A home is not an ordinary commodity. It is the place from which people work, learn, maintain relationships, and participate in public life.
When growth displaces people
Berlin is growing economically, particularly in the service and technology sectors. At the same time, housing costs are rising. Ahead of the Berlin election, Reuters reports that asking rents have nearly doubled since 2014 and that roughly 211,000 additional homes will be needed by 2040.
The problem cannot be solved with a single construction project or a single rental instrument. What is needed is faster construction, capable administration, social housing, reliable rules for existing housing stock, and infrastructure that genuinely makes new neighborhoods livable.
Public spaces are not leftover areas
At Tempelhofer Feld, two legitimate needs collide: housing and the preservation of freely accessible green space. Framing the conflict merely as "to build or not to build" oversimplifies it. Sound urban policy must demonstrate which areas are developed for what purpose, who can afford the housing, and which social and ecological functions are preserved.
A city's social balance sheet
A successful city attracts talent and business. A fair city also ensures that care workers, cultural workers, families, students, and older adults are not pushed to the margins. Affordable housing is therefore infrastructure—just as fundamental as transit, education, and digital networks.
Why the market alone is not enough
Housing does not emerge under ordinary market conditions. Land is scarce, permits take time, construction costs fluctuate, and new supply requires years to materialize. Yet households cannot defer their needs indefinitely. Those with work, education, or family ties in a place have limited capacity to respond to rising prices.
More construction remains necessary. What matters, however, is what gets built and who can afford it. High-end housing increases overall supply, but does not directly reach people with low and middle incomes. Social covenants, housing cooperatives, municipal land policy, and reliable tenant protections therefore remain part of the policy mix.
Regulation also has side effects
Rent caps can protect households in existing leases. Poorly designed, they can dampen investment, encourage bypass schemes, or reduce supply. Conversely, a policy geared entirely toward investors does not automatically create affordable neighborhoods. Sound regulation must monitor direct impacts and side effects simultaneously.
Separating housing policy from transit policy is also problematic. Affordable housing on the outskirts offers little help if commutes to work, school, and healthcare are long and costly. Urban development must plan land use, mobility, energy, education, and social infrastructure as a coherent whole.
Who bears the costs?
Densification creates housing, but can place demands on green spaces, neighborhoods, and existing infrastructure. Inaction protects the status quo, yet shifts the burden onto housing seekers and future generations. Fair decision-making makes this distribution explicit: who benefits, who loses, and what compensating measures are planned?
A city's social balance sheet therefore includes more than construction figures. Affordability, accessibility, energy efficiency, location, and neighborhood stability are equally central. When care workers, cultural workers, families, and everyday workers are displaced, the housing shortage becomes an economic and democratic issue.
Property, the public good, and trust
Ownership creates responsibility and enables investment. At the same time, land policy determines opportunities for many people who do not own property themselves. When publicly granted building rights translate solely into private value appreciation, distrust grows. Municipalities can counter this by granting long-term land leases, prioritizing conceptual quality, and using part of the newly generated value for infrastructure.
Trust requires reliable processes. Residents must be able to see early on what is being built, what disruptions will arise, and what public benefit is intended. Participation should not mean preventing all change. It should enable better solutions and clearly explain why not every preference can be accommodated.
What a viable strategy requires
First, it needs realistic targets and annual transparency on permits, completions, and affordability. Second, planning and building processes must become simpler without compromising safety and environmental standards. Third, existing housing must be used more effectively, through conversion, infill development, or the activation of vacant space. Fourth, transit and social infrastructure must be built into new neighborhoods from the start.
The housing question cannot be resolved with a flagship project. It demands years of implementation, reliable financing, and the willingness to adjust measures based on their outcomes. A just city is neither a museum nor a purely commercial investment. It remains capable of change without making its residents interchangeable.
Sources
Reuters: Berlin’s acute housing shortage and soaring rents dominate city election
Connecting housing, climate, and social mobility
Housing policy is simultaneously transit policy, climate policy, and education policy. Those forced to live far outside to find affordable housing often pay through longer commutes, lost time, and higher mobility costs. Families cannot freely choose schools when a move pulls them from familiar support networks. Older adults lose independence when accessible housing is lacking. For this reason, citing the number of new units alone is insufficient. Location, affordability, energy consumption, accessibility, and whether residents can remain long-term are what truly matter. In Tehran, Hamburg, and other metropolitan areas, legal frameworks and markets differ considerably; what they share is that land scarcity exposes political distribution choices.
Ecological retrofitting of the building stock is essential, but it can intensify social tensions. Renovations reduce energy demand and improve comfort, yet financing must not displace low-income households. Sound programs pair technical standards with tenant protections, transparent funding, and advisory services. Vacancies, speculative landholding, and short-term rental models also belong in the analysis. A functioning market requires rules against misuse alongside stable conditions for long-term investment. Blanket blame directed at private owners or the state prevents a precise debate about which instrument works in which context.
For Iranian cities, housing is further linked to earthquake safety, water scarcity, and informal settlement growth. Densification can make infrastructure use more efficient, but it requires green spaces, safe public areas, and resilient networks. Urban planning should involve affected communities early, rather than presenting finished projects. Data on rents, vacancies, building permits, and displacement must be public and comparable. Treating housing as social infrastructure ultimately means recognizing that a home is not merely an asset, but the foundation for health, work, education, and social participation. Policy choices should be measured against these functions.
What follows from this
The central conclusion of this piece is that housing must be simultaneously affordable, secure, ecologically sustainable, and connected to daily life. No single blueprint follows from this. What is required instead is a sequence of diagnosis, public deliberation, clear accountability, and subsequent evaluation. Policy and civic measures should state in advance which problem they address, which rights are affected, and what unintended consequences are possible. After implementation, results must be published alongside a willingness to make corrections. Without this cycle, even well-reasoned goals become assertions that escape scrutiny.
For MIYAN, this also represents an editorial commitment. The article "Who Owns the City? Housing as Social Infrastructure" offers a reasoned perspective, not an ultimate truth. New data, better sources, and grounded counterarguments must be able to prompt updates. References to Iran are addressed specifically, without reducing a diverse country to government, crisis, or diaspora. Where information is missing, that boundary remains visible. That is precisely the role of an independent publishing platform: not to produce quick certainty, but to enable readers to assess arguments, interests, and evidence for themselves.
