The "socially integrative city program"

Building bridges across social and cultural divides, recruiting people from disadvantaged neighborhoods to work for the good of their communities, investing more in minds and less in buildings, creating the conditions for integration: these are the fundamental ideas underlying the work of Philipp Mühlberg, Head of the Socially Integrative City division of Berlin’s Senate Department for Urban Development since May 2004.

Far-reaching organizational changes are in store for the program. In the year 2005, in line with the program’s philosophy, three of Berlin’s 17 Neighborhood Management areas were chosen to make the transition from intensive management by the Senate Department towards increasing self-management and organization by local residents themselves.

The borough has taken on increased responsibility for another five neighborhoods in Mitte. And the division is offering the expertise acquired in the Berlin Neighborhood Management areas in the program since 1999 to a further 15 districts where Neighborhood Management programs have recently been initiated.

"Increasing tendencies toward social segregation require the use of more differentiated approaches," Mühlberg said in describing the changes being made in the Berlin Neighborhood Management program in response to the findings of the 2004 Socially Integrative City Development Monitoring Report. In Spandau, Marzahn-Hellersdorf, Friedrichhain-Kreuzberg, Neukölln, and Mitte, new Neighborhood Management programs are now underway to prevent unemployment, poverty or integration problems from dragging the neighborhoods down and creating islands of poverty that isolate them from the rest of the city’s development.

According to Mühlberg, “In this process of intervention and prevention, the neighborhood, the Senate Department, and ‘strong partners’ work hand in hand.” ‘Strong partners’ are institutions in the districts with strong links to the neighborhood. They include public and private housing companies, which themselves have a keen interest in achieving stable tenancy structures within their rental communities; neighborhood social organizations and community centers that have been active at the local level for many years; as well as schools, which are particularly well acquainted with neighborhood problems and concerns through their students.

The new Neighborhood Management program is based on the results of the federal and state-level evaluations of the original Neighborhood Management program. The past years have shown the following five structural features of the Neighborhood Management program to be particularly effective in overcoming anonymity, building social control, and fostering the harmonious coexistence of different ethnic groups within the districts through sustainable forms of social organization:

• Playing a central role in districts, acting as a team that gives the process of neighborhood improvement and stabilization a face and a voice.
• Networking among different levels of city and municipal administration with regard to program management, with the aim of pooling resources.
• Offering integrated concepts of action and development describing the strengths and weaknesses of the district and formulating goals for its stabilization.
• Activating and empowering residents, placing priority on involving the people in the process and empowering residents to shape and organize community life themselves.
• Providing a Resident Fund for the use of the local people, placing financial resources under the direct control of neighborhood juries, creating incentives to get involved in the process, and demonstrating that the residents of the community are to be taken seriously and that they are capable of determining how to use and allocate their own resources.

Since the Neighborhood Management program is conceived of as a temporary measure, the importance of fundraising will increase over time. “We have to focus on the acquisition of additional funds, on finding sponsors, and also on promoting social responsibility among local entrepreneurs and businesses,” says Mühlberg. One of the fundamental ideas behind the program is that of providing need-based support according to the basic principle of subsidiarity, a condition of the program that will enable the continuation of the diverse initiatives and projects after its conclusion. According to Mühlberg, “We haven’t achieved anything if the program stops after providing a neighborhood with years of intensive support and all the structures it created disappear with it.”

But funding is just one component in the stabilization of disadvantaged neighborhoods. To decrease the negative contextual effects on the life opportunities of residents, it is of central importance that existing networks be interlinked in order to increase the willingness and abilities of different groups within the community to communicate with each other.

Unfortunately, there’s no magic formula for how to do this, just as there’s no handbook for “Stable Neighborhoods in Three Easy Steps.” But Philipp Mühlberg sees this in a positive light: “We still have the wind in our sails,” he says in regard to communities’ openness to experimentation with integrative projects, “we still have the resources, and we should use them to the fullest to find out through trial and error what produces positive effects. Often, the path is the goal.”

He argues against general guidelines, and in favor of using the knowledge of those active at the local level. “In our work as well, we have to build networks and learn from the projects tried out in other cities,”—or make use of personal experiences. For example, “student exchange” programs: Where do young people learn other languages and cultures best and most intensively? Wouldn’t it be possible for young Turkish people to improve their German abilities significantly as guests of Berlin families?

Mühlberg sees Neighborhood Management as a “fire brigade”: it should be called into action quickly wherever problems appear on the urban horizon. This picture of an organized task force corresponds to the division of responsibilities in the Socially Integrative City program, with one central administration for the entire city that gradually passes on its responsibilities and steering activities to the boroughs, and places as much decision-making power as possible in the hands of local residents.

“Berlin is very progressive in this approach to the work,” Mühlberg tells participants. “Now it is crucial to ensure that the neighborhoods where there already is a tendency toward unequal opportunities do not turn into the kinds of marginalized districts we are familiar with from other cities. This is an ambitious goal. It is a plea for an active cohesion policy despite scarce resources, using vast imagination and courage to tackle new integrative ideas together with everyone involved.”

(Translation: Deborah Bowen, Monika Scheele Knight, H. Hübner)