The area surrounding Chausseestrasse, a former no man’s land where a wall once stood in Berlin, may not seem to invite immediate comparisons with the Red Hook section of Brooklyn. But architects and urban planners see parallels in the rapid growth of both of these formerly gritty neighborhoods, particularly in how the arts have spurred gentrification.
As New York and Berlin undergo architectural booms, such provocative juxtapositions can shed light on how the arts, immigration and community activism affect urban development. That’s the thinking behind the “Berlin-New York Dialogues: Building in Context,” an exhibition at the Center for Architecture on La Guardia Place in Greenwich Village that will travel to Berlin in March.
“These are two cities that are both on the verge of paradigm shifts in how growth happens,” said Lynnette Widder, a curator of the show and head of the architecture department at the Rhode Island School of Design.
The question in New York is whether the city can sustain its building boom, Ms. Widder added, while in Berlin the question is whether the city can continue to reverse years of shrinkage. “Germany is looking to America as a model of a much more free market,” she said.
