Berlin Mix (Berliner Mischung) Revisited: An Inventory of Commercial Courtyards

The stylised Berlin block or Berliner Mischung (“Berlin Mix,” a form of mixed‐use development) can be defined as a multi‐story inner‐city housing (tenement) and working estate with one or more commercial courtyards from the early days of industrialisation. It features compact and dense rows of shops incorporated into the ground floor of the block facing the street, apartments on the floors above and in the side wings, and diverse commercial activities (retail, crafts, light manufacturing) with storage, production, and workshop facilities in the back and courtyards. Although largely abolished after the Charter of Athens, Berlin’s commercial courtyards often proved resistant and even experienced a renaissance after Germany’s reunification, evolving into a mixture of housing, artisans, industry, trade, and culture. The principal objective of this article is to investigate whether this mixture is still prevalent within commercial courtyards despite gentrification, a decline in manufacturing, and the tertiarisation of the economy, or precisely because of novel technologies, the resurgence of the productive city, and accompanying urban agendas. Methodologically, we investigate functional mixed‐use development using an indicator‐based sample of 35 former Berlin‐owned commercial courtyards (now run by a commercial company), divided into four types of courtyards: Integrated Berlin Mix Courtyards, Adjacent Courtyards, Autonomous Courtyards, and Extended Berlin Mix Courtyards. Our findings reveal several “New Berlin Mix” sub‐types, including an inner‐city Integrated Berlin Mix Courtyard, which loses diversity to Autonomous Courtyards on the outskirts. This raises questions about the limits to the productive city in Berlin and the role of planning amidst these trends.