Abstract

ExcerptFollowing the heated architectural debates in the 1990s about how to rebuild Berlin Mitte, there emerged a more general discussion that moved beyond the confines of the new capital to include not just other German cities but most of the European Union as well. The question of how to build in Berlin was transformed into a discussion of “the European city.”1 This innocuous phrase has become a source of considerable concern among urban planners, architects, and sociologists because “the European city” is consistently described as under siege—by a great variety of forces, globalization, the decline of municipal funding, leading to…