century consumer-orientated city, despite the loss of 90,000 jobs between 1991 and 1997 and the profound restructuring of the city's economic base. As part of this contradictory process of politically talking up the economy while it has struggled to perform, this paper argues that the conditions have been created in which Manchester's temporary staffing industry has been able to thrive. The first English city to regulate the earliest incarnation of temporary staffing agencies, employment bureaux, and hence with a long established `industry' as such, this paper exams the newly re-energised Manchester temporary staffing industry, and sets out some of the ways in which it is restructuring.     

Evaluation of liquefaction potential of Guwahati: Gateway city to Northeastern India

Guwahati city is a major city in the northeastern region of India, which is growing rapidly in every aspect, particularly the major infrastructures like sports complex, educational institutions, flyovers, multiplex halls, etc. Two great earthquakes struck this region in 1897 and 1950, and large-scale liquefaction was reported in and around the Guwahati city. However, a detailed microzonation study for liquefaction is not available so far and is taken up accordingly. The liquefaction potential of the Guwahati city is estimated using hundred boreholes data located at different places of city with a design peak ground acceleration of 0.36?g. The results are presented in the form of factor of safety contours at several depths below the ground surface. These contour maps indicate that most of the sites in Guwahati city area are susceptible to liquefaction and hence this aspect has to be considered in earthquake-resistant design of foundations/structures in Guwahati city.     

Pareto’s law and sample size: a case study of China’s urban system 1984–2008

While Pareto’s law has been widely supported by empirical evidence in urban studies, past studies have focused on finding best fits for city rank-size distribution. A main concern with Pareto’s law is the truncation of sample selection, for which few studies have examined it directly. This study tests three existing threshold methods (number threshold, size threshold, and urban population percentage threshold) using China’s city system as a case study. In addition, this study proposes a new method based upon the percentage threshold of the total number of cities. A systematic analysis is applied to examine the relationship between Pareto exponent and sample size using different threshold methods. The results show that Pareto exponent is sensitive to sample size and the truncation point. Including only large cities is problematic because a slight change in the truncation point will yield quite different results of Pareto exponent. In addition, the new method, the percentage threshold of the total number of cities method, presents an advantage over previous methods, in that this method yields a consistent set of results over a wide range of thresholds. Finally, when using this new method with China’s city system, the Pareto exponent presents a turning point in 1996, representing China’s transition from a planned economy to a more market oriented economy during that period.     

海绵城市建设有关问题讨论

海绵城市建设目前已成为众多行业和科技领域的讨论热点之一,也面临众多争议,海绵城市建设的内涵、目标、内容和效果等均存在不同认识。针对中国城镇化过程中面临的主要水问题,结合参与海绵城市试点建设评审、考察以及对国外海绵城市的调研情况,从城市水文过程的角度,系统解析了海绵城市的概念,就海绵城市建设的目标与指标、建设功能与发展方向、城市地下排蓄系统、建设管理体制等若干问题展开了讨论。核心观点认为,海绵城市是对中国城市水系统的综合治理,也是城市人居环境的重构,功能综合是海绵城市建设成功的前提,海绵城市的建设应以河湖水系为核心,需要流域和城市的整体规划设计,海绵城市建设应该基于多部门、跨行业的优势互补、合作交叉,按照整体规划、系统布局的方式协同推进。     

Assessment of urban groundwater heat contaminant in Jakarta, Indonesia

Urbanization has become one of the domain processes for city development in Indonesia. The results of the extremely high densities of fast growing population have led to negative subsurface environmental impact. Jakarta, as one of the rapidly developed and urbanized cities in Southeast Asia, has become one of the interesting urbanization city to analyze its effects. In Jakarta, the use of groundwater has greatly accelerated conforming to the rise in its population and the development of the industrial sector, which consume a relatively large amount of water. The increase of groundwater exploitation in Jakarta city has already caused a negative impact on these resources. Therefore, an assessment of groundwater trends in the urban area, including their hazard and risk management, is a necessary action. This paper describes the assessment of urban groundwater loading caused by human concentration in Jakarta city. Subsurface heat contamination under the condition of surface warming shows significant effects of urban groundwater loading during the past century in Jakarta city.