Walking along Mariannenstrasse in Berlin this summer, one might have seen what appeared to be a small studio apartment set up in a parking space – as if someone had begun building a tiny home, forgot the walls, and then just left it there. But this strange scene was no accident. It was part of an art intervention called Parasite Parking, staged by local artist Jakob Wirth.
The “parasite” is a 12 square-metre platform on wheels, designed to be mobile and fit within a standard parking space. On top of the platform, Wirth installed furniture including a bed, simple wooden shelves and countertops, a dining table with seats, and a small bookshelf.
This summer Wirth lived on this platform for 11 days and nights in various parking spaces around the city’s Kreuzberg and Neukölln neighbourhoods. His intention was to spark conversations around the use of public space in urban environments.
“I want people to imagine the possibilities of what it means to be in a public space, and what can be done with 12 square metres,” Wirth tells The Parliament.
He developed Parasite Parking with researcher and activist Alexander Sacharow. They launched the project in Chicago, where the city’s billion-dollar deal to lease 36,000 public parking spaces to a private firm for 75 years has led to problems – such as preventing the city from making infrastructural changes like adding cycle lanes or street-side gardens.
I want people to imagine the possibilities of what it means to be in a public space
The duo took inspiration from French philosopher Michel Serres, whose book Le Parasite compares human relationships to the relationship between a parasite and its host. Serres suggests that, by being a pest, minorities or small groups can have a great impact on public dialogue.
“Serres examined order and disorder, and also information, and what society needs to not stand still,” Wirth explains. “The parasite comes from outside, lives on the edges of a system, and irritates it by being there.”
While the intervention elicited a wide spectrum of responses, Wirth says he received mostly positive feedback from locals. Some of his temporary neighbours offered him the use of their showers, and others got involved in co-creating events in the space, such as a karaoke night, a film screening, and public discussions.
Wirth is not the first to publicly question the decision to commit so much public space to car parking. The Verkehrsclub Deutschland (VCD), an advocate for environmentally and socially equitable mobility, has been organising the so-called Park(ing) Day in Berlin since 2009. Similar to Parasite Parking, participants occupy parking spaces in order to explore what else they could be used for.
This year’s central action took place on Oranienburger Strasse on 15 September, where the VCD and supporting organisations temporarily converted about 30 parking spots into public space. From 11am to 9pm, art displays, discussions, and live music performances filled the spaces typically occupied by parked cars.
During a discussion on the alternative use of public areas that was hosted at the event, Lucas Schaal, a politician from Germany’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and member of Berlin's Transport Committee, suggested that if changes are to be considered, conversations need to be sought at early stages and residents need to be taken into account.
Chairman of VCD Berlin, Heiner von Marschall, tells The Parliament: “One of the problems we have, especially in urban areas in cities, is this lack of space for everybody.” He suggests that many things can be done with 12 square metres that benefit residents more than additional parking spaces – such as space for table tennis, cultural offerings, or gardens. According to a VCD press release, parking spaces use 10 times more space than playgrounds in Berlin, although 43.3 per cent of households in the city don’t have a car.
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An artist in Berlin showing what else can be done with a parking space
“Serres examined order and disorder, and also information, and what society needs to not stand still,” Wirth explains. “The parasite comes from outside, lives on the edges of a system, and irritates it by being there.”
While the intervention elicited a wide spectrum of responses, Wirth says he received mostly positive feedback from locals. Some of his temporary neighbours offered him the use of their showers, and others got involved in co-creating events in the space, such as a karaoke night, a film screening, and public discussions.
Wirth is not the first to publicly question the decision to commit so much public space to car parking. The Verkehrsclub Deutschland (VCD), an advocate for environmentally and socially equitable mobility, has been organising the so-called Park(ing) Day in Berlin since 2009. Similar to Parasite Parking, participants occupy parking spaces in order to explore what else they could be used for.
This year’s central action took place on Oranienburger Strasse on 15 September, where the VCD and supporting organisations temporarily converted about 30 parking spots into public space. From 11am to 9pm, art displays, discussions, and live music performances filled the spaces typically occupied by parked cars.
During a discussion on the alternative use of public areas that was hosted at the event, Lucas Schaal, a politician from Germany’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and member of Berlin's Transport Committee, suggested that if changes are to be considered, conversations need to be sought at early stages and residents need to be taken into account.
Chairman of VCD Berlin, Heiner von Marschall, tells The Parliament: “One of the problems we have, especially in urban areas in cities, is this lack of space for everybody.” He suggests that many things can be done with 12 square metres that benefit residents more than additional parking spaces – such as space for table tennis, cultural offerings, or gardens. According to a VCD press release, parking spaces use 10 times more space than playgrounds in Berlin, although 43.3 per cent of households in the city don’t have a car.
“We just assume this is normal,” Wirth says about the quantity of cars on the street. “We don’t think about what else could be there.”
Reclaiming parking spots for public space is fun for some, but it can also invite confrontation, especially with frustrated drivers. But Marschall and Wirth agree that stimulating these kinds of discussions is an important aspect of their projects
Asked how he responds when a motorist tells him to move, Marshall says: “We can ask why. You want to use [this space] but I want to use it too. Why do you come first? Maybe you can ask the car three lots further down if it can move instead.”
Both Parasite Parking and Park(ing) Day are focused on parking spaces in particular, but they touch upon a broader question that is becoming a heated point of debate in cities across Europe and around the world: do we design cities for people or cars?
Only car owners benefit from the use of public parking spaces along city streets, and the same can be said of highways and multi-lane streets that lack cycle lanes or pleasant walkways. But in Berlin, most residents don’t use cars on a daily basis. According to Civitas, an initiative aiming to help the European Commission achieve its mobility and transport goals, with fewer than 350 cars per 1,000 inhabitants, Berlin has the lowest car density in Germany.
According to data analysed by the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, the rate of new car registrations has not kept up with Berlin’s booming population. While the total number of cars in the city has steadily increased to 1.23 million today, the number of cars per capita has been decreasing since 2012. Congestion on city streets is at an all-time high, but the share of residents who benefit from cars is going down.
“We have this really naive assumption that everybody has the physical or financial means to drive a car,” Chris Bruntlett, co-author of Curbing Traffic, tells The Parliament. “But we give all our resources, all our space, and all our priorities to this one mode of transportation that only serves a segment of the population.”
Along with his wife Melissa, Bruntlett lives in Delft in the Netherlands where they study urban mobility and the positive impact low-traffic city planning can have on local communities. In their book, they recount their experience of moving to the Dutch city, and slowly realising how vastly the lack of high-traffic streets around their family home has improved their lives. They argue that low-traffic cities are more child-friendly, more equitable, more feminist, better connected, and more resilient.
“The more high-speed vehicles that use a street, the less sense of ownership we take in that street, the less likely we are to spend time outside our front door, the fewer friends and acquaintances we have in our neighbourhoods. Then we start seeing that street as a hostile environment rather than as a part of our community where we can meet people and interact," says Bruntlett.
Lately, support for low-traffic neighbourhoods has been gaining popularity in many urban hubs. But while cities such as Paris take steps towards eliminating car traffic, and creating hundreds of new cycle lanes, Berlin is poised to take a massive step in the opposite direction.
The next construction phase planned for Berlin’s A100 highway would bring it through the heart of the city’s east side, and result in the eviction of more than 20 clubs and cultural venues. Criticising the project’s negative impact on environmental health and local businesses, organisations such as the climate movement Fridays for Future, and Clubcommission, a network of Berlin’s clubs and cultural promoters, teamed up to host a street protest on 2 September this year.
A statement released by Fridays for Future claims: “The Berlin government is also propagating the car-compliant city … [and] further construction of the A100 accelerates the destruction of natural resources and man-made climate change.”
In support of the A100 expansion, CDU parliamentary group leader, Timur Husein, wrote in an op-ed for Tagesspiegel: “Only in the case of further construction will both the battered commuters in the eastern part of Berlin and the residents of the city centre benefit.”
However, despite conservative political leaders’ continued push for car-centric infrastructure, a number of local initiatives are attempting to move towards a low-traffic future.
The most ambitious of these is the Berlin car-free referendum organised by Berlin autofrei, a citizen’s initiative aiming to get cars off the streets of the German capital. If passed, the referendum would create the world’s largest car-reduced city centre. Street use inside the city’s inner ring would primarily be limited to pedestrians, cyclists and public transport, with exceptions for public and emergency services, commercial and delivery traffic, and those who truly depend on motor vehicles, such as people with reduced mobility.
Berlin autofrei drafted a proposal and submitted it to the city’s Senate in September 2021. The Senate initially blocked the proposal, calling it unconstitutional. The draft, titled ‘Berlin Law for Road Use Based on the Common Good’, is now being reviewed by the Berlin Constitutional Court.
“The Senate’s line of argument is based on the idea that there is some kind of fundamental and limitless right to drive a motorised vehicle on a road in Germany,” a statement provided to The Parliament by Berlin autofrei reads. “We disagree, and are confident that the Senate’s view, which is incompatible with the principle of democracy, won’t be validated by the state Constitutional Court.” According to the organisation, a legal opinion requested by the Senate found that the draft law did not violate European Union, Berlin, or Federal German traffic laws.
While the larger car-free referendum remains stalled in legal review, a smaller pilot project is under way in Berlin’s Kreuzberg neighbourhood, not far from the parking spaces that Wirth occupied with his parasite.
The Graefekiez Project is transforming the street on two city blocks into a low-traffic zone, and replacing parking spaces with garden plots. During the summer this year, one section of the street was completely closed to vehicle traffic for one afternoon each week to provide play space for children.
“It’s really beautiful to see all the kids running around on the street,” says Cosmea Christoleit, spokesperson for Berlin 21, an organisation supporting the project. “Having three kindergartens on the street makes this an ideal location to see the benefits of reducing traffic in the neighbourhood,” she adds.
On top of adding 30 square metres of play space for local kids, unsealing paved areas has the benefit of creating more green space and reducing stormwater runoff.
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Parasite Parking
“As a resident, I’m all for it," says Ramona Winter, co-owner of 8 Green Bottles, a natural wine shop located on the street where the Graefekiez Project is centred. “As far as we can tell, not many of our customers come by car … and I also think it will make the street a nicer spot to spend time.”
Considered a trial zone for implementing low-traffic initiatives in Berlin, lots of people are watching the Graefekiez Project closely. One of them is Dr Andreas Knie, head of a research group at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB), which is tasked with evaluating the project.
“We are measuring the traffic, the noise and the emissions before, during and after the experiment,” Professor Knie tells The Parliament.
According to polls conducted by Knie’s team before the transformation began, about two-thirds of local residents believe the number of cars in the neighbourhood is too high.
Knie suggests that German traffic and parking ordinances are focused on ensuring that everyone has the right to park their car. “We need to change that. We need more plurality, so that every traffic mode is accepted in public space,” he says.
Husein sees it differently. The CDU parliamentary group leader reportedly called the Graefekiez Project antisocial, telling the Berliner Morgenpost: “Only those who have been able to afford a parking space in the backyard or in a garage will remain unaffected. The rest are expected to walk.”
The CDU office did not respond to The Parliament's request for comment.
Having studied efforts to create low-traffic zones in cities across Europe and North America, Bruntlett is familiar with the backlash these initiatives can produce. “It only takes a handful of vocal, well-connected, angry people to make anything seem controversial … and so the challenge is to break through that status quo and give a voice to what we could call the quiet majority.”
Asked about his favourite memory from living on the parasite in Berlin, Wirth recalls a gathering on the final day that turned into a dance party.
“Somehow it sparked and expanded, and suddenly the whole street was reclaimed. Cars had to stop and slow down. It was this kind of moment where you see what can happen when something infects the status quo.”