Paradigm Shifts in Social Housing After Welfare‐State Transformation : Learning from the German Experience

Welfare‐state transformation and entrepreneurial urban politics in Western welfare states since the late 1970s have yielded converging trends in the transformation of the dominant Fordist paradigm of social housing in terms of its societal function and institutional and spatial form. In this article I draw from a comparative case study on two cities in Germany to show that the resulting new paradigm is simultaneously shaped by the idiosyncrasies of the country's national housing regime and local housing policies. While German governments have successively limited the societal function of social housing as a legitimate instrument only for addressing exceptional housing crises, local policies on providing and organizing social housing within this framework display significant variation. However, planning and design principles dominating the spatial forms of social housing have been congruent. They may be interpreted as both an expression of the marginalization of social housing within the restructured welfare housing regime and a tool of its implementation according to the logics of entrepreneurial urban politics

Ererbte Transformation: Kommentar zu Matthias Bernt und Andrej Holm „Die Ostdeutschlandforschung muss das Wohnen in den Blick nehmen“

Matthias Bernt und Andrej Holm weisen zu Recht darauf hin, dass es einer Forschung zu ostdeutschen Städten als konzeptionell eigenständigem Feld bedarf, die die spezifische Verräumlichung des tiefgreifenden gesellschaftlichen Transformationsprozesses nach 1990 ins Zentrum stellt. Dabei betrachten sie insbesondere das Feld des Wohnens als produktiv, um Kenntnis über die Struktur und Wirkung dieses Prozesses zu erlangen. Allerdings bleiben sie vage dabei, wie eine solche spezifisch auf Ostdeutschland gerichtete Wohnungsforschung zu konzipieren wäre und in welcher Weise die Besonderheiten und Parallelitäten ostdeutscher Entwicklungen zu den Transformationen von Wohnungs- und Stadtentwicklungspolitik in Westdeutschland, aber auch international, in Bezug zu setzen wären.Matthias Bernt and Andrej Holm rightly point out that research on cities in East Germany should be established conceptually within urban research and focus on the spatialization of the profound societal transformation that took place in East Germany after 1990. To do so, research on housing seems to be especially productive to understand how these transformations were reflected in the production and restructuring of urban space and how it affected individual lives as well. However, Bernt/Holm only roughly sketch their concept of a Housing research for East Germany leaving open a number of conceptual and methodological questions. Also it remains to be discussed in what way research might relate idiosyncrasies but also parallels of the transformation of housing and urban development in East Germany to national and international trends

[Book Review:] Structures of Memory: Understanding Urban Change in Berlin and Beyond, by Jennifer A. Jordan. California: Stanford University Press, 2006 and The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place, by Karen E. Till. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.The memorial landscape which emerged in Berlin after 1989 has been widely observed by the national and international public as well as by scholars from various disciplines. The reason is obvious: After 1990, German society had to develop a new identity, that of the “Berliner Republik.” Because memorials have an important impact on the so-called Funktionsgedächtnis (Assmann 1999; i.e., the part of collective memory that shapes the identity of a society), the urban environment of Berlin was both a motor and a product of the formation of this new identity. In their respective books, Jennifer Jordan and Karen Till examine the preconditions and forces that have produced the urban memorial landscape in Berlin

Exceptional segment: Form and function of social housing after welfare state transformation

Going along with the end of the “golden age” of the welfare state, the fordist paradigm of social housing has been considerably transformed. From the 1980s onwards, a new paradigm of social housing has been shaped in Germany in terms of provision, institutional organization and design. This transformation can be interpreted as a result of the interplay between the transformation of national welfare state and housing policies, the implementation of entrepreneurial urban policies and a shift in architectural and urban development models. Using an integrated approach to understand form and function of social housing, the paper characterizes the new paradigm established and nevertheless interprets it within the continuity of the specific German welfare resp. housing regime, the “German social housing market economy”.Going along with the end of the “golden age” of the welfare state, the fordist paradigm of social housing has been considerably transformed. From the 1980s onwards, a new paradigm of social housing has been shaped in Germany in terms of provision, institutional organization and design. This transformation can be interpreted as a result of the interplay between the transformation of national welfare state and housing policies, the implementation of entrepreneurial urban policies and a shift in architectural and urban development models. Using an integrated approach to understand form and function of social housing, the paper characterizes the new paradigm established and nevertheless interprets it within the continuity of the specific German welfare resp. housing regime, the “German social housing market economy”

Radix-Blätter

Harders L, Schönig B. Radix-Blätter. Berliner Hefte zur Geschichte des literarischen Lebens. 2001;(4):216-223

Ererbte Transformation. Kommentar zu Matthias Bernt und Andrej Holm „Die Ostdeutschlandforschung muss das Wohnen in den Blick nehmen“

Matthias Bernt und Andrej Holm weisen zu Recht darauf hin, dass es einer Forschung zu ostdeutschen Städten als konzeptionell eigenständigem Feld bedarf, die die spezifische Verräumlichung des tiefgreifenden gesellschaftlichen Transformationsprozesses nach 1990 ins Zentrum stellt. Dabei betrachten sie insbesondere das Feld des Wohnens als produktiv, um Kenntnis über die Struktur und Wirkung dieses Prozesses zu erlangen. Allerdings bleiben sie vage dabei, wie eine solche spezifisch auf Ostdeutschland gerichtete Wohnungsforschung zu konzipieren wäre und in welcher Weise die Besonderheiten und Parallelitäten ostdeutscher Entwicklungen zu den Transformationen von Wohnungs- und Stadtentwicklungspolitik in Westdeutschland, aber auch international, in Bezug zu setzen wären

Die Erzbischöfliche Pater-Rupert-Mayer-Volksschule Pullach auf dem Weg zum voll gebundenen rhythmisierten Ganztag : christliches Profil und ganzheitliche Bildung

Der Text bezieht sich auf die aktuelle Entwicklung der Erzbischöflichen Pater-Rupert-Mayer Volksschule Pullach (PRMVS). Im ersten Teil wird über die äußeren Rahmenbedingungen der Schule Auskunft gegeben (1). Anschließend wird die Umstellung der Schule auf den voll gebundenen rhythmisierten Ganztag vor dem Hintergrund des christlichen Erziehungs- und Bildungsauftrags erörtert (2). Die Ziele, Prinzipien und Verfahren der wissenschaftlichen Begleitung werden vorgestellt (3) und der Text schließt mit einem knappen Ausblick (4)