Google drops plans for Berlin campus after protests
bbc.com
bbc.com
See https://www.campus.co/berlin/de and https://www.campus.co/london/en.
It's easy to misunderstand this because of what the term 'campus' is typically associated with. I live in London, and when I say 'I'm going to Google's Campus', I often need to qualify that I'm not going to their main office complex at King's Cross.
There may still be very valid reasons to protest Google in Berlin, but I wonder if the people objecting understood the distinction: that this wasn't a hub for all of Google's employees, but rather a place that would help diversify the tech ecosystem in Berlin and give them access to facilities and other resources.
The kind of smaller startups that would be home at a Campus style incubator would not be fueling high paid Google salaries and would be a lot less likely to drive up rents e.g..
Another way of looking at that, is "gentrify the vibrant neighbourhood by trucking in techbros to displace the artists". It's not new (1)
I don't necessarily agree with that framing, but it is understandable and coherent, not a misunderstanding
As an aside, I dislike the term "techbro." It's obviously pejorative and I hardly ever see anything kind used to describe men working in the IT/CS sector. Just that and "neckbeard."
To me, it shows haters' level of intellect. And perhaps explains why they feel left out. They're attached to an ideal of what 'art' (additionally, activism[1]) should be. An outdated, 20th century one.
I personally don't like Google. And I understand your framing is hypothetical.
But why is tech framed the opposite of art?
Why is tech equal to techbro?
Yea there are always bad apples. But I wonder what Da Vinci would think about holding art in the opposite category as tech?
I'd argue they're more synonymous than opposite. To me, there's creativity. Both art and tech are creative. Applied creativity pertains to both code or a paint canvas.
Either way, the best, most valuable work to society is often never been done before.
Can anyone name an art piece (or if I'm being generous, an art movement) in the last 15 years that's made the level of impact as Google? Or cryptocurrency?
Ultimately, to me, the 'artists' need to up their game. Big time.
[1] Protest city hall if you feel gentrified. Especially in SF where it's largely illegal to build housing. Also, regarding gentrification, you don't hear the positive stories of immigrant families whose businesses flourish because of increased capital in an area, or those who feel safer, or even those who cashed out and sold their 50k house for 1.2 million. Again you hear a largely misdirected, dated and one-sided argument.
Also it sucks for "the good guys" - literally - that tech has a bad reputation in that sense and on the other hand this is improving only so slowly.
On the other hand it's of course naive to say that artists are good people per se, that is just not true. This is almost biblical, considering that artists are always poor and thus good. We all need to progress, not only people in tech.
>But why is tech framed the opposite of art?
You are fundamentally misunderstanding the issue. It's not tech vs. art. It's a "here's these people that make a lot of money and end up just being really big consumers" vs people that are the "creatives." The type that give a neighborhood flare.
Consider a programmer who perhaps love the "art" of programming and spends the majority of their time coding/tinkering without compensation (a rare prospect these days, admittedly), versus someone who works at a corporate job, does what they need to do, and goes home. Neither is better than the other, but they will end up creating radically different communities.
>Why is tech equal to techbro?
Because it's just the type of people it attracts these days. Name one neighborhood where a group of IT people came into that neighborhood and made it a creative space. Without fail, it just becomes a giant consumer hub with absurd rent prices. Artists tend to congregate in areas with other artists and areas that have cheap rent. Tech tends to drive up rent, and it certainly isn't an industry that attracts artists not centered around digital design.
>Or cryptocurrency?
The technology that did absolutely nothing, soaked up huge amount of raw resources, so techbros could play a game about who's going to be left holding the bag?
This is exactly why I used the term myopic. You might find it interesting and cool, and that's great! But it hasn't done anything for anyone else outside the tech sphere. In fact it's actually pretty easy to argue it's been a net-negative across the board.
I've lived in these communities of 'creatives'. For years. I know its a lot of drugs, idealism and not a lot of action.
Except for complaining about how wronged they've been by the system. Is that your 'another world is possible'? So maybe I am bitter...
Don't get me wrong, the system is fucked up in many ways. And I agree with your distinction of a grey blandness that permeates the tech culture.
I'm more interested in how all the enlightened 'creatives' can engage with this boring grey techbro community. Because frankly, they're the ones paying for most of their free shit.
>Except for complaining about how wronged they've been by the system.
You're still operating off of stereotypes instead of actually talking about the people that live in these communities and the work they do.
>I'm more interested in how all the enlightened 'creatives' can engage with this boring grey techbro community.
I think the techbro community needs to be the one doing the engaging.
I hate to be the one to say it, but in some cases I can see why some people might be reluctant to engage. I know that for my own part, I am generally disinclined to engage in genuine, kind, compassionate, and empathetic ways with people who treat me with what can feel like open hostility. It's almost always less emotional labor to tell them "Have a nice day" and walk away, putting them out of my mind. My making this choice does nothing at all to further any kind of constructive engagement, and certainly nothing to improve their lives or alleviate their pain and suffering, but it does make my life easier that day.
Again, you're completely right. Techrbos need to engage! It's just that at times it can be challenging to convince people of this basic truth when they find unfriendly receptions.
Within the tech community, it's really just ego and myopic view points and experiences.
>convince people of this basic truth when they find unfriendly receptions.
As a matter of practicality, it's easier to deflate the obstacle.
I definitely understand that. Tech people are too self-centerd and shortsighted to look or care about others! If they tried, they'd surely find it a highly rewarding experience. It's patently obvious that none of these asshole techbros has ever actually tried at all, right?
After all, if they had stepped outside their narrow worldviews and bubbles of greed and privilege then it would be obvious. They would think differently. Act differently. Believe differently. Value other things than they currently do. It's not possible that someone could be exposed to the glory of art, creativity, and expression without being moved to value it!
They'd stop acting as locusts, devouring all they come across because it looks tasty and destroying everything in their paths. They'd start acting in considered, conscious, intentional ways. They'd value community.
> As a matter of practicality, it's easier to deflate the obstacle.
I confess, I'm really not sure what you mean by "deflate the obstacle". Or what this means beyond a metaphor I think I don't understand. Could you please help me here? I would very much like to be able to engage substantively with whatever it is you are trying to say.
It's also pretty obvious when techbro's lack any kind of liberal arts education, or general praxis around the various subjects encompassed in liberal arts. You typically see this in discussions around government or social policies. But it can rear its head in literature to, like when the usage of satire is so out of place and crudely crafted one can't help but wonder how self-aware the person misusing it is.
> It's not possible that someone could be exposed to the glory of art, creativity, and expression without being moved to value it!
Well it certainly is possible and even likely. No one ever made any kind of point insinuating that, or even broached that subject about changing hobbies or what you enjoy. So you've definitely just misunderstood the entire discussion. I recommend rereading the topic post and this thread.
> I'm really not sure what you mean by "deflate the obstacle".
The obstacle being ego.
>I would very much like to be able to engage substantively
Well you can help yourself out by not wasting an enormous amount of energy and craftsmanship around... whatever it is you are doing.
Ah. Well. At least I now understand what you mean. Though I've found deflating the egos of every person in a discussion to be a difficult task. Telling a person getting a hostile reception to get their ego out of the way tends to come across a lot like telling someone to take the licks they deserve, complete with generally being discarded out of hand. Telling a person who feels righteous anger to deflate their ego tends to be seen as telling them their feelings aren't valid.
It's definitely possible for it to work! But I've rarely seen it accomplished.
> Well you can help yourself out by not wasting an enormous amount of energy and craftsmanship around... whatever it is you are doing.
Trying to understand you, establishing myself as someone who isn't your enemy, so we could have an actual discussion. And maybe help you understand the people you appear to viscerally despise as human beings with wants and needs and desires and goals and communities, just like the ones you love and wish to protect so that we can work towards what's best for everyone.
I'm sorry we couldn't have that discussion. I felt like it could have been productive for everyone. Have a wonderful day!
I'm sorry, who do I despise exactly? I'm not sure what you're talking about.
* Develop software on the side for free (art)
* Work on open source software during working hours sponsored by their host company
* Can afford to have families (I notice "vibrant" communities didn't include those with children in them)
> Or cryptocurrency?
Like it or not, Bitcoin is very artistic. Innovative, novel, spurs conversation and strong reactions...
I think it's you who's actually stuck in the 20th century mentality. Cultivating urban hipster hotspots full of "artists" is pure 20th century bohemian chic.
Your comment shows utter ignorance about what's happening — or already happened — in virtually every major city in every developed country.
The pattern I've seen (excluding SF) is that an arty area becomes trendy because of its culture, then a bunch of real estate developers kick out all the artists to build high-density housing while bringing in residential zoning laws (no live music etc).
The artists flee somewhere cheaper, build up the culture, rinse and repeat, until you end up with somewhere like Sydney Australia that's had all its culture surgically removed.
> Gentrification is a side effect of not building housing.
It's a much more complex than simply lack of housing. It's commonly described to neighborhoods, not cities.
That said, yes it would have still contributed to gentrification in a less extreme way than a true Google office.
But gentrification still happens without big dollar companies showing up. It's often a side effect of the success of the arts in the area. As the wealthy kids move in to be hip and cool, and the businesses that enjoy their money move in afterward, rents go up and creators are pushed out.
What makes Kreuzberg attractive for startups and a Google campus is that it's central and perfectly connected infrastructurewise. Most other regions like Schöneberg, parts of Friedrichshain, Prenzlauer Berg and maybe Moabit, are all harder to reach from some other regions, even though more start-up employees live there. You can see on the maps of rental e-scooters like Coup how during the day there is a lot of activity towards Kreuzberg whereas after work the district is basically empty of their scooters. Imho kreuzberg is too dirty for most startupers. I guess they don't want to see the heroin junkies of Kotti when they do their grocery shopping.
In general I liked the sentiment of the activists against placing a Campus in Kreuzberg. Nevertheless I didn't like much of their public attitude ("bullets for google") and some arguments seemed superficial ("other Google campuses have increased rents" idk about the causality and factor here). I wouldve liked a Google campus in Schöneberg for example, just as I liked the Google campus in Madrid. In Madrid it offered a nice environment for work, some interesting talks and I didn't feel like it was in an artsy district that suddenly gentrified and turned hip. This could've added something to Berlin, but meddling with the activist scene in Kreuzberg was a poor choice.
Artists often live in different districts or even different cities than their gallerists, but they tend to appreciate their patrons.
However, it should be pointed out that there are really two different programmer cultures. There the corporate one, and then there's, for lack of the better word, "open source" one. The latter is very close to artistic culture but very different from corporate culture. The people are working on what they love, they don't have much money, often they are in precarious situations. I've seen them sharing working space with artists, I've been at parties that mixed hackers and artists without any friction. I've seen self-help institutions meant to help the artists going out of their way to host some kind of strange hacking event.
So while I’m not surprised (and very much not sad) that the plans didn’t work out for a host of reasons I really don’t think that the campus would have led to substantial gentrification in that region.
Disclosure: we (still) have our office in the complex.
Exactly my point. The rents are on the rise with our without google. I really don't think that the victory is anything but a symbolic win. It does nothing to push the city to solve that issue.
+ A global shift toward freelance and remote work letting people take a risk and move to a new place.
+ The first German renaissance back toward the east after the wall fell. The older generation in the west still remember Berlin and people from Berlin in a negative light, but their children have quiet a different impression and their parents are alltohappy to buy property for them in under-priced Berlin. Additionally reunification gutted all industry in the east causing a renter exodus to larger east German cities
+ A global debt surplus and rich people everywhere looking for stable places to stash wealth with Germany's open markets an attractive destination. In some odd way financially conservative Germans think they win with this, not considering how it increases costs of all social services and thereby their tax burden as well.
Focusing on overpriced jobs is definitely only one of many places to start. Google just made it very easy that people target them first because their products are so disliked for their lack of care for privacy: post-snowden I'm not sure I know of a single service Google has switched to being e2e encrypted.
It's basically the difference to people living off their parent's money (artists) vs. people living off money they make themselves (tech workers).
That's the sort of thing that invokes the image of a "tech bro" and this is what people don't want in Berlin. People don't want the local scene replaced with overpriced chain stores and electric scooters and multinationals dictating city development policy.
The CCC has its roots in Germany and we've always had a hacker and nerd friendly culture.
What on earth are you talking about?
Who are these magical people who build castles?
And Berlin is not hugely more 'communal' than anywhere else.
Every company definitely has security, even small one's, and this has nothing to do with the FANGs.
Try to waltz into the UBS or Deutchebank building and see if you can just wander around.
Most banks have considerably more security than the FANGS and ever since 9/11 many NYC buildings have a ton of security.
You need to get a visitors badge with a photo they take of you on the spot to simply go to a meeting in some towers in the US. You need 15 minutes just to get in.
Not sure what you've been exposed to, but having wandered many office towers up and down the west coast, vanishingly few have any form of security beyond perhaps a receptionist or a maintenance man who may harass you if requested to do so. Some do have elevators that attempt to enforce access control during certain hours, but this is generally a non-issue in the daytime.
> You need to get a visitors badge with a photo they take of you on the spot to simply go to a meeting in some towers in the US. You need 15 minutes just to get in.
This is an extremely rare request, and complying with it is consistently not worth it in my experience.
* Gentrification is caused by landlords. If being a landlord was illegal it wouldn't happen (or at least the problems caused by it wouldn't).
Or bring very high paying jobs that Germany desperately needs, and allow great students to actually do something with their education, which would in turn enable a poor neighbourhood to thrive with ancilliary businesses, restaurants, taxis etc. etc..
The good thing is that Google eventually understood their error (you can't buy the friendship of people who will despise you for trying) because any attempt to achieve this through regulation would have been a total shitshow for everyone involved.
It's basically the same story as the Chelsea Market building, but with gritty Berlin punks instead of cute but toothless Greenwich Village and in an environment where even rich conservatives agree with the left that money cannot overrule everything else. It's really not surprising that it turned out differently.
I live in Berlin and have not followed this topic closely, and only heard about this not being a typical Google office days ago when Google changed plans. The talk on the street over the last months was always centered on Google wanting to create a big office and the residents not wanting any big corporations there.
Very much so. Been to a panel discussion organized by them.
The fear was that the incubator would accelerate gentrification. Doesn't matter whether the pay checks come from Google at the end of the day.
Sort of understood, given that Germans are a nation of life-long renters (as opposed to home-owners). Gentrification is generally great for the owner and terrible for the renter.
Well not entirely.
Gentrification is started and driven by new groups of tenants moving into a neighbourhood. Property owners and investors will only jump onto the bandwagon afterwards. With German restrictions on rent-increases, being one of those original gentrificators (OG) you can lock in an incredibly low rent in a place where rents for new leases skyrocket. As long as you stay in your flat, you're shielded from those rent-hikes.
Growing up, I've had many friends who lived literally in city mansions (4m++ ceiling height, art deco, 6-10 rooms for a family of three) in a fully gentrified area paying a rent lower than I paid for my no-go-area 25sqm studio. All because their parents kept the lease from their 1970s flatshare (pre-gentrification, no-go-area then).
Today even more than 20yrs ago, those OGs often live in an opaque, inaccessible grey housing market: If they want to move (because e.g. the 6 people they share a flat with became 1 spouse and a kid), they first look out for other OGs to do a lease-switch. Which means their rent level stays pre-gentrification forever. If nothing comes across they can still "resell" the lease.
Also, the idea to make everyone a landlord while widely accepted in housing economics to be a good thing, I happen to think is shortsighted and contradicts the principle of "economics of scale".
Housing companies (can be non-profit co-ops as well) often provide much more quality/€ to tenants than the landlord, who owns 1 flat and is always overstrained with the simplest maintnance requests.
That's great in theory, but in practice has literally dozens of ways to be bypassed. Rents in Bavaria and Berlin have increased by nearly a quarter over these past 4 years.
One of the problems being that the Mietspiegel only accounts for new rentals, with steady increases in rent prices, it does not reflect the actual "average rent prices" because it's missing data for people who've been living in the same place for years and up to decades, with the same low rent.
The latter has way more room for increase than the former - by law. Add to that, that owners often stop bothering increasing rents for longterm tenants (because the allowed increase is the more miniscule the more years pass by) and concentrate on hikes for new leases.
Also ain't helping that over these past decades incomes have stagnated while job security got way worse, so people are less likely to commit to such long-term liabilities.
Gentrification is great for wealthy landowners. For poor/middle-class homeowners (in the USA, anyway), there is about 100 asterisks attached to that "great". And in various situations, gentrification can hurt poor/middle-class people even if they own a property.
It's a free workspace with a lot of benefits, like wifi, cheap snacks/drinks and meeting other founders for kx.
This is incredibly sad :(
This sort of arrogance is so typical for Germany.
They main issue to tackle for the Berlin government—from my point of view—is to find the right balance of luxury and affordable housing. People making above average salaries in the growing tech scene should/would pay the higher prices for luxury properties, while the art and counter culture scene would not need to be gentrified if there was a higher supply of affordable housing.
As a Berliner for the past 5 years, I really believe that most the unique vibe of the city comes from the art and left-oriented community here. A lot of us working in the tech world support it, enjoy it and even adapt to their ways (while keeping quiet about how much more money we earn). I really hope that the government makes an effort on affordable housing to keep the balance that makes the city special.
From what I know about the protest - reading public statements, how the protests began, how they now publicly celebrate their 'victory', and from having seen their early campaign websites - they almost certainly had no idea what a Google Campus is about. At some point certain parts of the campaign learned, but many never left the black & white painting behind for a more nuanced assessment.
What they are publicly exhibiting as "creative street art" may be very telling about their capability for nuance: https://fuckoffgoogle.de/2018/04/17/street-art-against-googl...
There is lots of criticism in Germany right now about these protests having chased away a startup campus.
You can argue that we have second most popular operating system thanks to Google but you can’t argue that have not Google someone else would have filled in the void. And now that despicable news came out about Android founder and how Google covered for him, its akward looking at friends devices thinking to yourself: this has been invented by a total creep with a dream of slavery times being back so he can own people. Disgusting! I mean imagine if it came out that Jobs was a big fan of Hitler or enjoyed fantasizing about mass-blanket genocide! Would you still buy Apple products? And then there is that PR spin that it was fun kinky game of two. No it wasnt as she barely knew him! If I email 7 billion individuals with plan to own them and lease them, how many will come back defending me that it was okay because it was “only a kinky game.”
I applaud Germans for not being gullable when it comes to Internet. Germany amongst all European Union nations have the most strict rules and regulations protecting citizens first and foremost, not foreign entities that pay squad of taxes within German borders. Even on email protection alone you cannot email someone without double optins. We need similar protection laws in USA and Google needs to stick to search!
Otto Bock (market leader in prosthetics and wheelchairs) just bought a old brewery for several hundred million € in Prenzlauer Berg [1] with the goal to convert it into a research center. I don't remember any kind of protest or outrage against that.
1: https://www.ottobock.com/en/press/press-releases/ottobock-re...
2. A prosthetics company is a far cry from the omnipresent, omnipotent entity that is Google. Everyone on planet Earth knows what Google is. Many people take issue with their behavior.
2. That's what I said, and I think it's sad that Google won't open the campus there, as I think the area and the city could profit from it.
Also, this is a personal opinion but I think Kreuzberg is far from being a "haven for artists or counterculture". Already now the district has some of the highest rents in Berlin and many flats are being rented out as AirBnBs (often by the same people that complain about companies gentrifying the area). Also, the counterculture that you're describing can be quite snobbish and exclusive as well, at least for people that don't conform to the Berlin "hipster" ideal. I think Berlin really needs more corporations and large enterprises that set up shop there and create jobs, as the startup ecosystem has so far failed to deliver much in terms of well-paying jobs (at least if you don't want to work for Zalando). Just my 2 cents.
This point of view is precisely the problem and why companies like Google aren't welcome in places like where they tried to open this campus. Money isn't everything.
As long as the group is following laws and zoning restrictions, there should be nothing preventing them from joining a community
A place can have a unique culture that’s worth maintaining. How to maintain it - I don’t know. But converting everything to MegaCo offices probably isn’t the solution.
The housing market by its nature has a weak flexibility to adapt to new demand. NIMBYism acts like a lever on that inflexibility.
This is "you piss in the pool wherever you go, please stay away from our pool." This isn't NIMBY in any meaningful way and the comparison is downright mendacious.
From the article: In September activists occupied the building it was to be located in for several hours.
That seems like the activists were preventing them
> This is "you piss in the pool wherever you go, please stay away from our pool." This isn't NIMBY in any meaningful way and the comparison is downright mendacious.
Saying you do [something I don't like] and I don't want you to do [thing I don't like] in my neighborhood is exactly NIMBY
This poor-benighted-Google thing is gross. These companies are not on anyone's side.
No, that's most definitely not NIMBY. NIMBY means you support something when it's farther away but oppose it happening close to you. It stands for "not in my backyard", not "not in any backyard".
If I had to guess, a lot of those protestors probably don't care if Google ever opens an office anywhere--but, not being billion-dollar panopticons-as-a-service, they are constrained to act locally rather than globally.
Not really. It's sort of like RMS with open-source hardware: yes there are a handful of modern computers that can be made to work without binary blobs, but it's a lot of trouble and only a few people will actually do that out of principle. It's practically requred to run proprietary binary blobs. Similarly, Bing, Duckduckgo, and OpenStreetMap exist, but Google services are practically required for modern daily life.
For an illustration: a typical local shop is going put the effort into making sure its information is correct on Google Maps and that their website is indexed on Google; but it's going to put zero effort into updating its info on OpenStreetMap or making sure it's indexed by Bing. If you want info about that shop, you're probably going to have to use Google.
That's a great example, thanks for mentioning it. I'll probably use it from now on.
And what does having a stock ticker matter presumably you took advantage of the German miracle and the rise of VW and others.
It's also the same line of thinking behind Trump's wall and hostility to immigration in general: "people I don't like should stay out."
Several people mentioned something to this effect. Nobody makes clear what they are referring to. Is this just about gentrification?
I'm not really sure what point you're getting at. Berlin is prized by its inhabitants for its unique culture - a modern, western city that for nearly 20 years was dominated by artistic culture. It has nothing to do with the "original inhabitants vs. the new transplants" and very little to do with NIMBYism from property owners, especially considering the the overwhelming majority of Germans rent, not own.
Following your logic, that it shouldn’t matter where new tenants come from - isn’t that what anti-gentrification activism effectively is about? Prohibiting new tenants to move in?
You repeatedly write that this happens because of some snowflakes' NIMBYism. Which is definitely not.
If we were talking about any other city in the world, whatever you're saying would make sense... because from the outside it looks like "oh the people who moved to city center doesn't want anybody else to move there".
That's not the case with Berlin.
Maybe you missed the topic recently but there was WWII and then East Germany, with Berlin Wall, death strip in between and East German State Police Stasi... and people who wants to escape from East.
Of course all of these happened in the city center, because the wall separated the city from the middle of it, and the areas once city center, become the dangerous ghettos.
The canals in Kreuzberg has become grave for some immigrant (and German alike) children, because it belonged to the East. If any child accidentally falls in the waters and scream for help nobody could save them. Because anyone who would enter the canals would be shot by East German police. And they did. And people couldn't save their kids from the waters, after these incidents happened. This is just one of the disadvantages of living next to a death strip, in the epicentre of the nuclear cold war.
Because of these dangerous properties, the place was cheap. And people in more "hip" areas didn't wanted to rent their flats to young people, artists, punks etc. So these people find home in Kreuzberg.
But yeah, feel free to forget about these context and try to blindly invalidate peoples experiences.
---
I gave the same example in another comment: There are many shops in Kreuzberg, which are located there for let's say 50-60 years. There are grocery stores, bakeries, markets, shoe repair shops, cheap quality restaurants, local bookstores etc.
But these people has to go now, because there is better buyer, who can afford the prices that these people can not. Or they have to increase their prices too. You were buying a croissant for 0,40€... now it's 4€. But hey, you can like our instagram page!
Now you're accusing these people of b+ching about the development, and you think they're greedy and they get what they wanted, now they're protesting so others can not get what they have?
Or do they want to live in the area, where they've been living for the last 60 years, and experienced many many disadvantages of the area?
The area was ghetto, so unwanted people located there. Now the area is hip again (after 100 years), and the people who lives there is unwanted again.
I want my city to be better and i want workers to do this. -Immigrants? Not in my backyard.
I want my city to be culturally rich and i want to be proud of the art that created in my city. -Punks? Unemployed artists? Not in my backyard.
Because of this, these people located in Kreuzberg... many many years ago, before the Wall even came down.
Now the wall came down and the same people say:
I want to have a nice and cheap(er than my area) office next to Landwehrkanal in Kreuzberg. -Immigrants and artists next to my office? Not in my backyard.
Born in Cologne (not Berlin), finished School in Frankfurt (not Berlin), studied humanities for nine years (in Hamburg, Barcelona and then Berlin). And before holding political office never once worked in a private sector job where he payed into social security.
Pretty much ironic what goes as anti-gentrificationista these days.
[1] https://www.berlin.de/ba-friedrichshain-kreuzberg/politik-un...
He is portrayed in this documentary for his fight against a major housing property investor and shows the camera team around his Kreuzberg flat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI2QpsWQgEA&t=580s
I really wonder how he can still be living in his old 2-room student Kreuzberg apartment with a full family. It is not true that Berlin has no cheap apartments for families anymore. Outside the hip quarters for sure, but certainly offering better living spaces for 2 little children and a wife than this tiny Kreuzberg flat. He may believe that he is carrying the fight over to his private life but I call this irresponsible.
And this guy was one of the major players chasing Google away.
Let's not loose focus of my main argument here: How are people claiming the moral highground on who should become a new tenant, if they themselves where new tenants very recently?
How can you call yourself an "activist" on the good side of democracy or morale in general, whilst being an office-holding politician, without even being elected into that office?
And regarding your admiration for him for living in a 2-room Kreuzberg apartment
... I grew up the same way, where is my medallion for that ? Do I get extra points for not getting to choose to live that way, like he did?
... as a housing councilor of the city rest assured he's not poor, makes 7.533,07 € a month [1], 2.3 times the median Berliner income
... and wasn't poor before that, indicated by the fact that his family used to travel frequently between homes in Barcelona and Berlin
[1] https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/berliner-bezirke-stellen-...
I didn't admire his living conditions, I think you misunderstood me here. He is indeed not exactly poor^1, maybe unable to pay for decent housing for a family in a Kreuzberg with rising rents. But he would certainly be able to pay for a decently sized apartment in a less hip quarter. It looks as if he is not willing to for reasons we can only speculate about.
1: You added the numbers, and this is certainly enough money for much better living conditions even in the hippest quarters of Berlin.
After the selection had occurred, the procurement machine had been tasked and at that point it takes a lot of resistance to stop that machinery.
[1] For some real estate group in Google determining office locations.
but i also wonder: does Google consider itself to be one of the "cool kids?" i mean, when it tries to create a new campus like this, does Google think it will be welcomed with open arms?
Berlin has an amazing start up scene, certainly unique for and unrivaled in Germany. That being said, Berlin hosts a lot of NIMBYism. Particularly by people who gentrified the city in the first place and immediately turned to become fierce gentrification enemies. Essentially locking in their gains.
I used to know someone that bought a flat in Soho, central London, in the mid-90s. She sold it when she married 8 years later and made over half a million quid. No idea what it would be worth now.
I doubt the concept of gentrification translates as well as a dictionary might suggest.
The "gain" in this case is:
1) Getting to transform a neighbourhood (that you weren't a part of before) however it fancies you, while simultaneously prohibiting those that come after you from doing the same.
2) locking in the low rents you have to pay. While keeping supply of housing artificially low you're thus increasing the rent-gap between what you have to pay and those that move in after you.
As the other commenters noted, Germany has a low home-ownership rate (good thing IMO but a whole different story). Because of strict laws on how to increase rents, gentrificators can secure themselves the low rents from before gentrification. It is not uncommon that one neighbour tenant in the same house pays two times your rent.
In the US, it is not uncommon that one neighbor homeowner next door pays two times your mortgage.
I would be interested in your story about home-ownership, but difference in pricing due to time of arrival doesn't seem like a differentiator between renting and buying.
- Economics of scale: housing companies provide more quality/ € than your landlord that owns one flat or even what most owner-occupiers can reasonably provide for themself.
- Real Estate is a Commodity, yes. Owning that is an investment, yes. But living in one isn‘t. It’s a product that you use. We should stop telling people otherwise. A house is not your retirement.
- Austria, Germany and Switzerland are the countries with the world‘s lowest home-ownership rate. Putting them in that order, you also get their GDPs (Switzerland being the richest) as well as the lowest ownership-rate. That clarifies some myths: a) that low rate has anything to do with WW2 (it doesn’t) b) that high ownership rates benefit the people (it doesn’t, Third world countries have ownership rates topping 90%)
But building on the idea, that because Germany/Berlin being a tenant place there are no gains to lock in - that logic would then conclude that there can't be gentrification at all. Which is of course nonsensical.
Gentrificators don't need to be property owners, in fact gentrification theory explicitly states the opposite: that it's usually new tenants that change poor/working-class neighborhoods and spark the gentrification process. Those tenants are so called "pioneers", usually high educated, creative class, affluent and thus able to buy property even after the gentrification process has started.
Historically investment in a city has benefited a city. This is the opposite.
I wonder who was behind the protest, was it the established tech players and wanted to keep competition out?
This seems like a mild form of isolationism, and again, if we use history, this seems like a bad idea.
Compared to the situation in the US ("fly-over states"), it's still trivial to get to your trendy night time activities: Eastern coal mining hubs are 2 hours or less by car from Berlin, and less from Dresden or Leipzig. Western coal mining is in an area with one of the highest population density of the country. That makes me think that the regular "who wants to move there" argument isn't as convincing here as in the US.
- Most residents in Berlin (and in Germany for that matter) rent their apartments.
- There's a fairly good supply of newly built homes. It's still not enough to absorb the population growth, but it's much better than in many German cities.
People complain because they can see the downside of this influx of tech workers very clearly, while the benefits aren't obvious, at least not yet. Rents have doubled in some areas. Government offices are understaffed. So are kindergartens, schools, ...
While the government is partly to blame, a lot of startups haven taken advantage of Berlin's situation in questionable ways. The time where you could hire cheap developers is definitely over, but it's still very common to underpay and abuse people in non-engineering positions, who very often are interns and freelancers.
Kreuzberg is maybe too emblematic and Google is a scapegoat here, but I can understand the resentment against tech incubators.
It will just keep getting harder to hire staff. Candidates know that their purchasing power and quality of life are threatened by the gentrification quicker than the government is willing to raise wages and invest in the infrastructure.
However: I literally cannot confirm or refute the possibility of blame shifting, as my German comprehension is at the level of headlines and 50% of content, I can’t do in-depth news coverage yet.
Logically you would think as these rich 20-somethings become rich 30-somethings they will start having children, but after 10 years they cannot afford SF either, so they also move away.
Sure, forcing out Google doesn't solve the problem, but it sends a very clear message: Profits are not more important than livable communities.
I would argue it is mostly for the better. But of course it is not necessarily that nice for the locals who are confronted with vastly increased prices for basically anything.
The city has changed a lot and is growing and projected to continue to grow by about 50K people a year for the foreseeable future. This is good for Berlin because it definitely needs economic development as it has been living well beyond its means for some time and because it is still catching up in terms of economic activity that was lost between WW II and the fall of the wall. All this growth is increasing employment opportunities and lots investment money is being spent in this city, which is definitely benefiting local businesses.
Meeting actual Berliners born and raised in Berlin is actually not that common. Change is very much the local culture. Major changes of the 19th and 20th century originated here and were fueled by waves of people moving here. So most people you meet here are part of the problem (in terms of gentrification). So complaining about gentrification is a bit disingenuous for most.
I would say it's a shame that a bunch of anarchists get to push back economic development in what is still one of the poorer neighborhoods. They're a vocal minority and they don't speak for all. They live in Kreuzberg because it used to be a dump before the wall fell and was thus cheap. Basically, this area was heavily damaged in WW II and the West Germans put a lot of cheap housing for immigrants there (these are not the people doing the protesting). After the wall fell, it happened to be conveniently close to the former East German historical center and it became a popular place for young people moving to Berlin to settle and for poor startups to open up cheap offices.
So, most of the protesters moved there because it was cheap and now they feel entitled to live cheaply in the middle of a major world capital that is once again flourishing around them.
This city is not done growing. There is plenty of room to build and expand.
As it's stated by others also, the area was ghetto and the border to East Berlin, separated by the death strip and the wall. So "the unwanted" people located here. (they've been invited by the German government to repair the country after the young working population died in WWII)
Now the wall is gone, the place become hip again, and the people are "unwanted" again. And if you say that the local immigrants (mostly Turkish) doesn't protest, it's basically misinformation and not recognising their efforts to keep the area what it's been for many decades: a cultural hub of the misfits. (immigrants, punks, musicians, artists etc.)
https://www.bizim-kiez.de One of the main initiatives by the local immigrants. (Bizim means "our" in Turkish, and Kiez means "neighbourhood" in German)
Most of the people moved here because it was cheap and the society was welcoming the misfits. But what you say as "economic development" is destroying the culture there and pushing people out of the town. If you create a big startup hub there, all the shops will transform into hipster cafes and restaurants... Which is happening for many years and if you can't see this, open your eyes a bit. How can you expect people who live there for the last 50-60 years to pay the increasing rent, while their income doesn't because they don't work in a Startup? How can you expect a grocery store who sells cheap vegetables to compete with a vegan smoothie store, which sells the exact vegetables for 5 times the price, or even more? And after all the places will be gentrified, the rents will go even more up... then you will start protesting the smoothie prices goes up. (Which you think is happening there, which is not!)
Especially the campus idea - which in London, for example, attracts tens of thousands of techbros and -sises per year - puts more burden on the neighborhood as "just" a regular startup office. Neither google nor the city of Berlin could address any of the concerns, housing costs, general costs of living, traffic situation, just to name a few.
Berlin in general suffers a lot from rising real estate prices and rents - and the area where google wanted to put their campus is even more heavily affected than other parts of the city. This neighborhood - I am living a mere 500 m from that place - suffered from an influx of people probably more than other parts of Berlin. On top of that it turned into one of the hip party areas.
Given that this neighborhood historically houses lower-income families, which won't gain anything from google moving here, but will have to face even faster rising cost of living, and at the same time have no chance to move to other parts of the city - with the housing market being as tight as it is - it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that this move saw local opposition.
I'm happy for a single reason: as long as Berlin startup scene preserves its working culture (that reflects German working culture in general), it will be a better working environment than the Silicon Valley. Big campuses and the presence of foreign corporations in general will have a slow but steady cultural influence on the IT workforce, normalizing the level of individual and systemic exploitation that is acceptable in the USA but not in Germany. Unpaid hours, unclear separation between work time and leisure time, ideological brainwashing, identity politics are all things I wouldn't like to see in the company I work for, but if a majority of my colleagues have worked for American corporations before (because they can afford to offer good salaries), it's more likely for it to happen.
Zalando is enough of a meat-grinder, we don't want more.
Come to think of it, why no campuses in Italy or Spain? Those countries have kinda lowish expenses, good weather and people will pay a premium to be able to move there. Instead everybody is opening in London and Switzerland which are overpriced and kinda meh.
Italy in particular is at risk of defaulting on its debts (which are 131% of GDP compared to 87.7% for the U.K and 64.1% in Germany as of 2017) and the ECB and other lenders are going to be reluctant to lend to them. This is turn puts the banks and all kinds of public services at risk.
I would easily move to a cheap locale even if tech scene there is not abundant. I'd not move to London or Switzerland since you will always be 2nd class citizen compared to e.g. bankers. Which is just non issue in southern europe.
Weak economic is a thing you leverage.
Huh?
Also, those places are way more international than most places in Europe, which makes relocation more attractive. Good luck attracting non-Italians to Italy, or non-Polish to Poland.
I would gladly move to Italy with its amazing culture. I would not move to a place so diverse and full of recent immigrants that it no longer has any specific culture. Am I unique here?
And yes, people relocate to Poland a lot, from ex-USSR countries for example.
I'm pretty sure both London and Switzerland have cultures (OK, UK culture is mostly just drinking but still...).
Large software hubs generally need to pull in people from around the world, not just USSR. And that's the crux of the problem. London, Berlin, Paris, Zurich are all major international cities - it's easier for people from all around the world to settle down there than in places like Warsaw or Perugia.
You are aware that the Soviet era is long ago and the youngest people educated under a Soviet system are mid-30 by now? There is plenty of universities in Poland teaching among other things also Computer Science.
Italy currently has a slow growing economy and needs a large number of younger economic migrants to increase Italy's competitiveness and pay taxes.
I wouldn't. Being in high demand in Silicon Valley is amazing even compared to Seattle. I wouldn't move to a backwater for fear of having to move again every 3-5 years.
But I do agree, we export talent to anywhere, where Spanish professionals, executives or researchers lead the way on many fields.
While I agree with the rest, I wouldn't be too sure about this. I suppose a tech talent doesn't plan on working at the same place their whole lives, so they would take into consideration the availability of tech jobs in the area.
The comparison to the US is not apt because the US has control over its own currency. This is critical for high debt scenarios because it leaves the option of essentially printing money via a program like quantitative easing to always ensure interest rates on fed bonds don't get out of control. This serves the purpose of providing favorable rates for the government as well as inflating away the value of the outstanding debt.
Countries bound to the Euro do not have this option so it usually means growth-killing austerity+taxes is the only way out.
E.g. in Poland software is more Krakow based than Warsaw. Because why would you be wasting on rent, being in a large city where you aren't that important?
They develop for LATAM in other offices
already done: https://www.campus.co/madrid/en
The space in Berlin would have been part of the same setup, not a regular Google office - there's already Google in Munich and Hamburg for that.
Sehr viel drastischer formulierte es Ulrike Schneider, Aktivistin beim Initiativkreis „Google-Campus & Co verhindern“, die den Konzern beschimpfte: „Google ist und bleibt ein Scheiß-Konzern, der seine Gewinne mit Überwachung, Ausschnüffelei, Zusammenarbeit mit Militär und Geheimdiensten sowie Steuertricks macht.“
I'm sure most local residents mostly care about rent prices going up in that area, though, rather than a specific anti-Google sentiment. They probably don't want it to be gentrified as another district, similar to what happened/is happening to Prenzlauer Berg.
Somehow, the same activists with dubious motivations don't mind domestic entities like infamous credit rating agency or the debt collection agency collecting the public media fee. The public media debt collection agency has the most complete database of who lives where and with whom in the whole country, probably the most comprehensive database on domestic households that exists in the world, certainly in the EU. What about it, fraudulent privacy zealots?
[citation needed]. The examples you mention are widely disliked and fought too. + of course conflating privacy activists and those protesting Google here likely is not very accurate.
You do notice this is kind of government work? (Organized in a way politicians are supposed to have little influence about broadcast content)
I understand the US is special in regard of having very high distrust for the government, something not that pronounced in most European countries. My government does indeed know where I live and I don't have much of a problem with that in principle. That doesn't mean I approve of all the way that data is handled. They at least have some accountability towards us citizens, in contrast to some private company not contractually obliged to the public.
City (Hamilton) is fairly well developed with a functioning International Airport and since it was initially built around manufacturing, its prestige within Canada has suffered somewhat in last 20-25 years. If firms like Google would be so kind to invest there, the locals and the children of locals and other Canadians would welcome them with open arms.
Why?
If I picture a gentrification activist I think about a purple-haired kid that wouldn't get a job if his life depended on it, making people that might be interested and have the skills to work at Google miss an opportunity.
On the other hand, Google could have picked another spot instead of giving up?
How is it..?
For instance, if I google image search for "women in bikinis" I get hundreds of thousands of women in bikinis, but not the broader narrative of their lives and personalities. It is completely decontextualized and drops all the other dimensions of the context in which these photos were taken.
In the same way, Google employees lack context because everything is a component, they moved from somewhere else and have been assimilated into the great corporate standardization. They crave things with context, but when they try and coexist with it, their enormous economic superiority draws the interest of the whole world to extract from that environment that which promotes their ability to decontextualize and conform the world around them and the decontextualization whirlwind grows around them.
She had to have good genetics, not overeat and workout. Thus, there was a bigger context that created that woman in a bikini picture that is lost by the algorithm. The algorithm extracts and decontextualizes.
The google algorithm for selecting property is the same. Consume culture, extract, decontextualize, strip mine all the culture off the top but let other people nurture it, until they are priced out of the market.
They should set up the next Google headquarters in the middle of the sahara in shipping containers, preferably one of those places without a lot of sand that's just flat with gravel in all directions.
Watch all the nerds walk back and forth to their shipping containers while looking at their cell phones and drinking their soylent unless the company pays for culture to be brought in.