Berlin:
Environment improvement concepts as a tool of information
Berlin:
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| Country: | a) Western Europe | ,b) Germany |
| Language: | |
| Type: | Concept, 1 |
| Area: | District/Quarter, > 1 million |
| Actors: | Local government, Regional government, Economic sector |
| Funding: | Local government, Regional government |
| Topics: | Air-quality |
| Energy | |
| Health | |
| Information and public participation | |
| Objectives: | Improve access to information |
| Increase public awareness | |
| Instruments: | New urban management tools and instuments |
Ecological information is an essential precondition for the planning of future living potentials in highly built-up cities. In particular, energy-related pollution has a significant impact on the local and the regional environmental conditions. In Berlin the Environment Improvement Concepts, a model of systematic assessment of ambient impairment characteristics, had been developed in order to identify relevant paths of pollutants. Seven major studies for six city districts had been worked out in order to support decision-making on environmental problems. The Environment Improvement Concepts are an important information tool for the following reasons:
High environmental impairment constitutes a major problem of the urban development of densely populated cities. The sustainability of the future living potentials within conurbations crucially depends on the reduction of impairment factors like noise, air pollutants, soil contamination or water pollution. Therefore, the use and redevelopment of spatial areas and the possibilities for new business settlements in city areas had to be improved. From the policy-makerspoint of view such ambitious objectives can only be reached within a coherent policy strategy as the complex implementation of measures often involves planning at various levels and by different administrations. Therefore, the Ministry of Urban Development and Environmental Protection, the Berlin Land ministry, initiated several research projects within the Environment Research Programme in order to get fundamental and detailed information on the directions of possible local environmental action.
The idea was to work out potential strategies for environmental improvement under the constraint of conserving the traditional urban mix of trade, industrial and residential functions in Berlininner city areas. The Environment Improvement Concepts should identify the multitude of different pollution sources in a typical built-up area. In addition, the paths of environmental impairment from the emitters at the origin through processes of transmission onto the affected areas uses should be quantified.
However, one had to set priorities as on the one side the collection of information and the stimulation of innovations is a costly matter, and as on the other side the city and district administrationswillingness to offer support is usually facing financial and organisational contraints. With respect to this framework the studies mainly cover the types of pollutants and the emitters causing the worst ambient impairment, and the areas and the affected uses suffering from the most severe pollution.
As a policy-oriented way of processing data the Environment Improvement Concepts are screening the environmental pollution source at local district level. Each concept followed the same research pattern:
Stage 2: Selecting relevant paths of pollution;
Stage 3: Dispersion in environmental media;
Stage 4: Assessing emissions and environmental impairment and local interaction;
Stage 5: Setting priorities for political measures.
The first stage is devoted to a systematic assessment of the ambient impairment characteristic in Berlin and the local district concerned. The second stage is concerned with the identification of major paths of pollutants in the area of investigation as well as bringing together detailed description on the specific pollution. In the third stage the dispersion of single pollutants from the various emissions into the different environmental media is quantified. In the fourth stage the actual environmental impairments are compared with ambient environmental quality standards and other reference standards. This procedure enables the evaluation of the toxicity and / or the level of hazardousness. At this stage the various types of local environmental impairment are superimposed on one another as this makes it possible to identify the most severely polluted areas. In the final stage the results from the evaluation and the identification are combined in order to list policy measures according to priorities.
On the one hand the Environment Improvement Concepts should generate new insight into the complexity of the local environmental situation and on the other hand they should provide an information tool on the potentials of improvement and the readiness of political actors for the implement of proposed measures. The information on the local and regional impact should be related to the following themes:
Between 1987 and 1992 seven Environment Improvement Concepts in six districts have been worked out:
The first Environmental Improvement Concept for Neukölln contained two major studies on the special topics of energy-related pollution and the environmental situation of trade and industry. The following concepts for Tempelhof, Wilmersdorf, and Wedding did cover all environmental media but the research of these so-called low-cost concepts had not been as extensive as in the Neukölln one. Nevertheless, the established research pattern had also been used. The focus of these studies was mainly directed towards the spatial concentration of environmental pollution sources (e.g. industrial pollution from an area with a high percentage of garages or the impairment resulting from traffic congestion). At district administration level, various departments provided an information input. In particular, the environmental authorities, the district town planning department, the health department, and the economics department had been asked for environment-related data.
The Environment Improvement Concepts were designed to provide an operational output, but the overload of conflicting proposals (e.g. road planning versus traffic reduction) limited their far- reaching implementation. The conflicts not only relate to the planning issues on district level but are also by the planning hierarchy between the city level and the district level.
Furthermore, a number of proposed measures could not be implemented to a full extent, as after the fall of the Berlin Wall the situation in certain environmental areas has completely changed (e.g. in the transport sector). A further change has taken place in the sector of financial support to the district level as funds have been shifted to measures and programmes in the East Berlin area.
However, the Environment Improvement Concepts also proved to be a valuable information base for a number of reasons:
In day-to-day business constraints, are put to the initiation and implementation of a sophisticated policy approach like that of the Environment Improvement Concepts. Different political actors and different administrations use different parts of the overall concept. Although the complex process of superimposing, weighing and evaluating the local priorities for measures is a valuable asset of the decision-making process, the proposed measures often conflict with the innovation capacity of an urban policy system that is under growing financial pressures. In addition, many policies of the 1990s have to adjust their scope of activities due to the changed situation after the fall of the Wall and the reunification of both parts of the city.
With regard to the individual measures the local policy actors at district level often stress that the proposed improvements have to take into account the specific procedures of a policy area. Furthermore, it is essential to analyse the required time horizon for implementation, and to set deadlines for different phases of implementation. Another important element of strategic information concepts has to be the linking of sets of measures to financial planning and financing programmes.
ARP / InnoTec / peb 1987: Environmental Improvement Model Berlin-Neukölln. The Impact of Energy Planning on Local Environmental Improvement. A Research Project sponsored by the Commission of the European Communities DG XVII, Berlin
OECD 1990: Environmental policies for Cities in the 1990s, Paris
Jänicke, Martin 1992: Die Umweltproblematik - ein Engpaßfaktor industrieller Entwicklung in Berlin?, in: Senatsverwaltung für Wirtschaft und Technologie, (Hg.), Auf dem Weg zur Wirtschaftsmetropole Berlin. Empfehlungen der Strukturpolitischen Expertenkommission, Berlin, S. 158-167
Fietz, Harald / Wanke, Andreas 1996: Erfolgsbedingungen umweltpolitischer Handlungsprogramme in Berlin aus der Sicht von Unternehmen, Projektbericht innerhalb der berlin-dienlichen Forschung der FU Berlin, Berlin
| Name | : | Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung |
| Firstname | : | |
| Telefon | : | ++49 / 30 / 9025 - 0 |
| Telefax | : | ++49 / 30 / 9025 2920 |
| Address | : | Senatsverwaltung für |
| Stadtentwicklung | ||
| Brückenstr. 6 | ||
| D - 10179 Berlin | ||
| Germany | ||
Berlin has a population of almost 3.5 million of which approximately 11% are foreign citizens. The wider conurbation has an additional population of nearly one million. The city covers 889 square kilometres; 38 km from north to south and 45 km from east to west. 24 per cent of the city’s surface is water and navigable waterways are 197 km in length. In size it is almost as large as the densely populated Ruhr area in North Rhine Westphalia. Berlin is the largest city in Germany, and one of the sixteen regional States (Bundesländer) of the Federal Republic of Germany.
The unified municipality of Berlin is a decentralised body divided into 23 districts (Bezirke). The districts have between 50,000 and 300,000 inhabitants. They carry responsibility for local politics and their own administration. Unlike independent municipalities, however, they do not have financial autonomy but are allocated funds by the City Government, the Senate of Berlin. The main authority for the City as a whole is the Senate which is divided into different administrative departments (comparable to Ministries in other German Länder).
Although Berlin has experienced a steady decline in industry, there are still over 200,000 people working in the manufacturing sector. Approximately 230,000 of the 1.5 million citizens in the workforce are employed in trade and about 750,000 people have jobs in service, primarily in the public sector.
In addition, Berlin is a centre of environmental research as well as technology, and a great number of businesses are engaged in environment-related activities. According to a study by the ifo Institute in Munich and the IÖW (Institute for Ecological Economic Research) in Berlin, 400 companies with 13,000 employees are directly involved in environmental protection (engineering offices, and producers and distributors of environmental technology). This number has tripled within the last ten years, and half of the companies have started as new businesses since 1990. Furthermore, Berlin is a stronghold of scientific research with approx. 100 companies involved in measurement and analytical activities, approx. 80 eco-research institutes (including universities), and 45 public administrations and authorities in charge of environmental matters.
Project was added at 25.06.1996
Project was changed at 21.08.2001