UNEVEN · Hotter for Some · Berlin
Where the city barely cools down on summer nights, who lives there and how many older people are affected. Each column is one of Berlin's 542 planning areas, shown on the 2024 aerial image. Drag to pan; right-click or use two fingers to tilt and rotate.
What the map shows
planning areas are in the top quarter for both night temperature and old-age poverty. That is twice as many as chance would predict.
people aged 65 and over live in these 68 areas, including about 15,400 over 80. An estimated 11,000 of them receive basic old-age income support (Grundsicherung im Alter).
people aged 65 and over live where nights are among the hottest quarter of the city. That is one in five older people in Berlin.
is the climate model's 4 a.m. temperature in Huttenkiez (Moabit), the warmest planning area. In Nikolassee it is 17.3 °C.
Across all planning areas, hot nights and old-age poverty are clearly linked (rank correlation ρ = 0.66). That does not mean one causes the other. Both follow the same pattern of the city, and only once that pattern is taken out can you see what is left.
Dense, sealed neighbourhoods release at night the heat they store during the day. At the same time, old-age income support is especially common in Moabit, Wedding, Kreuzberg and Neukölln. Controlling for distance to the centre lowers ρ from 0.66 to 0.41.
Within 5 km of the centre the link disappears (ρ = −0.05). Nights here are warm no matter how well-off a neighbourhood is.
Further out the link stays strong (ρ ≈ 0.6). The likely explanation: large housing estates and dense tenement blocks with low pensions sit next to leafy areas of villas and detached houses. The double-burden areas are noticeably less green on average (NDVI 0.37 versus 0.49). People with small pensions tend to live where it is dense and has little green.
In the hottest neighbourhoods the share of people over 65 is actually lower (12 % versus 20 % in the rest of the city, ρ = −0.62). But the older people who do live there are especially often poor. That is why the absolute numbers matter: set the column height to “People 65+”.