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.
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”).
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.
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.
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 Central Livestock- and Slaughterhouse - the Zentralvieh- und Schlachthof - was the largest of its kind in the city. It was originally conceived at the end of the 19th century as a remedy to the chaotic situation in Berlin’s livestock and slaughterhouse industry. In the 1870s, there were as many as 800 independent slaughterhouses in the city.
In 1933, Hermann Tietz & Co., one of the largest department store firms in Germany, was forcibly expropriated from its Jewish owners as part of the Nazi policy of Aryanization. It was renamed Hertie, and remained one of Germany's largest retailers until it was purchased in 1994. The heirs of Georg Karg, who took over the firm from its rightful owners in 1933, set up a foundation in his honor shortly after his death.
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.
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.
One of the aspects that makes Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley – ok, maybe THE aspect that makes it what it is, is the huge amount of venture capital that entrepreneurs have access to. In the second quarter of 2014 – the second quarter – venture capital firms invested $7.1 billion in SV startups. Say what you will about possible bubbles, and overheated investment climates, but that number is what makes Silicon Valley the tech world’s equivalent of the Amazon Jungle: a lush, fertile environment that supports an almost unlimited number of creatures.
Berlin’s growing startup scene does not feature quite as much money.
