Vol. 23 No. 2 (2025): Nature, Myth, Design
Nuovi miti / New Myths

L’idea di natura compensativa a Berlino. Il paradosso di equilibrare gli impatti sulla biodiversità: esperienze e progetti contemporanei

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  • Elena Antoniolli
Elena Antoniolli
Dipartimento di Architettura, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italia.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/rv-18041

Published 2026-05-08

Keywords

  • Brachen,
  • Abandoned Railways,
  • Replacement Habitats,
  • Biodiversity offset,
  • Wild

How to Cite

Antoniolli, E. (2026). L’idea di natura compensativa a Berlino. Il paradosso di equilibrare gli impatti sulla biodiversità: esperienze e progetti contemporanei. Ri-Vista. Research for Landscape Architecture, 23(2), 236–253. https://doi.org/10.36253/rv-18041

Copyright (c) 2025 Elena Antoniolli

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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Abstract

The paper explores the ‘myth of compensatory nature’, understood as a paradox intended to off-set the impacts of urban expansion by creating substitute habitats and allowing the exchange of compensation credits, trading biodiversity loss in one location for an equivalent ecological gain else-where. Through the analysis of a series of abandoned railway and former military sites, the paper ex-amines the origins and ambivalence of the concept of ‘compensatory nature’ in Berlin, tracing the transformation of vacant lands from marginal phenomena to legally recognised, environmentally protected biotopes. However, compensation, far from being neutral, constitutes an ideological con-struct that rhetorically reconciles development and conservation, dissolving the conflict between ur-ban growth and habitat destruction. The legal logic regulating compensatory areas risks reducing biodiversity to a replaceable value. Its foundation is a reductive vision of ‘nature’, in which so-called ‘wild species’ are treated as manageable and movable elements. Recent cases of reptile and am-phibian resettlement illustrate how the pitfalls of conceiving ‘nature’ as interchangeable and repli-cable contribute to the depoliticisation of biodiversity loss.

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