Exploring lived space of new build urban environment through photovoice interview: The case of Donau City in Vienna

Contemporary urban design practices and new build redevelopment projects are strongly influenced by economic, social and cultural practices, as well as by new forms of management. These different parameters play on the quality production of open spaces. Investigating the place study of Donau City, a mixed-use neighbourhood located in Vienna (Austria), we look at the relations between the new build environment and the daily users. We aim at analysing the intrinsic qualities of this specific urban environment by understanding how residents and users perceive and decode it (emic perspective) and how they make sense of everyday practiced and lived space. In order to do so, we followed a citizen science approach, using photovoice interview with thirteen residents and workers. Commenting the photographs they took on a one-day walk, the users revealed their daily life of their surrounding through design and planning elements associated with personal stories. We analyzed the corpus via inductive coding which helped us conceptualize the users’ lived space (Lefebvre, 2000), perceptions and interactions. Discussing the results, we contribute to a deeper understanding of the role forms, functions and scales play on open spaces’ quality in new build redevelopment projects by bringing in a bottom-up and sensitive approach. We show that social and spatial fragmentation could be mitigated by paying more attention to the emic perceptions and intangible values in spatial conception

Infant company protection in the German semi-synthetic fibre industry: market power, technology, the Nazi government and the post-1945 world market

In the 1920 and early 1930s, the German semi-synthetic fibre industry was dominated by a duopoly of two big players. The incumbent firms were not willing to expand their staple fibre capacities to the extent demanded by the new Nazi government, which prepared for autarky and war. Hence the government encouraged other private companies, especially spinning mills, to found eight regional staple fibre plants and protected them against the incumbents who were technologically superior. The Nazis’ infant company protection policy enabled the ­newcomers to become competitive both in economic and technological terms within a few years. After the war and without protection, these firms flourished on the world market. While the big players left the market, two of the newcomers founded in the second half of the 1930s are today the last European producers of staple fibre. We analyse in detail why companies founded for protectionist reasons by a non-benign government became successful firms competing on the world market

Le Troisième Reich dans l’historiographie allemande

Confrontée à un passé bien lourd, d'abord privée de sources, l'historiographie allemande s’est libérée peu à peu de la perception qu’avaient eue les contemporains des réalités du Troisième Reich. Comme toute gestion mémorielle des crises graves et des époques criminelles, l’histoire de la période 1933-1945 fut d’abord écrite en marge d’une opinion plus soucieuse de tourner la page que de se souvenir. En mettant spectaculairement en évidence la responsabilité des fonctionnaires, les grands procès des années 1960 (Eichmann, Einsatzgruppen, Auschwitz) alimentèrent la contestation par la jeune génération du passé de leurs pères. Des fictions, des polémiques relayées par les médias et des expositions spectaculaires contribuèrent à la prise de conscience. Tel fut par exemple le cas de la présentation au grand public des crimes de la Wehrmacht, qui détruisit le mythe d’une armée noble comparée à des SS responsables de tous les maux. Las d’une république en crise endémique l’électorat du Reich avait attendu des solutions miracles d’un homme providentiel. Mais selon une formule célèbre, les Allemands de 1932 n’ont voté ni pour la guerre, ni pour Auschwitz. Ils ont pourtant eu l’un et l’autre – et le nazisme en fit des instruments de son pouvoir. Quand ils en prirent conscience, il était trop tard. L’impossibilité d’agir autrement ne fut pas la seule raison de l’adhésion au régime jusque dans sa dimension criminelle