Right to party versus right to quietness? Mitigating noise conflicts of free open air events in Berlin

ABSTRACT

In Berlin, party-related activities in public spaces are increasingly leading to conflicts between people seeking leisure and those needing quietness. The Model Space project aims to mitigate these conflicts by directing free open air events to conflict-avoiding spaces. The paper outlines the spatial analysis conducted to identify suitable spaces.

KEYWORDS:

• Free open air events
• QGIS
• noise conflicts
• public space
• Berlin
• health

Acknowledgments

The Model Space Project was envisioned and designed by Liese Kingma, Lucas Counter, Arno Bouma, Daniel Priller, Thomas Schele (Advisor) & Konrad Braun (Advisor) in collaboration with the Clubcommission Berlin e.V. and funded by the Senate Department for Europe and Culture and the Musicboard Berlin GmbH. Test events and Roundtables were executed by Kollektiv Spieltrieb e.V.. The student project was established, coordinated & lead by Lucas Counter - Coordinator of Research of the Model Space Project (Clubcomission Berlin e.V.). His contribution consisted of:

1. Development of methodology, research design and concept.

2. Identification of spatial parameters.

3. Review and tailoring of evaluation criteria.

4. Analysis & interpretation of data.

The Students were supervised by Dipl.-Ing. Christian Kloss (TU Berlin) and Dipl.-Ing. Toni Karge (TU Berlin).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. We use the term ‘free space’ to describe the German term ‘Freiraum’. It refers to open spaces such as brownfield or undeveloped sites and green areas that can either be privately or publicly owned. It also refers to spaces that can be created and utilised according to the needs and ideas of the local population, where people are ‘free’ to participate in shaping the urban fabric. These can be either inside (e.g. youth clubs or neighbourhood meeting points) or outside (e.g. temporary uses, open air events, legal graffiti walls) and are usually easily accessible (for example public, free of rent or very low rent).

2. Free open air events take place in different kinds of spaces. Most of the events are organised in public green areas such as parks. They also appropriate abandoned spaces such as brownfield sites or interspaces, for example near railway tracks that are accessible, albeit mostly illegally, despite being privately owned. Illegally organised events in particular tend to take place in hidden, hardly visible spaces, in order to hide from the authorities. Organisers mostly use generators to power music systems for example and bring their own refuse bags. Sometimes they provide portable toilets, sometimes the surroundings serve as a toilet. Thus, the existence of infrastructure is beneficial, but the events are not dependent on it.

3. This has the advantage that the organisers do not have to reveal their secret venues, to avoid the risk of overuse. The ‘scene’ also emphasised the importance of the subcultural character of free open air events, i.e. not everyone wants to organise events legally. The Web-Map would also allow organisers of non-permitted events to choose conflict-avoiding spaces.

4. At this point, there is no final map of the evaluated spaces. Since there is not yet a final political decision regarding the project, there might be a risk that the spaces evaluated could be mistaken as Model Spaces, leading to potential misuse by organisers of open air events.

5. The Model Space Project started cooperating with three partner districts in Berlin: Pankow, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg and Mitte. Therefore, our spatial analysis was focused on spaces within these districts.

6. Some parameters are assigned a rating scale consisting only of two (one and five points) or three (one, three and five points) values as they included less decisive options in regard of the suitability of the space.

7. Within the project, questions regarding necessary conditions for recreation in public spaces were raised, such as: does the Green Area Act, equating recreation with quietness, address all needs, or is it lacking, for example, the demand for cultural activities for recreational purpose? However, we consider that a complex question that cannot be answered in the framework of this paper.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Charlotte Weber

All the contributors are currently studying Urban and Regional Planning at the Technical University Berlin. They engaged in the Model Space Project through a six-month university project in 2018 that was organised by the Model Space Project (Clubcommission Berlin). For further information on the project, please contact Lucas Counter: [email protected]. The Clubcommission is currently working on an advisory report that will be handed to politicians and the administration at the beginning of 2019. For further information on the Model Space Project in general, please visit: http://modelspaceproject.de/.