Noa Levin : Towards a Commons of Urban Microclimates: Thermal Communities in Berlin
19 juin | 11h00
Umwelt, Klima, Energie: Gesellschaften und ihre ökologischen Herausforderungen
The climate crisis is the most urgent planetary threat and presents specific challenges for urban planning and governance. European cities are particularly affected by rising temperatures, and there is a growing necessity to adapt them to warming summer conditions while retaining their capacity to withstand cold winters (IPCC 2022). This project argues that access to microclimatic commons and ‘thermal communities’ – a new concept that will be used to define informal communities constructed around thermal conditions – are important and overlooked elements driving both city-led responses and bottom-up initiatives that form part of climate adaptation. The project combines theoretical and ethnographic methods to examine the Heat Network (Netzwerk der Wärme), a municipal initiative for public heated spaceslaunched in Berlin during the energy crisis of winter 2022, as a case study. The Network, which included over 400 facilities, provided warm public spaces for residents who could not afford to heat their homes and led to the foundation of a civil-society crisis association (Krisenstab der Zivilgesellschaft Berlin) which aims to strengthen the city’s resilience to the climate crisis. While research on microclimates usually focuses exclusively on exteriors, this project highlights the continuity between indoor and outdoor spaces (Roesler 2022) and focuses on interior microclimates. Based on this case study, the project suggests that access to shared comfortable microclimates should be guaranteed to all, and especially to vulnerable residents, who are often most affected by the changing climate conditions (Saverino et all 2021, Hsu et all 2021, Li 2018). By considering microclimates as commons, departing from the idea of the urban commons as a collective practice and social relation rather than a resource (Harvey 2012, Federici 2019), the project demonstrates the crucial role of thermal communities in equitable urban climate adaptation processes.
Kommentar: Ignacio Farías, Professor für Stadtanthropologie (https://hu.berlin/stadtanthropologie)
Contact
Benjamin Beuerle
benjamin.beuerle ( at ) cmb.hu-berlin.de