For years, the Berlin housing demand has exceeded its supply. The Stadtentwicklungsplan Wohnen 2030 states that 200.000 apartments need to be built within the next 10 years to house the growing population. This coincides with a lack of vacant land as a result of Berlin’s “Ausverkauf der Stadt”, leaving the city-owned housing associations with few options for inner-city development today. One of these options is highly controversial: the vacant site of the former Tempelhof Airport. Since its closure in 2008, the 300-hectare field remains an urban open space despite dozens of reuse proposals due to conflicting interests.

In 2011, the citizens’ initiative “100% Tempelhofer Feld” successfully overturned a new housing construction intended by the Berlin Senate with a Berlin-wide referendum by framing the ecological value of the inner-city green space. Their slogan, “Either a field for all or a privileged few” was populist in the exclusion of a dialogical understanding of interests. Instead of creating the dichotomy of “either-or”, the suggestion is to use “both-and” asking: who builds where for whom?