ABSTRACT

The existence of political systems in Germany and the city of Berlin made any comprehensive city planning unlikely, although a number of plans for Berlin as a whole were drawn up by planning groups and institutions in both West and East Berlin. If one disregards the foreign political and economic dependencies of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), which are certainly considerable, then three key aspects of the overall planning system within which the house construction industry operates. Three keys are central economic planning, state housing management, and de facto state control of all real estate. In the mid-fifties, the GDR government initiated the industrialisation of building production, for economic and ideological reasons. The evolution of housing policy in the GDR in the post-war has been orientated towards the reconstruction of war damaged cities and an attempt to meet the acute national housing deficit by the construction of increasingly large estates, characteristically located in the city peripheries.