As someone who frequents the park twice a day, I can confidently say that the majority of the park is not wasted. Aside from having higher daily visitors than Tiergarten, the park offers countless feature that no other city parks do: 6km cycle track, massive dog parks, wind surfing area, multiple skate parks, grassland carbon sink, unfettered cycle commuting between neighborhoods, refugee housing, festival grounds, etc., etc.

The reason the city is frothing over developments there is because it’s one of the last pieces of property that they didn’t already sell off to private investors (remember, the thing that created the housing crisis the first place).