Skate-parks in abandoned industrial estates, ponies grazing alongside the former Berlin Wall, flea markets in disused warehouses, music and fashion in hard-to-let stores and climbing walls in development niches – scarcely a city in Europe has been so radically characterized by temporary use projects as has Berlin. Temporary use projects are increasingly of strategicimportance for urban development, for space pioneers open up new development prospects at disused sites that defy the traditional urban planning. Combining a documentation of over 40 temporary use projects in Berlin with a series of essays and interviews, this book offers comprehensive insight into current discourse and proposes new guidelines for how temporary use projects might shape urban development.

Skate-parks in abandoned industrial estates, ponies grazing alongside the former Berlin Wall, flea markets in disused warehouses, music and fashion in hard-to-let stores and climbing walls in development niches – scarcely a city in Europe has been so radically characterized by temporary use projects as has Berlin. Temporary use projects are increasingly of strategicimportance for urban development, for space pioneers open up new development prospects at disused sites that defy the traditional urban planning. Combining a documentation of over 40 temporary use projects in Berlin with a series of essays and interviews, this book offers comprehensive insight into current discourse and proposes new guidelines for how temporary use projects might shape urban development.

Date of publication: February 2007, reprinted: Oktober 2011