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Summary: History in the Making

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Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Geography ((BRIEFSGEOGRAPHY))

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Abstract

Potsdamer Platz emerged after robust redevelopment from the razed footprint left by the Cold War and is shaped by the four main influences. The first influence was represented by those who wanted it to recreate a state that closely resembles pre-First World War (i.e. traditionalists following the theory of critical reconstruction). The second comes from a group of controversial contemporary designers and theorists who argued that the comeback of the pre-war urbanity is naive, and who wanted Potsdamer Platz to reflect the current state of Berlin: full of voids marked by the holocaust of the history. The third grew from a corporate one and the one that had the final word on the image of today’s Platz. And the last, but not least, is the influence of Berlin’s own wish and tradition to be re-shaped and re-created into what undeniably added importance and almost with the ‘mission’ for a redevelopment project unlikely to be repeated in the current era. It is undeniably true to follow Sandler (2003) in the sense that the ‘redevelopment game’ around Potsdamer Platz was eventually won by the corporate players, aided by the economic and political changes of the time.

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Correspondence to Malgorzata Nowobilska .

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Nowobilska, M., Zaman, Q.M. (2014). Summary: History in the Making. In: Potsdamer Platz. SpringerBriefs in Geography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02928-3_5

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