Paths
> Berlin, Germany
Berlin,
Germany
berlin
tagged map in Tagzania
Berlin
paths summary
The main area for path mapping in Berlin was the sub-urban Marzhan. Marzhan
is an eastern district with large amount of different kinds of block houses.
It was built in 1970' during the time of GDR and it was one of the biggest
building sites in Europe. People came to work there i.e. from Turkey.
There not much city planning what so ever, the buildings were meant to
be a quick solution for housing problems. People started to move to the
new appartements before the district was ready. There were no shops, schools
or paved streets, but comforts of the new appartements tempted people
to move. The interesting thing about Marzhan is: were the streets then
built on top of the paths people made? I didn't find an answer for this
question, yet. There are still a lot of paths in Marzhan. Some of them
even look like there should be a street on top of them, like i.e. one
that starts from Rathus and goes across a park in Springfull. You could
call it a path highway.
People living in Marzhan now seem to be very happy. It was very hard to collect stories, though. People were suspisious, when asked about their lives and the common answer was “no” or they just walked away without saying anything. Unconfirmed information is that 40% of racists acts of violence in Berlin happen in Marzhan and close-by Hellensdorf. This might be one reason, why people seem to be reserved when a foreign stranger who doesn’t speak German properly comes to ask questions. The district seemed to be more or less “pure white”, there were not very many ethnic people to be seen. It has to be said that these are of course assumptions. A road to racism is paved with assumptions.
The paths were mapped in spring 2005.
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Copyright © 2004 - 2010 Mari Keski-Korsu |  |