The German amounts to “steadification”, though “perennialization” is more fitting. Within a context of rising land and real estate values it refers to digging in your heels, as opposed to the FIFO (Fly in Fly Out) usage of one empty warehouse, one rent gap, one fallow land after another. Sticking around allows you to reap important long-term fruit: both a local familiarity over time, and accumulated surplus otherwise reserved for owner-investors. The best kind of Verstetigung requires a sense of collective entrenchment and pride of place that is more Rojava and less CSU, but also an awareness of financial instruments. In Germany, “Erbbaurecht” leaseholds, “Mietersyndikat” foundations, “Bodenfonds” land banks are among the tools that are out there.
Tirdad Zolghadr is a curator and writer. He teaches at the Graduiertenschule UdK Berlin. Writing includes fiction as well as curatorial research, e.g. REALTY: Beyond the Traditional Blueprints of Art & Gentrification (Hatje Cantz 2022). Recent curating includes an associate curatorship at KW Institute of Contemporary Art (2017-20).