The Politics of Memory in Berlin and Stockholm: A Policy Cycle Analysis of Debates on the Preservation, Demolition, and Reconstruction of Historic Buildings, 1945–2024

This article compares urban planning dealing with historic buildings in Berlin and Stockholm. It examines some cases of preservation, demolition and reconstruction of historic buildings. Different historic approaches in urban planning are subsumed under the slogans “architecture as wellbeing” and “the automotive city”. The policy cycle serves as a framework for a qualitative content analysis of debates on urban planning in both city councils. It results in the application of the slogan” architecture as wellbeing” could both result in demolition of historic buildings and their replacement with modern ones (the Hansa Quarter in Berlin and the demolitions in Nedre Norrmalm/Klara in Stockholm), and in restorations and reconstructions (from the 1970s on). The intention to build a modern city in the 1950s and 1960s could both result in a loosened city, as realized in the Hansa Quarter, in Vällingby and in most of the argumentation in Stockholm’s City Council in favour of hygienic housing and underground traffic, and in a densened automotive city, as it actually was implemented in Stockholm’s center. Today, while Berlin has opted for reconstruction in several cases, Stockholm is preserving the status quo achieved by the large-scale demolitions of the 1950s and 1960s.