The Senate Department for Urban Development Berlin is the competent authority for the portfolio of construction, housing, environment and transport of the city of Berlin.

By virtue of the federal constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany, the city of Berlin is a Land, and thus the Senate Department for Urban Development has the status of a Ministry of a Land.

Statistical data of Berlin: 3.45 m. inhabitants, 1.87 m. flats, and a surface area of 889 km².

The Senate Department for Urban Development (the section IV C for urban renewal of the department for housing in cooperation with the section GRI with its field of European affairs) is acting as the Lead partner of the EU BEEN project.

The section for urban renewal, inter alia, is in charge of programmes with public support for maintaining and modernising Berlin's housing stock. Subsequent to German reunification, various programmes with public support for refurbishing and improving the land and surroundings of housing estates consisting of "buildings made of prefab slabs" have been implemented within its competence which are situated in the eastern part of Berlin (former GDR). Between 1950 and 1990, a total of 273,000 flats were built of prefab concrete slabs in the eastern part of Berlin. Since half of the population of the eastern part of Berlin lives in these flats, this building stock is of major significance for Berlin.

Since 1990, therefore, refurbishments in favour of said building stock were as follows:

• Aggregate investments for refurbishment: approx. 5.5 billion Euro;
• 60 % of these flats underwent full refurbishment, 15 % of them were partially refurbished;
• Average investments for refurbishment amounted to 20,000 Euro per flat (margin per year of construction, type of construction and specific requirement of refurbishment: between 5,000 and 50,000 Euro per flat);
• On average, 1,000 Euro per flat were invested to improve the land and surroundings of those residential buildings.