Community Asset Map Part II

My first interview was with two women who worked/lived in a small apartment building for seniors which we were told also has community center functions, though these seem to be primarily for seniors. The community center is in a small plaza which includes a grocery store, a bar, and a few small stores. Many of the stores have apartment buildings above them, and throughout the hour we were there a few people were coming and going from their homes.

The first woman we approached in front of the community center did not speak very much English, but we were able to get across that we wanted to talk with her, and so she called a friend who came down from her apartment. This friend spoke much more English and that and our German we were able to get some basic information from her.

It was implied, though not explicitly stated, that she had lived in Berlin for 30 years, after living for a few years in Boston. From what she said about the community, she views it as mostly older, with families who regularly come to visit relatives. I believe this was in reference only to the community directly surrounding the plaza, not the neighborhood as a whole. She was also aware of the refugee housing further down the road, though she seemed to view this as separate from the rest of the community. This fact was apparent in our discussion of our community partner's work, in which she said (through words and gestures) that it's good for the refugees to have work, otherwise they will sit and smoke within the housing. She stated that she has taken in a number of Syrian refugees, which I thought added an interesting context to her comment about smoking. Despite her view of them being potential layabouts, she seemed to have a positive view of them overall and seemed happy to have them in the community, or at least had no complaints. It was difficult to tell the subtleties of the conversation with the language barrier.

The second interview was with a man from the refugee housing. This man lives in a small 'container home' with a number of other men and is currently navigating the process to become a citizen and obtain work. His view of the community offered an interesting contrast to that of the first interview. He often leaves the container complex and explores the city on days where he does not have German language classes. He much prefers the busier interior of the city to the more suburban area around the containers. In particular he likes Sonnenalle, where there are many Arabic speaking shops and stores. In these places he feels much more at home and as though he is a part of the community, a feeling he does not have in Buckow.

Overall, he viewed Berlin, and the rest of Germany, negatively. He believes that it is not a very welcoming place, at least in his case and the cases of those around him, and stated that if he were granted citizenship he would use that to then become a US citizen and never come back to Germany. To him, the community provides him with almost nothing in terms of education or support. Even the money that he receives from the Germany government, he believes, comes primarily from subsidies from the government of his home country. I cannot seem to find anything to support this claim, but the important part is that he believes it. To him, Germany and the German community is not as welcoming as the women in the first interview seemed to assume.

2.

People In The Neighborhood

Buckow seems to be a fairly uniform area with families and retirees. Most of the people in the area seem to be culturally German, and the fact that I have not seen a single store in the area catoring to any minority group, for example a Russian or Turkish grocery. The area seems very uniformly white with the exception of the refugees located Gerlinger Strasse.

The shopping complex described above seems to be one of the only ones in this immediate area, with the only competing on being the one surrounding the U-Bahn station to the north. To the west there are a number of streets with small stores and restaurants, though I did not see any chains or large grocery stores.

There appear to be three bus routes that service this area, 172, M11, and X11. These run fairly frequently during the day and drop off at night, and are usually full during the afternoon with children returning from school or adults returning from work or shopping further north. In my experience, the buses north to the S-Bahn are much less crowded in the evening, indicating perhaps that people live in Buckow, but not many work there. The composition of riders mentioned above seems to reinforce this theory.

Housing

The housing in Buckow is a mix of duplexes, medium and small single family homes, and apartment complexes. It does not have any of the large post-war apartment buildings that can been seen further to the north-east. The specific area of East Buckow has one of the lowest average rents in the Berlin, at around 7 euro per square meter per month, despite having having higher than average income. Furthermore, it's top 25% and lowest 25% of rents are also lower than the Berlin average, meaning that rent in this area is lower across the board, and not just in one size or price range.

As mentioned above, there is a distinct lack of the massive housing units that dominate much of the skyline in the outer areas of Berlin. Most of the housing seems either to be single family homes or duplexes constructed before the war, or apartment complexes built well after, perhaps the 70's or 80's. This composition makes sense for an area not heavily damaged during the war, with close proximity to a relatively newer airport (Shoenfield Intl.). There are noticeable similarities, then, to the Sea-Tac neighborhood in Seattle, with low rents, airport proximity, and only relatively recently developed with apartment buildings (which are possibly the cause of the lower than average rent prices in both places).

The refugee housing is of course the notable departure from the Sea-Tac similarities (though Sea-Tac too does have government subsidized apartments nearby). The refugee housing complex is a single plot of land containing around 90 shipping container sized units each housing 2-4 people. Each of these units contains a beds, a stove, a small fridge, and a bathroom with a shower. The units are paid for by the government so long as the refugees are unable to obtain work in Germany, after which point they are evicted.

Physical & Land Assets

The terrain in this neighborhood is relatively flat and without any notable features. The road systems are well developed and seem to adequately service each area of the neighborhood, though they are clearly older roads that were created out of use and not out of planning; there is almost no sign of the system of blocks and planned streets which can be found even two miles to the north. This all gives Buckow a very sprawling feel, and makes it feel very separate from the more developed, dense areas of Berlin. This is not to say that Buckow is undeveloped, however. There are very few buildings that appear to be abandoned or lots of land not in use. Again this is in contrast to other areas on the outskirts of Berlin, such as Lichtenberg, which has many unused plots of land and large abandoned buildings.

The refugee housing complex is built on the former No-Mans-Land between Brandenburg and Berlin, which was cleared in after WWII in order to shoot any escaping refugees from Berlin attempting to reach West Germany through the countryside. The fact that refugees are now housed in this still somewhat cleared section of land is noteworthy, as they too now stand in limbo between Germany and their countries of origin.

SOURCES:

http://www.berlinhyp.de/uploads/media/2015_WMR_EN_WWW_20150114.pdf

Observations

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