Berlin Techno Clubs Under Threat From Highway Expansion
The A100 extension project has united club workers and environmental campaigners who say it will contribute to the climate crisis.
The highway, which forms a semicircle around central Berlin, is scheduled to be extended in the coming years from Treptower Park, over the River Spree, to the nightlife center of Friedrichshain in the north.
The Berlin Club Committee, a network of the city's clubs and cultural promoters, says the expansion threatens five of the region's most popular nightclubs.
These include About Blank, an industrial-style techno club located next to Ostkreuz train station, and Renate, a community center for the LGBT community located in a renovated building.
“These clubs have been here for 20 to 30 years,” said Lutz Lichenring, a representative of the club committee. “They are what makes Berlin famous and why people love them.”
The club committee helped organize a demonstration in early September to protest the plan.
Thousands of people wearing shorts and leopard print dance with streamers while makeshift stages play techno music on the proposed A100.
Club culture
“The clubs here... are really important to the culture of Berlin,” said Adrian Schmidt, a 25-year-old student wearing a black T-shirt and pearl necklace.
“These clubs create spaces where everyone can express themselves freely,” he said.
Carol Canal, 25, a Parisian marketing director, made his first experience with Au Blanca in Germany and is regularly bullied at all five clubs.
"It's a place where people keep a lot of memories... and it would be very sad to have everything closed," he said.
After the fall of the Wall, Berlin's nightclub scene boomed, giving a new use to many of the city's abandoned buildings and industrial wasteland.
But the city's nightlife has suffered in recent years due to the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as complaints about noise, rising rents, bureaucracy and rising prices.
Eli Stephen, 37, who owns a number of vacant lots, describes the A100 extension project as “this gray crap on the motorway”.
Does he really think the opposition has a chance against Germany's powerful, business-friendly FDP-led Ministry of Automotive Industry and Transport?
He added: “Right now, no one can say.
But "we are determined to resist and it is always important to fight for transportation, sustainability, color and diversity in cities."
The German wing of the Arab League also joined the protest, expressing concern about the future of the movement.
The group's representative, Clara Dauphine (21 years old), said. “Construction of the A100 must be stopped entirely, not only for obvious social reasons, but also because motorways are a major contributor to the climate crisis.”
"Increase in traffic."
But not everyone outside the cultural bubble in central Berlin is determined to stop the movement.
According to a recent opinion poll conducted by Die Welt newspaper, 62% of Germans support modernizing and expanding the country's road network.
Only 33 percent said highway expansion should be halted to protect the climate.
Decisions on motorway infrastructure were made by the central government, with a limited extension of the A100 motorway agreed in 2016 by former Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The current coalition, led by Olaf Scholz, has pledged to re-evaluate some major infrastructure projects based on their environmental impact, but is committed to moving forward with these plans.
At a recent government press conference, Transport Ministry spokesman Bastian Pauli said the highway expansion is “essential to manage and respond to increased traffic in the future.”
The project is unlikely to face political opposition in Berlin, which earlier this year elected a conservative mayor for the first time in 20 years.
Kay Wegner, 50, a former insurance salesman, strongly defended the contract extension.
