Insurgent participation: consensus and contestation in planning the redevelopment of Berlin-Tempelhof airport

Despite decades of debate, participatory planning continues to be contested. More recently, research has revealed a relationship between participation and neoliberalism, in which participation works as a post-political tool—a means to depoliticize planning and legitimize neoliberal policy-making. This article argues that such accounts lack attention to the opportunities for opposing neoliberal planning that may be inherent within participatory processes. In order to further an understanding of the workings of resistance within planning, it suggests the notion of insurgent participation—a mode of contentious intervention in participatory approaches. It develops this concept through the analysis of various participatory approaches launched to regenerate the former airport Berlin-Tempelhof. A critical reading of participation in Tempelhof reveals a contradictory process. Although participatory methods worked to mobilize support for predefined agendas, their insurgent participation also allowed participants to criticize and shape the possibilities of engagement, challenge planning approaches and envision alternatives to capitalist imperatives

Negotiating formalities: Everyday rule in Berlin's allotment gardens

Negotiating Formalities explores informal dwelling practices and their regulation in Berlin. In the literature on urban informality these themes are predominantly researched in Southern cities and have long been related to a lack of state capacity. As this assumption fails to account for the ways in which legal orders, administrative hierarchies or bureaucratic practices produce, enable or constrain informality, it impedes an analysis of the phenomenon in regulatory regimes that are presumed to rely on functioning bureaucracies. This thesis links literature on informality to an ethnographic understanding of states, to address this gap and think more precisely about the ways in which institutional and civil actors shape and contest order in everyday governance. This is what I call negotiating formalities. This conception is based on an empirical study of the governance of informal dwelling prac- tices in Berlin's allotment gardens. Although a federal law prohibits the inhabiting of these sites, gardeners take up residence within allotment compounds, particularly over the summer. My analysis of this case challenges three assumptions about urban governance. First, Negotiating Formalities argues that order is carefully arranged between institutional and civil actors, rather than implemented from the top down. Second, it contends that formality cannot only be understood by reference to institutional imperatives, but needs to be related to the processes through which these actors shape, interpret or ignore regulations by enacting them on site. Third, this thesis asserts that the boundaries of transgressions are not only defined through written statutes or the rules of the state, but depend on the everyday engagement of all concerned. In sum, these contentions suggest that formality is the contested product of enduring negotiations. This conclusion not only challenges imaginaries of the state and informality but also bridges presumed divides between the functioning of states in the global North and South

Refracting Eurocentrism, operationalizing complicity: The Swiss Sonderfall as a vantage point

Critiques of the parochialism of urban theory have resulted in appeals for more global urban studies. Yet, the fruitful responses to postcolonial work frequently remain sequestered, reflecting the persistence of Eurocentrism as a burden shouldered largely by the so-called “South”. This paper aims to shift the work implied by critiques of Eurocentrism – from the labor of translation to the chore of representation – to those whom Eurocentrism serves. We argue that recognizing the ways academics are always already complicit in Eurocentrism by working within the academy is an important starting point. Can the functions of complicity also serve to redistribute the burdens of redress and allow cultivating new possibilities to respond? To understand the functions of complicity, we take inspiration from the historical position of Switzerland on “the margins” of colonialism. Scrutinizing the history of a formally non-colonizing country reveals multiple forms of taking part in, benefitting from and assisting in colonial efforts. Applying these learnings to institutional and epistemological possibilities of working with complicity in the academy, we interrogate the potentials and limits of these functions to address the reproduction of Eurocentrism

Responsibility for housing: Property, displacement, and the rental market

As property speculation has become an integral element of the rental market, debates on housing dispossession and displacement regularly place normative claims on responsibilities for the provisioning, maintanance, and safeguarding of adequate and affordable housing. Yet, while offering important perspectives, these discussions lack a theoretically grounded account of responsibility that would allow for an analysis and critique of how modes of responsibility and irresponsibility are practised and an understanding of how these practises are mediated by liberal property regimes (Singer, 2000, Blomley, 2013). Focusing on the evacuation of the mass rental housing complex Hannibal II in the municipality of Dortmund (Germany) and the eviction of its 753 tenants in the context of decades-long processes of speculative disinvestment and property neglect, this paper explores the lived relations of (ir)responsibility that shape processes of housing. How is responsibility assigned, abdicated, and enacted by all concerned parties? Based on a discussion of the building’s decay, the tenants’ evacuation and later redevelopment attempts, we argue that the narrow understandings of responsibility for housing inscribed in liberal property regimes obscure responsibility relations that work alongside, disguise, or stabilize the vulnerabilities and harms of housing regimes. In conclusion we thus suggest that reading property relationally – as a string of social agreements that mediate the relation between people (Cooper, 2007, Blomley, 2020) – requires rethinking responsibilities for rental housing property and propose a broader conception of responsibility that is feminist, political, and encompassing

Urban visions of global climate finance: Dispossessive mechanisms of futuring in the making of Groy

Of late, the trope of the green, smart and climate-resilient city has dominated imaginations of urban futures across the globe. Less visible perhaps, but arguably of equal social impact, global climate finance (GCF) agendas have asserted themselves as the only imaginable pathway to do and undo such futures in effective ways. Based on a document analysis of recent GCF reports, this contribution unpicks the mechanisms of ‘futuring’ advanced in this process of agenda setting, and sketches its inherent imaginaries of a model future city. We borrow from John Berger’s city of Troy and call this city Groy. Groy is a metaphor for green growth; it is the World Bank’s fantasy project: a techno-capitalist vision of prosperity, the bank’s donor darling and its best practice case. In rendering this fantasy into a fictional city, we explore how future visions of urban GCF initiatives shape cities today to allow for a sustained critique of that future and, in consequence, a rethinking of present times. Our analysis builds on the work of futurists Ben Anderson and John Urry, and an emerging debate that seeks to postcolonialize climate finance, to demand thinking about definancialization beyond regulation as a sociopolitical process of opening up the future for other imaginations

Wo steht die kritische Stadtgeographie? Rezension zu Bernd Belina / Matthias Naumann / Anke Strüver (Hg.) (2018): Handbuch Kritische Stadtgeographie. Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot.

Das Handbuch Kritische Stadtgeographie ist Leser*innen dieser Zeitschrift schon aus einer 2015 erschienen Rezension der Erstauflage dieser Veröffentlichung bekannt (Beurskens, 2015). Es spricht für die wachsende Bedeutung der kritischen Stadtgeographie, dass auch die 2016 erschienene zweite Auflage des Buches bald vergriffen war und 2018 eine dritte, korrigierte und stark erweiterte Auflage neu herausgekommen ist. Mit dem Buch reagieren die Herausgeber*innen, Bernd Belina, Matthias Naumann und Anke Strüver, auf ihre Beobachtung einer Leerstelle in der Geographielehre im Bereich dieses Themenfeldes. […] Was ist neu an der dritten Auflage? Das aktualisierte Handbuch wurde um 23 Kapitel auf 66 erweitert und deckt damit ein breiteres Themenspektrum ab. Einzelne Beiträge wurden überarbeitet. Ein zweiseitiges Vorwort skizziert die vorgenommenen thematischen Ergänzungen und begründet diese durch die Weiterentwicklung der Disziplin (S. 11). Eine wünschenswerte Veröffentlichung als E-Book steht auch in der Neuauflage weiterhin aus

Wo steht die kritische Stadtgeographie?

Das Handbuch Kritische Stadtgeographie ist Leser*innen dieser Zeitschrift schon aus einer 2015 erschienen Rezension der Erstauflage dieser Veröffentlichung bekannt (Beurskens, 2015). Es spricht für die wachsende Bedeutung der kritischen Stadtgeographie, dass auch die 2016 erschienene zweite Auflage des Buches bald vergriffen war und 2018 eine dritte, korrigierte und stark erweiterte Auflage neu herausgekommen ist. Mit dem Buch reagieren die Herausgeber*innen, Bernd Belina, Matthias Naumann und Anke Strüver, auf ihre Beobachtung einer Leerstelle in der Geographielehre im Bereich dieses Themenfeldes. […] Was ist neu an der dritten Auflage? Das aktualisierte Handbuch wurde um 23 Kapitel auf 66 erweitert und deckt damit ein breiteres Themenspektrum ab. Einzelne Beiträge wurden überarbeitet. Ein zweiseitiges Vorwort skizziert die vorgenommenen thematischen Ergänzungen und begründet diese durch die Weiterentwicklung der Disziplin (S. 11). Eine wünschenswerte Veröffentlichung als E-Book steht auch in der Neuauflage weiterhin aus

The financial ecologies of climate urbanism: Project preparation and the anchoring of global climate finance

Global development institutions herald private finance as a key mechanism for limiting climate change. Many have concentrated their efforts on bridging urban “infrastructure gaps,” thereby creating profitable fixes and establishing new markets through global climate finance initiatives (GCFIs). This paper examines the project preparation practices of GCFIs in cities of the global South to understand how global climate finance anchors itself within cities. Leaning on the concept of financial ecologies, we argue that these practices do significant relational work, linking emerging smaller financial ecologies with each other, thereby establishing a larger financial ecology of climate urbanism. Examining the actors, spatial strategies and relations of these initiatives, we conclude that the sum of these parts ultimately serves the reproduction of global climate finance itself

Langweilige Dystopien in fiktiven Geographien

Dieser Artikel untersucht das Verhältnis zwischen räumlichem Eingeschlossensein und dystopischem Alltag in fiktionalen Filmen. Unser empirischer Ausgangspunkt ist die Darstellung des Eingeschlossenseins in den Filmen Parasite (2019) und Dogtooth (2009). Beide Filme erzählen mit düsterem Humor verflochtene Geschichten über Erfahrungen des Einschlusses in sozialen Hierarchien (Parasite) und patriarchalischen Strukturen (Dogtooth) sowie über den unmöglichen Versuch, aus diesen Ordnungen auszubrechen. Wir lesen diese Erfahrungen als langweilige Dystopien, also als Dystopien, die in den Alltag eingeschrieben sind und eine grausame Realität normalisieren. Wir nutzen die fiktionalen Erzählungen von Dogtooth und Parasite für eine kulturgeographische Analyse, die das Eingeschlossensein neben seinen räumlichen und materiellen Bedingungen als eine affektive Atmosphäre (Anderson 2014) versteht. Aufbauend auf der zunehmenden Stadtforschung über Affekte und Emotionen vermittelt dieser Zugang, wie das Eingeschlossensein sich als alltägliche, dystopische Erfahrung normalisiert. Wir argumentieren, dass eine Analyse affektiver Atmosphären die unsichtbar gewordenen Gewalterfahrungen des Eingeschlossenseins greifbar machen kann

Understanding the functioning of urban climate finance through topologies of reach

Urban climate action is increasingly understood through the lens of finance: through financial agendas, interests, and practical tools which enable ‘bankable’ or profitable interventions. While the literature is rife with criticism of the normative foundations and exploitative effects of this approach, it fails to capture the variegated ways in which finance configures, and is configured by, particular urban sites and spaces of power. This contribution extends our cartography of urban climate finance by bringing to light the relational dynamics of financial practices and the ways in which they span across diverse urban sites in topological ways.It has now become a common refrain among development and finance institutions that urban climate finance is, in fact, difficult to realize. A central reason for this is the perceived lack of possibilities to generate returns for investors. A topological perspective offers a relational view on the spatial practices through which new places are to be enrolled into the use of climate finance with the aim of stabilizing financial investment. Concentrating on the notion of ‘topological reach’, we show how climate finance, through its particular demands for bankability, creates new urban presences through spatial mechanisms of stretches, folds and distortions. By examining these topological mechanisms across a breadth of empirical material sourced from the individual research of the coauthors, we unpack the ways in which climate finance strategies are extended by a limited set of actors across space, often dominating and instrumentalizing urban climate action imaginaries and practices, while also failing to address a wide range of concerns and communities which fall outside of the operational parameters and speculative horizons of finance.The topological perspective provides us with the tools to make these struggles visible and opens up avenues to contest contemporary climate finance practices on the ground and to decenter the overarching narratives that drive contemporary climate finance