The Ambiguities of “Sustainable” Berlin

Abstract

City marketing has a strong tradition in Berlin, with two organizations, Berlin Partner and Visit Berlin, responsible for designing and implementing relevant strategies. Sustainability has been on and off the city marketing agenda, almost exclusively in its environmental dimension. In this article, we examine the current representations of Berlin as a “sustainable city” in the official city marketing strategies. We look at how sustainability is used and instrumentalized to create a specific city profile and also to attract particular target groups in tourism. We propose an analysis of sustainable planning in Berlin since reunification to show how it has moved into different directions over time and how this has (or has not) been followed by city marketing. In this endeavor, we move between the existing, and as we argue deeper and more sophisticated, environmental planning of the city on one hand, and the reductions and simplifications of city marketing representations on the other. Finally, we argue that there are inherent contradictions in marketing a sustainable city, where both in terms of tourism and economic development, the concept of growth seems to be reaching environmental limits.

Sustainable Beirut City Planning Post August 2020 Port of Beirut Blast: Case Study of Karantina in Medawar District

“…It contains specific projects, measures, and instruments to meet the challenges formulated in the document and to achieve its objectives. The socio-economic reality of Berlin in 2020 is of a city that is strongly socially segregated between a wealthy and very welloff population on the one hand and a growing number of urban poor on the other-an inequality that has been on the rise since the double coronavirus crisis [18]. Although Berlin is way ahead today in its quest for sustainability, from 2001 till 2011, Berlin was, similarly to Beirut, going through difficult political, economic, and social crisis.…”

“…A spatially targeted program that sought to solve social problems at the neighborhood level was set up introducing the "neighborhood management" as a main tool. By introducing a small-scale governance structure, the "'neighborhood manager", it created an intermediate level between the municipality, citizens, and other local actors [18]. Abandoning large-scale foreign investment, understanding the city demographics, transforming industrial facilities into cultural and creative hubs, and developing affordable living and working spaces were at the core of this strategy.…”

Economic Improvement, Environmental Sustainability, and Community Empowerment in Indonesia: Bibliometric Analysis (Smart City and Smart Tourism) Year 2013-2022

“…According to (40), who researched the use of modern technology in Polish museums, there is a low selection of smart tourism and an emerging technology gap. According to (41), the development of smart cities and smart tourism has an impact on economic development which affects environmental growth that reaches limits.…”