I used to live a couple of blocks away from the Umspannwerk. The area is almost entirely built up with 5-6 story buildings. Due to the latitude of Berlin, bui

I used to live a couple of blocks away from the Umspannwerk. The area is almost entirely built up with 5-6 story buildings. Due to the latitude of Berlin, building higher would mean lower floors don't get any natural light in the winter. This is not something that people in California see as a concern, but it's extremely important for people's mental health that live in northern latitudes. In the eastern parts of Berlin that have high rise housing from the DDR time, the buildings are spread out so that the buildings don't make shadows on each other that last all day. Then you end up with these islands of people separated by big open areas. The density isn't much higher overall, and you don't get the cozy feeling of Kreuzberg where it's continuously built up, and there is street level retail on the ground floors. As it is, Kreuzberg, the district we're talking about, the population density is 15,000/sq km, about half the density of Manhattan, and about twice the density of San Francisco as a whole.