‘Our Görli remains open’: Racialization, enclosures and resistance at an urban park in Berlin

This study explores the perspectives of community activists and park users on the racialization and proposed enclosure of an urban park, Görlitzer Park in Berlin, by the Berlin Senate, and highlights their resistance to and actions against this measure. Scholars have focused on the conditions for convivial encounters and expressions of diversity in parks, park-making and the design and development of parks, relationships between local governance and administration, cultural policy formation and everyday participation, conditions fostering cultural sustainability in parks and urban parks' contribution to local urban thermal environments, procedural injustices in parks such as inequitable access and quality, gentrification, the criminalization of Black and racialized communities, disproportionate frequent white visits to state and national parks and racial segregation and discrimination in parks. However, the nexus between the racial profiling of migrants, state power and resistance in public parks has been explored less. This study considers some of these factors which become central in the understanding of an urban park in Berlin. The study is based on 25 semi-structured interviews with 20 individuals aged 27 to 53 from two action groups and park users, as well as participation in demonstrations and workshops related to the resistance to the park's enclosure.