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Comment by littlecranky67 | Hacker News Reader

You could just as well argue NYC should start to use Central Park for new housing...

Manhattan's population density is already 17 times higher than the one in Berlin so no, I wouldn't suggest that.

Berlin is also super unevenly populated and includes several forests. If you compare the density of the actually populated areas, like Mitte, you are still under Manhattan, sure, but only by a factor of 4 - which is extra impressive given the near complete lack of tall buildings in Berlin. Neukölln (which borders the area in question) is even more dense - about half as much as Manhattan [1].

Its unfair to compare Manhattan which apart from Central Park is nearly 100% urban to Berlin, which is significantly larger and includes many areas with widely distanced houses and forests.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitte_(locality) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuk%C3%B6lln_(locality)

That doesn't make sense. If it's 17x less dense in Berlin, then it sounds like there's still a lot of room to build that doesn't involve taking away the parks.

A lot of the available space is woodland and on the outskirts of Berlin. People want to live in the center, not further out (they already can do that, once you cross over into Brandenburg in the north, the competition for flats is much lower), that's why such a giant piece of land in a sought-after location would be a great idea for development, while some even larger piece of land out in the middle of nowhere where nobody wants to live isn't.

You could

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