Berlin and London: two cultures and two kinds of urban squares

Abstract

The contrasting planning cultures that gave rise to urban squares in London and Berlin in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries are explored. The differences reflect the different roles played by king or state, the different types of interaction between landowners, builders and their clientele, the different origins of financial resources invested in urban development, the different forms of land tenure and ways of disposing of land for urbanization, and the significance of different ‘conceptual paradigms’ concerning urban open space. In London the concept of rus in urbe entailed primarily the upgrading of a marketable urban product (plots and dwellings), whereas in Berlin the conventional notion of public space related to a ‘representative public stage’ provided by a monarch and serving primarily his own glorification.