From Roadblocks to Superblocks

Have you ever walked through central Berlin and suddenly noticed the city become quieter? One moment you're surrounded by traffic, the next you're sitting outside a café on a street where cars have largely given way to people. Places like Friedrichstraße offer a glimpse of how urban spaces can be transformed when pedestrians and cyclists take priority. Across Europe, so-called superblocks are being promoted as a way to create greener, quieter, and more livable neighborhoods. In Berlin, the concept has gained strong support from civil society groups and local governments, yet turning these ideas into reality has proven surprisingly difficult. The Landscape Ecology Group (Dagmar Haase) examined why efforts to implement Berlin's "Kiezblocks" often stall despite broad public interest and political backing. Through interviews with key stakeholders, the researchers reveal how conflicting goals, limited resources, bureaucratic hurdles, and a lack of a coherent city-wide strategy can slow progress and fuel public frustration. Read their Cities Article to explore the politics, challenges, and opportunities behind Berlin's Kiezblock movement and the importance of aligning governance, participation, and long-term planning along the way.

Abstract

Superblocks have been at the forefront of innovative local urban sustainability strategies for a number of years. At the same time, the implementation of this concept is routinely subject to scrutiny, conflicting interests and even rejection. In Berlin particularly, the implementation focuses on traffic-calming solutions and the concept has been initiated through a broad civil society coalition. Despite a diverse and strong group of actors and several supportive district governments, its implementation is faltering, and a surprising level of resistance has emerged. A specific neoliberal turn towards participation, shifting responsibilities and the partial shadow of authority explains some of those hurdles. The article employs an in-depth case study of the institutional and perceptional context-factors the ‘Kiezblock Initiatives’ work within to better understand aspects of this constellation. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with state and non-state actors combined with the novel method of the process-net map and analysed through structured content analysis. We argue that specific institutional lock-in effects, actors’ inconsistent goals and a disparate and in general scarce availability of resources are paralyzing attempts for remaking neighbourhoods facing climate change. Challenges in implementation and the absence of a coherent city-wide strategy are found to contribute to public frustration and a lack of acceptance, potentially undermining the effectiveness of superblocks and exacerbating issues of urban socio-environmental justice. The novelty of our approach lies in our focus on structural hurdles inherent in multi-level governance settings specifically for civil-society initiated policy change.