Gentrification is a complicated subject for Andreas Murkudis. For a start there are many people in Berlin who hold him at least partly responsible for what happened to Münzstrasse in Mitte. It was in a back garden here, below his apartment, that Murkudis opened his first shop in 2003. Back then Münzstrasse was all residences, small cafés and old-time bars. “It was a real neighbourhood,” he says. A second space soon followed, as did his more prominently located Acne Studios and Schiesser stores. By 2007 he ran six shops in the area, all specialising in high-end fashion, furniture or accessories.

Today Münzstrasse is lined by the flagships of big international brands, paying exorbitant rents for exposure to the throngs of people who hurry along the pavements each day. Murkudis still lives on Münzstrasse and looks back fondly on days gone by.

“Back then we had the best times in Mitte, especially when we were strolling around on Saturdays,” he says. “Today it’s a different kind of people: tourists who want doughnuts.”

His eponymous emporium soon became one of Berlin’s best-known shops, attracting other businesses. “I was part of the euphoria,” he says. Yet Murkudis was eventually priced out of the neighbourhood he helped create. In 2011 he moved his business to an ample space in the former Der Tagesspiegel newspaper offices in Potsdamer Strasse, a nondescript area that seemed a little too close to the red-light strip of Kurfürstenstrasse and a little too far from the action to feel like it could ever be home to anything special. Yet today the northern part of Potse (as Berliners like to call it) is crammed with art galleries, modern restaurants and design shops, many actively brought here by Murkudis, others drawn by his nose for a new thing.

“I want to have the chance to participate in the decision of who moves here,” he says of the area, which is also where he attended school as a teenager. “I want to have people who inspire me.” So he recently rented a gallery space on the street that he’ll use to show design exhibitions. When he heard that a nearby space was available he spoke to the owner and arranged for porcelain artist Stefanie Hering to move in. “She supports crafts, as do I, and it’s better than a Nike shop.”

He also sorted a rental contract for his friend Oliver Mahne, who runs Oliv Café on Münzstrasse in Mitte, to open a second café on Potsdamer Strasse. And he brought in art galleries. “I’m here thanks to Andreas,” says Thomas Fischer, who opened his gallery in an old building opposite the shop in 2011. “We walked around here when it was all empty. I took a space and suddenly there was an avalanche.”

Murkudis explains his approach: “I ask people who are near and dear to me and I do it with caution. I bring the good guys so there’s no room for the bad guys.” So far, he says, the change has benefitted old tenants and businesses by livening up the area and bringing in new trade. And a walkabout shows that Murkudis is both well known and well liked in his ’hood.

Yet for him it’s important to ensure some parts stay unchanged. He would never open a shop in Kreuzberg, he says, and he cherishes diversity. He also believes the reshaping of Potsdamer Strasse should be limited to the northern parts, up to Pohlstrasse. For his hand in gentrification, he’s unrepentant: “Cities change. There is no standstill. What does it mean to be responsible for change? That you shouldn’t do what you love? Who gets to decide how a city changes?” In Berlin, Andreas Murkudis does.