Overview
- Stefan Evers, the CDU’s new lead candidate, said on Wednesday that the Sept. 20 Abgeordnetenhaus election should decide whether Randbebauung at Tempelhofer Feld goes ahead and that he will not seek a new referendum or citizen poll.
- Evers pledged to press for a change to the law that enshrined the 2014 Volksentscheid if the CDU wins, arguing edge development could create room for about 50,000 homes without touching the park’s central green area.
- The Greens, The Left and organized citizen groups such as "100 % Tempelhofer Feld" repeat their opposition and say the 2014 vote and the law that followed bar any building, setting up an intense post‑election legal and political fight.
- Evers’s stance abandons earlier governing‑coalition plans for a top‑down Volksbefragung and raises fresh questions about how the Senate and the Abgeordnetenhaus could lawfully alter a citizen‑passed law.
- Tempelhofer Feld is one of Europe’s largest inner‑city open spaces with a protected core and a larger former‑airport footprint, and the clash pits Berlin’s acute housing shortage against longstanding civic protections for urban green space.