Setting the Stage

1In October 2008, the last plane took off at the inner-city airport of Berlin Tempelhof, leaving behind a vast infrastructure site in the middle of the German capital. The question arose of how to use the huge terrain of more than 360 hectares. In a city with a recent history of a significant loss of population and a relaxed housing market, there was no immediate pressure for development. Therefore, the area was opened as a public park and became very popular with the urban public. With the Berlin housing market tightening after 2010, the city government started planning efforts for future housing and commercial development on the fringes of the airfield. These development plans were abruptly halted by a city-wide referendum in 2014, in which the Berlin electorate voted against any developments within the premises of the former airfield.

2This empirical case – the article argues – offers valuable insight on how atmospheres inform planning decisions. As will be shown, the planning conflict sketched out above between the planning officials and the local population was triggered by contradicting atmospheric perceptions of the former airfield. As Tonino Griffero’s example of an oak tree illustrates, a place can be perceived fundamentally differently, depending on the subjective context of each individual.

[An oak tree] is, for instance, a potential few cords of wood for the forester, a threatening daemon for the little girl, to whom the knobby bark resembles the deformed face of a man […]. The same object, in a strictly physicalist sense, therefore presents different tones in different species-typical Umwelten. (Griffero, 2014, p. 32)

3In the empirical case presented here, the very creation of landscape plans, maps and zoning decisions made by planning officials heavily relied on their “[a]tmospheric perception [of the airfield as] a holistic and emotional being-in-the-world” (ibid., p. 15). Similarly, the local protesters were affected in their political valuations by the atmospheres they perceived. Strikingly, both sets of atmospheric perceptions had little overlay, promoting the political conflict of the Tempelhof airfield. By empirically focusing on the participants of an urban planning conflict, the article – on a conceptual level – is able to sketch out the societal and political impacts of atmospheric perceptions that go well beyond the scope of the individual subject.

Disregarding the sensing body/subject in urban planning

5This neglect of emotions and feelings in planning discourse resonates with the broader phenomenon in Western society of separating a public and private realm, leaving the field of feeling and sensing to the latter. Hasse (2012, p. 178) describes this maneuver as a

• 2 My translation of the original text: ‚kultivierte‘ Segmentierung des Menschen in sogenannnte ‚öffen (...)

cultivated segmentation of the human being in so-called ‘public’ and ‘private’ life segments. As an acting individual one appears to act according to good reasoning – in science, administration, law and legislation as well as in daily life. As a sensing – quasi separate – human however, one enjoys the art, good food, sports, sees a therapist and enjoys leisure time.2

7The evident downside of this negligence of emotions is that our understanding of planning practice within this frame of reasoning must be necessarily limited. “There are many aspects of the practical art of planning that we do not understand because analysts have overlooked how emotions and feelings shape the plans people make individually as urban dwellers or urban planners” (Hoch, 2006, p. 380). For example, the absence of emotions in planning discourse, as well as the self-image of planners, tends to become a source of superiority, resulting in a power imbalance between planners and the local population. By ascribing emotions only to the latter group, “their knowledge cannot count as knowledge for it is too intimately grounded in, and tainted by, their (essential) corporeality” (Longhurst, 1997, p. 494). This artificial distinction of a political sphere and a body/subject sphere (Anderson, Smith, 2001, p. 9) consequently leads to a depolitization of emotions. By disregarding the feeling and sensing body/subject as being the base of any perception – including those of planning professionals – planning discourse has so far left out the chances of a more adequate and comprehensive understanding of how planning decisions occur.

Introducing the concept of atmospheres to urban planning research

8The self-image of planners as impartial professionals, as well as their daily practice of working with maps and plans, seems to marginalize all atmospheric sensing. The “cartographic silence” (Harley, 1988, p. 58, cited in Sullivan, 2011, p. 90) seems to effectively segregate them from the lived life of the urban fabric. Nevertheless, if this convention is empirically investigated, the picture becomes more ambiguous and complex as the interview statement of one of the landscape planners of the Tempelhof airfield illustrates:

• 4 My translation of the original text: Vor dem 8. Mai saßen wir da in dem kleinen Gebäude auf dem Fel (...)

Before May 8^th [of 2010; the day the former airfield opened as a public park] our office was in this small building on-site. And we had a totally different impression of the terrain, just a different feeling. […] No one was there, but a few construction workers. And we thought: ‘well, not sure if anyone will come at all once the park is open’. […] And I must admit, from May 8^th on (…) it was still the same situation of us working in that building and looking out of the window. But now we had a totally different feeling about the terrain. Because now there were people. Because people were passing the window riding their bikes. Because now there were people flying a kite and mothers with their children. Since that very day, the terrain somehow has had a different character to me. I can’t describe it (…) it’s just a feeling (…) and it is not objective and all, but suddenly it was different than before4.

10The empirical episode of the landscape planner draws attention to a defining characteristic of atmospheres, which is of importance to planning research: the relevance of the bodily presence and locatedness for any perception. “In order to have an experience of urban space, we have to be there, we have to have a bodily experience of something that is not a mere representation” (Lapintie, 2007, p. 43, emphasis in original). Edward Casey (2001, p. 689) specifies this co-constituting character of place and self by stating: “[j]ust as there is no implaced self except as a body/self, there is no place either without such a self.” He highlights the atmospheric truth that the very idea of a place without a perceiving self is misleading. All of our reasoning and doing takes place somewhere: “being inevitably requires a place, a situation for its disclosure” (Larsen, Johnson, 2012, p. 633). Even activities such as day-dreaming or using Twitter take place somewhere. Consequently, “our actions and words might not be determined by the places in which they occur, but they are certainly influenced by them” (Beauregard, 2013, p. 13). This simple but momentous truth has been neglected in planning discourse and needs to be considered for a more thorough understanding of how planning decisions are made.

12The epistemological benefit of adapting the concept of atmospheres to questions of spatial perceptions – especially in urban studies – has been increasingly recognized (Bille Bierregaard, Sørensen, 2015; Buser, 2014, 2017; Edensor, 2012; Frers, 2007, 2013; Göbel, 2015; Hasse, 2002b, 2012; Kazig, 2007, 2012; Manz, 2015; Michels, 2015; Thibaud, 2015; Wylie, 2005). With the growing academic interest in atmospheres, a new diversity in theoretical concepts has developed. The originally phenomenological approach represented for example by Schmitz (2014), Böhme (1993, 1995), Hasse (2012) and Griffero (2014) has been complemented by a mainly non-representational approach pursued by for example Anderson (2009) and Buser (2014). Anderson (2009) defines affective atmospheres as “a class of experience that occur before and alongside the formation of subjectivity, across human and non-human materialities, and in-between subject/object distinctions” (ibid., p. 78). The term affective atmospheres, intrinsically linked to non-representational theory, has become an established idea within the academic, especially English-speaking discourse (Buser, 2014, Closs Stephens, 2016, Edensor, 2012, Michels, 2015). As Winz (2018) has shown, these two sub-discourses can be fruitfully combined. At the same time, the conceptual split of atmospheric discourses has prompted new signs of dissociation in a rather small academic community (Griffero, 2014, p. 35). The atmospheric concept pursued in this article relies on the phenomenological approach and does not discuss further the different nuances of the two sub-discourses sketched out above.

How to research atmospheres in planning practice

15On the other hand, language-based methods such as interviews allow for thorough access to the subjective, emotional perceptions of atmospheres. These methods generally address atmospheres in retrospect. Thereby, the immediate presence of the situation gets lost. Especially in non-representational theory this assumed limitation of interviews has been strongly criticized (Lorimer, 2005, p. 87; Thrift, Dewsbury, 2000, p. 424). This critique has been addressed by the methodological innovation of in-situ interviews. These have been introduced as go-along interviews (Burns, Gallant, Fenton et al., 2019), walking interviews (Evans, Jones, 2011) or commented city walks (Thibaud, 2013). For the research group of planning officials, these walk-along methods have proven to be unfeasible as will be shown below.

“The memories told by the interviewed persons represent moments that are meaningful for them precisely because they are linked emotionally to their [personal experience]. It is not in vain that they recall these moments. […] Looking at emotions helps to identify crucial moments in the data” (Richter, 2015, p. 146f.).

18From the range of methodological approaches to atmospheres, the empirical setting in this case study called for a focus on interview data for two reasons. First, the mere number of on-site experiences by the planning officials was very small. One of the planning officials I interviewed reflects this fact as follows:

• 14 My translation of the original text: Ich guck zwar von meinem Büro aus schon in den Park, das ist k (...)

“Well, I am having the view on the park from my office window, sure. But, I am not on-site a lot. I wished I had more time just to take a walk around […]. But there is just too much paperwork to do.”14

As part of their professional obligations, the planning professionals seldomly visit the former airfield relying mostly on two-dimensional maps and plans when thinking about the planning site. A second empirical constraint has been the limited access to the on-site visits of planning officials due to the exclusive character of these internal meetings. Therefore, the most feasible empirical approach was conducting interviews (with 11 planning officials) at their work place. By speaking at length about the planning process and the airfield in their daily surrounding of the planning office, I became part of their regular working atmosphere while simultaneously encouraging my interview partners to share ‘environmentally-aesthetic episodes’ of their atmospheric perception of the Tempelhof airfield, the site they were dealing with constantly.

How the ‘unobtrusive obtrusiveness’ of atmospheres informs planning decisions

“[W]e are already within and part of the world we study. It is not possible to sustain an objective and detached view of the world. Geographical understanding always begins from or is relative to a given location in space. The space which is being studied” (Rodaway, 1994, p. 8f.).

19This basic condition of any knowledge production can be impressively observed in the planning for the former Tempelhof airfield. Therefore, the first question to be asked and answered is where the planners in charge of this project are situated in space when dealing with the Tempelhof airfield. Their specific spatial detachment translates into a certain perspective on the airfield as Merleau-Ponty points out:

“All knowledge takes its place within the horizons opened up by perception” (1962, p. 241).

20The planners’ knowledge of the Tempelhof airfield has been mainly informed by their view on the field from within the airport building. This building with a length of more than one kilometer was constructed during the Nazi regime and is to this day one of the longest buildings in Europe. It is located in the northwestern edge of the airfield. Since the closing of the airport in 2008, it has also been the place of business of two companies – founded and owned by the city of Berlin – Grün Berlin and Tempelhof Projekt – whose task has been to maintain and develop the park (Grün Berlin), as well as to promote housing as well as commercial development of the site (Tempelhof Projekt). The municipal planners involved with the planning process have been in close and regular contact with the companies’ associates as this interview excerpt illustrates:

• 15 My translation of the original text: Sind Sie regelmäßig auf dem Feld? Ich bin insofern, wenn man s (...)

Interviewer: Are you regularly on-site?
Planner: Well, you may say, I am on the field, because the offices of Grün Berlin are located right there within the airport building. And we have meetings there quite regularly. Tempelhof Projekt’s offices are also located there, but Grün Berlin has this wonderful meeting room with a nice view over the field. Insofar, I very much enjoy having meetings there15.

21Looking from the northwestern edge onto the airfield produces a specific constellation of here and there, of closeness and distance for this planner as well as his colleagues. Whereas the adjacent neighborhood in the west (Tempelhof) necessarily becomes part of the planners’ regular routes in order to get to their workplace, the neighborhood of Neukölln, which borders on the airfield in the opposing eastern edge, remains alien to most planners.

• 16 My translation of the original text: Ein Pionierprojekt [ist] hinten an der Oderstraße. Das ist so (...)

Planner: Back there at the Oder street [at the eastern edge of the airfield] there is this outdoor project, where they show kids how to build huts from recycling material. These kids learn how to use a hammer, nails or a screwdriver16.

23This characteristic planners’ perspective, looking from west to east has become manifest in the subsequent planning decisions. The alienation of the eastern parts of the airfield first became evident in the park opening in May 2010. The festivities, organized by the Senate Department for Urban Development, included a public run, a speech of the Mayor of Berlin as well as an entertainment program with several booths. What is striking here is the location of these events. The mayor’s speech and the starting and finishing line of the run were located at the western main entrance. Other stages and booths were distributed in the northwestern part of the airfield alongside the airport building. In contrast, at the eastern main entrance, no stages or events were located (see illustration 1).

24The same spatial pattern can be identified in the landscape planning decisions that were made. In the same year of 2010, the Senate Department for Urban Development launched a planning competition for the future development of the park. Out of the 78 participating planning offices, the winning concept featured the same spatial focus on the northwestern part of the airfield as the opening event (see illustration 2). Whereas a significant number of the submitted concepts spatially focused on the east-west link of the disused runways, the Senate Department chose a design focusing on the airport building. The founder of the winning planning office explained his approach to the park design as follows:

• 18 My translation of the original text: Weil das Flughafengebäude das gesamte Flugfeld räumlich derart (...)

Because the airport building accommodates the whole airfield so harmoniously, the building’s footprint was our key element for the whole design. […] One must place a simple, figurative form to communicate the spatial experience and to clarify the idea of the footprint. This is what we tried to do calling them [the footways] orbits or circuits.18 (Hooftman, 2011, p. 27)

25The very idea of using the airport building as the starting point of the park development resonates with the atmospheric experiences of the planners making the design decision. Their positioned and “emotional being-in-the-world” (Griffero, 2014, p. 15) in the airport building catalyzes the choice of a park design that reinforces their atmospheric perceptions. The plan and its orientation towards the building just feels right to them. And once this plan is being chosen, the performative power of the plan further consolidates this spatial perspective.

Discussion: Why missing an atmospheric competence matters

26As much as the planners’ appreciation of the airfield is informed by their corporal and placed being-in-the-word, so has been the appreciation of the public park by its visitors since its opening in 2010. With more than one million visitors after only a few months, the park quickly became a highly appreciated public space.

27Strikingly, the dominant pattern of the public’s atmospheric perception of the field has differed fundamentally from that of the planning officials. The following excerpt from one of Berlin’s main local newspapers exemplarily demonstrates the field’s predominant atmospheric perception (Lange, 2015, n. pag.):

• 19 My translation of the original text: Kaum haben wir das ehemalige Flughafengelände betreten, setzt (...)

We have just entered the former airfield, and immediately, we can sense this magical gasp of relief. Our views fly over the vast terrain – it is just wonderful to have my view not being blocked every few meters by just another wall. With every step further into the grassland our everyday troubles become smaller and feel more distant than before19.

• 21 My translation of the original text: Das Gefühl einer allseitigen Ausdehnung haben wir u. a. dann, (...)

“We experience the feeling of an all-round expansion for example when we enter a high forest with a liberating gasp or an unexpectedly captivating hall. Automatically, we widen our chest and straighten up, just as if we tried to adapt to and to prove being worthy of the impressive surrounding” (Schmitz, 2014, p. 94)21.

With the field being void of a materialized third dimension the immaterial powers of wind, light, smell and sound are accentuated. Although atmospheric perceptions neither can be generalized nor stem from the environment itself, the wide physical setting of the airfield contributes to an intensive experience and the potential formation of “environmentally-aesthetic episodes” (again: Kazig, 2012, p. 95).

29Just as the positioning of the planning officials towards the field has shown to be group-specific, a main point of origin for the atmospheric perception of the group of park visitors can be located around the eastern park entrances. The park monitoring, which was conducted by Grün Berlin annually from 2010 to 2014, quantitatively supports this assumption. Almost half of all visitors enter the field via the eastern entrance (Grün Berlin GmbH/Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung und Umwelt Berlin, 2012, p. K6).

30This entrance is characterized by a privileged view over the runways resulting from a sloping ground (see illustration 3). Designated areas for urban gardening and public barbecues further contribute to the amenity of this segment of the park.

33Due to their lack of own embodied knowledge, the planning authorities did not show any consideration for the atmospheric force that was experienced onsite by park visitors. The study’s findings indicate that the atmospheric ignorance of planners intensified the planning conflict. Without arguing for a causality (Mackrodt, 2019, p. 58), it has been shown that the political opposition of planning authorities and local inhabitants resonates with their atmospheric opposition. Like in John Godfrey Saxe’s poem “The Blind Men and the Elephant”, in which blind men stand at different parts of an elephant touching it and cannot agree on what they are feeling, planners and park visitors have had a fundamentally different perception of the airfield.

34Ultimately, the case study has shown that all knowledge is embedded in a positioned, embodied and emotional sensing of the environment. Thereby, the paper contributes to planning research by suggesting a self-image for planners that is “intimately grounded in, and tainted by, their (essential) corporeality” (again: Longhurst, 1997, p. 494). It is a call for using the concept of self/body as the point of origin of all deliberation. Subjectivity and emotional accounts in planning practice are not a deficit of the subaltern part within a dichotomic power relation. They are a human precondition. By adopting this approach to planning practice, future conflicts in urban planning may be more adequately dealt with, potentially leading to better planning results.