$8 billion project to turn German airport into a green city

at the old airport tegel on the outskirts of berlin, germany , workers continue to discover bombs. The residue of the Prussian army and two world wars remains on the 495-hectare site, which became the city’s main airport in the 1970s, before falling into disrepair and closing in 2020.

When the airport was built, the land was used for runways and about three meters on each side were cleared, while other areas were left. Since May 2021, more than 10 tons of explosives and ammunition have been moved or detonated.

But unlike old ammunition, Tegel will not be dormant for long. Because its terminal, with its winding corridors – even its flight control tower – has already found a new purpose.

Thanks to a multi-decade investment of €8 billion ($7.9 billion), the site is well on its way to becoming one of Europe’s most ambitious smart cities.

The project, dubbed Berlin TXL was conceived as a “climate-friendly community” full of sustainable technologies, with integrated university campuses and innovation centers to propel these technologies into the future.

It is pitched as the next chapter of urban life who wants to write the chapters after that as well.

Commissioned by the State of Berlin and built on publicly owned land, developer Tegel Projekt is collaborating with public sector and private companies and investors on Schumacher Quartier, a pedestrian community of approximately 5,000 homes, and The Urban Tech Republic, an area for 5,000 students and up to 1,000 companies.

Nicolas Novotny, director of design and development at Tegel Projekt, told CNN that the project had been ongoing since 2012.

“We expect different challenges in the 21st century: lack of resources, climate change, energy crises, urbanization”, he explains. To meet them, the project sought solutions in the areas of energy, mobility, water, recycling, materials and communications.

“We look around the world,” says Novotny, finding inspiration in high-tech communities like the 22@ district in Barcelona, ​​Masdar City in Abu Dhabi and Sidewalk Toronto, a now stalled project supported by Google. But many of Tegel’s ideas are created in-house and formed in collaboration with private companies.

The site will produce and consume all of its own energy, says Novotny. Photovoltaic and geothermal fields will generate electricity. Tegel Projekt has also embarked on a joint venture with utility E.ON to develop an innovative heating and cooling system called LowEx.

Geothermal heat will combine with heat generated by industrial activities and the sewage network, along with biogas, to heat a 12-kilometer system of underground water pipes, which connect to heat exchangers and heat pumps to heat buildings. . On hot days, heat can be extracted from buildings to cool them and is stored in the piping network.

Inside the Schumacher Quartier

In the residential area, the houses will be made of locally sourced wood and will have green roofs. The project is also working with animal-assisted design experts from the Technical University of Munich and the University of Kassel to create the ideal environment for local species such as hawks and Eurasian swifts to establish themselves.

Schools, kindergartens, shops, sports venues, restaurants and bars will also be present, making the area more than just a housing development. “We don’t want it to be a sleepy city,” says Novotny.

The streets will be car-free and the project is encouraging the use of bicycles, e-bikes and scooters. This won’t always be practical, however, particularly for the elderly, and the team at Tegel Projekt is exploring using delivery robots for things like groceries.

As part of a “sponge city” concept, no rainwater will flow into sewers and instead will be retained, reused, soaked or evaporated as a form of natural air cooling.

The Urban Tech Republic

At nearly four times the size of the residential area, the innovation campus and industrial park dubbed the Urban Technological Republic has even greater ambitions.

BHT University (University of Applied Science and Technology Berlin) will take over the iconic hexagonal Terminal A of the former airport, Terminal B will become a startup hub with a conference center and showrooms, and Terminal D a hub with laboratories. Infrastructure such as a “living laboratory street” will be used to test new mobility technologies, says Novotny.

The concept of the website is to provide spaces for students to develop their ideas once they finish studying, offering spaces for profitable startups.

There will also be necessary nods to the past, says Novotny. As the terminals are protected buildings, the new streets and sidewalks nearby will be made from recycled concrete from the runways to meet building regulations. Competition is underway with companies to develop these recycled materials, he says.

A “gem” of Berlin

Dr. Johanna Sonnenburg, urban development consultant and associate at the Center for Metropolitan Studies at the Technical University of Berlin, notes that the project was delayed for years while Berlin Brandenburg Airport, Tegel’s replacement, was completed.

The Berlin TXL ideas are innovative, she says, “but they are not as advanced as they were when they were developed ten, eight, five years ago, because this area (of sustainable development) is very fast.”

The academic says that integrating Berlin’s TXL into the city will be another challenge. “Tegel is not very well connected,” she says, noting that the old airport does not have a rail link, and only the Quartier Schumacher, in the upper east corner, will have an underground connection.

However, Sonnenberg describes the project as a “jewel” in the crown of Berlin’s infrastructure projects.

Its influence can also extend beyond its borders. Ideas like building the Schumacher Quartier out of wood can inform the conversation about environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards in real estate, she explains. “I cross my fingers… that they make it, because I think it will be good for Berlin and for Germany,” says Sonnenburg.

A thousand abandoned airports

The Berlin TXL is not alone in the field of airport repurposing – it is not even the only example in Berlin. The area where Tempelhof Airport once stood became the largest park in the city in 2010.

In Quito, Ecuador, the Former Mariscal Sucre International Airport, known as one of the most treacherous airports in the world, turned into a park when it closed in 2013. Others were fully recovered by nature, such as the Galeville Military Airfield in New York, which was decommissioned in the 1990s and became the Shawangunk Grasslands National Wildlife Refuge.

But the potential for old airports to become new communities is coming to light. Brooks City Air Force Base in San Antonio closed in 2011 and is now a 1,300-acre mixed-use development that includes residential and commercial spaces, as well as a college campus (keeping the runway intact).

Meanwhile, a proposal was recently announced for a hyper-ambitious rebuild of Downsview Airport in north Toronto that would house more than 80,000 residents and include 1.1 square kilometers of office space. Like the Berlin TXL, sustainable technologies are everywhere.

With over 1,000 abandoned airports in the US alone, according to a 2019 research paper, there are many more locations that can be repurposed.

Work on the former Tegel Airport site has already begun and the project aims to be completed by the end of the 2030s.