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Book Review: Ruderal City: Ecologies of Migration, Race, and Urban Nature in Berlin by Bettina Stoetzer

In 2017 the exhibition ZurückGESCHAUT, produced by the district Museum Treptow in Berlin, made history when it partnered with antiracist organizations to tell the story of participants in a Völkerschau that had taken place in 1896. It was the first time that a German museum incorporated a critical view of German colonialism in its permanent exhibition and interwove local and global history. The exhibition inspired an artistic audio project, ZurückERZÄHLT (2019), and was subsequently revised (2021). The three projects grappled very differently with challenging source material, a set of anthropological photographs of participants. The article analyses the choices made by museum curators, activists, and artists who cooperated in these innovative, interlocking memory projects. It argues that the cooperation helped the museum relate the hard truths of colonial violence without reproducing that violence in the exhibition space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the role of community food spaces in processes of social change and reproduction. I investigate the mechanisms by which these groups reproduce, exacerbate, or dismantle power relations and socio‐environmental injustices. I systematically examine exclusion and inclusion dynamics and assess what shapes diversity of participation and representation. Contending that diversity is not a sufficient indicator of social equity and may overshadow forms of injustice, I unpack the interlocking workings of privilege and power in place and examine innovative ways of developing emancipatory food politics. Drawing upon activist ethnography among community gardens, people's kitchens, and co‐operative projects in Berlin, I expose the complex, dual nature of its food activist landscape, characterised by the coexistence of experienced, locally rooted, and openly political projects, and more recent, outsider‐led sustainability‐ and consumption‐orientated projects—together embodying the variegated and shifting politics of socio‐environmental change in the city and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writer Michel Dufranne and illustrator Maza’s French-language graphic novel, Triangle rose, (2011) features a Berlin homosexual deported under Paragraph 175. In this frame narrative, the elderly survivor’s story never reaches its potential diegetic audience, Parisian students, including the protagonist’s great-grandson. The framed narrative represents the protagonist’s unarticulated memories. This narrative glitch reflects 1) the historic failure to acknowledge homosexuals as legitimate Nazi victims, and 2) ongoing homophobia in Berlin and Paris, resulting in shame, as conceptualized by Sara Ahmed and Ruth Leys. Portraylng the Nazi persecution of gay men, Triangle rose highlights an important, underrepresented chapter of National Socialist history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amid the Covid‐19 pandemic, the food and grocery delivery sector became a multibillion‐dollar industry, making riders with squared backpacks visible in our urban landscapes. We explore the role of quick delivery platforms in spatial production—and especially the strategies platforms employed and the tactics of platform workers in relation to this production. By adopting a Lefebvrian perspective, we introduce the concepts of ‘strategies of spatial abstraction’ and ‘spatial tactics of resistance’. We argue that strategies of platforms such as territorialization and digital Taylorism homogenize spatial relations, while platform workers use tactics to resist and to negotiate their everyday lives mediated by platforms. We draw on vignettes from Barcelona and Berlin to illustrate the spatial implications of these strategies and tactics. Territorialization anchors platforms to urban locations through physical infrastructure, while digital Taylorism utilizes algorithms to standardize spatial practices. These strategies contain contradictions: territorialization reduces worker atomization, while digital Taylorism catalyzes worker resistance tactics, especially logistical resistance around the platforms’ dark stores and warehouses. This article contributes to the growing body of literature on platform urbanism, revealing the complex and often contradictory nature of platform‐mediated production of urban space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article delves into the work of contemporary visual artist Yael Bartana, focusing on her recent artwork, the monumental video work Malka Germania (2021). Amidst the constant struggle over politics, commemoration, and territoriality in Berlin’s memory landscape, Bartana’s art emerges as a critical and thought-provoking intervention. By leaning on interviews with the artist, observations from exhibitions, as well as a thorough analysis of the video work itself, I propose an interpretation of Malka Germania as a radical rethinking of Berlin’s memory landscapes. I argue that the work not only reframes struggles over memory, but also materialises them as territorial struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Berlin in 2019 and 2020, partly during the COVID-19 lockdown, this article seeks to address the spatial dynamics experienced by young dating app users, aged between 20 and 33, in the context of digital media reconfiguring the tourist encounter. The article highlights how geolocational dating apps seek to create a feeling of proximate romantic possibilities, and hide the global information networks they operate through, a factor brought into relief by the proliferation of dating app tourists on Tinder during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in Berlin. Drawing on ethnographic data incorporating 36 semi-structured interviews and 45 chat interviews across three popular dating apps, Tinder, Bumble, and OkCupid, the study finds that dating apps are operated by users as unwieldy technologies with unreliable distance parameter settings, in the pursuit of primarily local connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1901 until 1920, Albert Kohn, director of the Berlin insurance organization Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse, conducted a systematic housing survey of defective apartments. The work included statistics, reports, and photographs. I situate the project within the context of social surveys in the years around 1900. In the larger history of housing surveys, Kohn's project was one of the first that amalgamated diverse media and data visualizations. The original publication exhibits a crucial connection between statistics, reports, and apartment photographs. I will show that both reports and photographs epistemically hinged on numerical data gained from a questionnaire. The assemblage of shocking figures in statistics, reports, and photographs was intended to make visible an epistemic object: the misery of the lower classes. Hence, Kohn's depictions of urban misery did not depend on a specific form of representation, but rather on the consistency between descriptive registers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The opening of the Congress Hall in Berlin-Tiergarten in 1957 took place during the heyday of the Cold War. Designed by American architect Hugh Stubbins, the building became a focal point in East–West confrontations. Against this backdrop, the article explores the role of architecture in national soft power by taking the example of the Berlin Congress Hall. Commencing with a discussion of architecture as a component of soft power along five criteria, it goes on to examine the planning of the Congress Hall and the significance of its unique design vocabulary. The article concludes that the building, strategically located near the sector borders separating East and West, represents a concrete embodiment of US soft power. Although not an official representational building, the Congress Hall has thus served as a political, cultural and ideational 'embassy' of the United States and a major building block in German–American relations up to the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article delves into the topic of ghosts and their significance in our cultural consciousness. It examines how ghosts challenge binary oppositions and represent a state between states. The article also explores the relationship between architecture and the ethereal, highlighting how architecture is intertwined with our understanding of the unknown. It argues that architecture has become overly focused on physical aspects and has lost its imaginative ambiguity in the face of technological advancements and societal changes. The article calls for a reevaluation of architectural practices to address the uncertain and indeterminate nature of emerging spaces. It discusses the concept of hauntology, which explores the spectral and paradoxical nature of ghosts, and presents various perspectives on hauntology, including discussions on conservation architecture, LiDAR scanning, erasure, and the manifestation of hidden histories. The text also explores the use of photography, X-rays, and stereoscopic imaging in capturing the spectral. It concludes by emphasizing the importance of embracing the spectral and imaginative ambiguity in architecture to address contemporary uncertainties. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Tropelías: Revista de Teoría de la Literatura y Literatura Comparada is the property of Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

On 9 March 1977, 'Künstlerinnen International (1877-1977)' opened in Charlottenburg, Berlin, a survey of international women's art over the last hundred years, inspired by the 1976 exhibition in Los Angeles. The political, social and economic situation in West Germany in these years was very complex, both because of the still looming presence of the Wall, and because of social struggles, urban guerrilla warfare and the terrorism of the Rote Armee Fraktion In this complex climate, women were once again demanding the right to abortion, a law that had been passed in 1974 only to be declared unconstitutional again in 1975. In this context, one understands the importance of an exhibition such as Künstlerinnen International which, as the catalogue states, 'would not have come about without feminist struggles'. For the first time in the history of German criticism and curating, the exhibition was curated by a collective of feminist artists together with literary critic Silvia Bovenschen. The aim of this contribution is not only to investigate the figure of Silvia Bovenschen, especially in relation to the staging of the exhibition Künstlerinnen International, but also to analyse the international significance of the exhibition for feminist art in those years. In particular, an attempt will be made to understand the reasons that, paradoxically, led this exhibition and Boveschen's work to be forgotten after a short time by official German historiography. What is the role of Künstlerinnen International for collective and feminist historical memory in Germany? What consequences did the exhibition have for contemporary Italian feminist art, considering that both Mirella Bentivoglio (an artist invited to the Berlin exhibition in 1977 and curator of "Materializzazione del Linguaggio" at the 1978 Biennale) and Lea Vergine ("L'Altra metá dell'Avanguardia") were aware of Bovenschen's intellectual and critical work? What were the artistic relations between Italy and Germany following the Berlin exhibition of 1977?

Статья посвящена исследованию региональных особенностей живописи новой вещественности на берлинской почве. Особенное положение принадлежащего к числу наиболее интенсивно развивающихся столиц мира делало главный город Веймарской республики необычайно притягательным для самых разных слоев населения, в том числе и художников. Актуальность темы определяется возрастающим в современной науке интересом к противопоставляемым авангарду реалистическим и фигуративным образам в искусстве XX столетия. Ее новизна заключается в рассмотрении произведений новой вещественности не как иллюстративной фиксации истории Берлина 1920 – начала 1930-х годов, а как своеобразного зеркала эпохи, преломившего жизнь мегаполиса в самых разных жанрах изобразительного искусства. Цель — выявить особенности «образа мира» в картинах вещественников, творящих в германской столице. Исследование проведено с применением формально-стилевого и социокультурного методов.

This article examines the entangled worlds of anti-colonialism and anarchism in Weimar era Berlin. Looking particularly at Agnes Smedley and her partner in Berlin, Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, as well as M.P.T. Acharya and others, the article explores the ways in which these figures approached the question of anarchism in relation to Indian anti-colonialism. While recent scholarship has focused on Smedley’s– and to some extent Chatto’s– communist activities, this article suggests that, in the early 1920s, they were much closer affiliated with anarchism than often admitted. Drawing on extensive correspondence and publications, it demonstrates that Smedley and the Indian anti-colonialists often challenged anarchists to devote more attention to the colonial question and, in fact, often facilitated such contacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, religious organizations increasingly mediatized their activities. Studies examining this process mostly focused on communal offerings, while ignoring how rapid mediatization affected programs geared toward interfaith dialogue. This paper examines the effects and possibilities of this shift to virtual spaces by focusing on frameworks that promote Jewish–Muslim dialogue in Germany. It traces how Jews and Muslims intervene in popular discourse using social media platforms to self-define their respective religions and the relationship between them. In this process, those involved in creating virtual spaces focused on the intersectionality between gender biases and Christonormativity. This paper utilizes a broad methodological approach, including participant observation in dialogue events in virtual spaces, discursive analyses of videos and podcasts, and qualitative interviews with Jews and Muslims involved in the creation of virtual spaces. The first section discusses Jewish–Muslim encounters occurring in organized dialogue events on video communication platforms that are ephemeral in nature (no recordings). The subsequent sections analyze German-language formats that have a representative character and are streamed, recorded, and presented on social media platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the issue of migration success achieved by Poles settling in Berlin and London between the 1980s and 2018. We focus on the migration wave that took place after Poland's accession to the European Union in 2004. We show different ways in which migrants understand their new situation in the light of their integration, daily life, and well-being or satisfaction in the context of migration success. We analyse the similarities and differences of approaches to the new life in London and Berlin explicated by Polish migrants. In doing so, we pay attention to several important characteristics and processes related to the integration of Polish migrants into the metropolitan environments of Western Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bilingual offering table of Tasuchion from Fayum (Berlin, Egyptian Museum ÄM 11631) is an early Roman offering table for the woman Tasouchion. The table probably originates from Fayum and is adorned with a rare bilingual hieroglyphic-Greek inscription. The hieroglyphic text contains a ritual, while the Greek text offers a Greek version of the well-known Latin epitaph "sit tibi terra levis" (may the earth be light upon you). The offering table has been missing since the end of World War II. [Extracted from the article]

How can tenants affect housing policy? This paper compares rental housing politics in Los Angeles (USA) and Berlin (Germany) between 2008-2020 by examining how political processes influenced policy. It serves as a case of the emergence, escalation, and impact of tenant power. Tenant movement organizations employed five mechanisms to affect policymaking: (1) making demands, (2) forming coalitions, (3) promoting referendums, (4) engaging government officials in dialogue, and (5) transferring agents to government. The paper draws on multiple data sources, including interviews and participant observation over ten years. The cities witnessed policy episodes with four parallel characteristics: (1) locally progressive and regionally moderate, (2) shifting from defensive to offensive, (3) shifting from particular to universal, and (4) signs of a breakthrough beyond neoliberal housing policymaking. The findings suggest that the rise of tenant movements and their allies help drive policy change via multiple channels, exhibiting both similarities and differences across cities, especially in terms of money power and people power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a case study of an immigrant dense working-class neighborhood in Berlin, this article asks how racial and territorial stigmatization figure into state-enabled financialized gentrification and resistance against it. While there is a discussion on territorial stigmatization in the gentrification literature, this debate remains understated in the emerging financialized gentrification literature and rarely connects to race. Debates on resistance to financialization, in turn, while being attuned to the detrimental effects of stigmatization on struggle, pay little attention to the role of the local state as a producer of stigma. In this article I draw together debates on financialization, state-enabled gentrification and racial and territorial stigma to suggest that the local state, through its oppressive classifications and racialized representations of urban space, contributes to preparing the symbolic and material structures on which finance capital is able to flourish, not only by normalizing displacement, but by hampering resistance and demobilizing local working-class communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organized as part of the annual Art Days festival in the capital of the Latvian SSR, the First Exhibition of Approximate Art comprised a cacophonous and provocative mashup of music, dance, performance art, and design. At the center of the event was a demonstration of mixing and scratching records by Maximilian Lenz, also known as Westbam, one of the leading DJs in West Berlin. Mining archival sources in Berlin and Riga, this article reconstructs the complicated path by which the DJ came to perform at the event. It reveals a surprising network of relations and alliances operating in tandem behind the scenes, featuring a Riga artist dedicated to enacting a vision of postmodern performance in his city, an ambitiously networking émigré Latvian living in exile in West Germany, and a pair of Soviet offices under direct control of the KGB, charged with managing cultural exchanges with the West in hopes of currying sympathies for Soviet culture and policy. Complementing and extending research on the "gaps" and "holes" in the Soviet system that sometimes allowed for the staging of otherwise unacceptable works of art, the story of the First Exhibition of Approximate Art reveals how personal connections and interpersonal networks within even the most highly monitored parts of the system itself—the state security apparatus—could open doors for artistic projects unanticipated and even undesired by the bureaucratic state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In July 1951, the American Midwest experienced one of its worst floods in its history up to that point, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. While ostensibly a national issue, the natural disaster also drew the attention of hundreds of German citizens who donated to the relief effort. In the letters accompanying their donations, these Germans emphasized that they wanted to submit a token of their gratitude to the American people and begin to pay back a fraction of what they felt they owed for American humanitarian assistance in the immediate postwar era. Though the American government did not solicit these donations, it saw value in help publicising the donations and their letters. Locked in a propaganda battle with the Soviet Union, American authorities promoted these donations not only as evidence of German-American friendship, but also as evidence that their humanitarian policy at the dawn of the Cold War had achieved significant cultural, political, and diplomatic goals throughout Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To contribute to the understanding of green gentrification, this study aims to elucidate the factors that contribute to its occurrence or non-occurrence following urban greening, by considering necessary and sufficient factors. The investigation examines several potential characteristics, including the distribution, size, function, transportation connectivity, neighbourhoods’ centrality, and pre-existing availability of green spaces within neighbourhoods. The research employs an embedded case study approach, focusing on Berlin as the primary case. A fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is conducted to analyse the notions of necessity and sufficiency. The analysis identifies several sufficient pathways to gentrification, indicating that the neighbourhood context, particularly the initial availability of green spaces in the neighbourhood, plays a crucial role in determining the occurrence of green gentrification. By contrast, no specific type of greening, such as scattered greening approach, park size, function, or transportation connectivity, consistently led to green gentrification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores different conceptions of freedom in Kant, Green, and their critics. Kant introduces three kinds of freedom—negative freedom, positive freedom or autonomy, and transcendental freedom. Sidgwick objects that Kant's conception of positive freedom is unable to explain how someone might be free and responsible for the wrong choices. Though Green rejects transcendental freedom, he thinks Kant's conception of practical freedom can be defended by identifying it with the capacity to be determined by practical reason. Green identifies his own tripartite conception of freedom—juridical freedom, moral freedom, and real freedom. He thinks that these are stages in the perfection of freedom. Green's tripartite conception provides a principled reply to Berlin's doubts about positive freedom, explains Kant's claims that respect and esteem are fitting attitudes toward different aspects of freedom, and supports Schiller's criticisms of Kantian freedom and virtue. Green's conception of freedom defends the best elements of the Kantian perspective while addressing legitimate worries. In doing so, it unifies different aspects of freedom in a way that is grounded in moral personality or rational nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Bourdieu, residential location as habitat may provide spatial profit when it matches with a habitus – but how? How can we conceptualize situations of mismatch between habitat and habitus, and what may they mean for urban inequalities? This article explores this topic through the lens of mothering practices in elementary schools. Qualitative interviews in two neighbourhoods in Berlin, Germany, suggest how moral geographies at intersections of class and race/ethnicity structure parents' opportunities to organize resources for children in their specific spatial contexts. It argues that mothering practices can help us see not just that, but how habitus and habitat are related. Empirically, it suggests that the moral geographies in which these schools are embedded reinforce the exclusionary consequences of their institutional practices. I theorize that the moral geographies of neighbourhoods as sites of mothering practices vis‐à‐vis the class‐based state logics in institutions may contribute to an urban impasse of educational inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, a wide range of contributions have sought to conceptualize the emergent effects of platforms on contemporary capitalism(s). One strand of literature has emphasized the novelty of platforms, stressing their disruptive features and proclaiming the rise of a new era – platform/digital capitalism. Another strand has tended to position platforms within the longue durée of capitalist transformation, focusing on the continuities and historical recurrences of platform-led transformations. In contrast to both strands of literature, this paper argues that platforms should be understood as reworking existing, neoliberal institutions from within, engendering a process of hybridization. It builds on the French Régulation approach to trace platform-led transformations in the wage relation and social reproduction. It argues that platforms have consolidated their dominance in the post-2008 financial crisis period by, on the one hand, inserting themselves into neoliberal 'innovations' in labor markets, benefitting from a flexibilized, precaritized and casualized workforce and, on the other, by responding to the neoliberal crisis in social reproduction, and the decades-long privatization, marketization and individualization of reproductive tasks. It explores these dynamics in the context of Amsterdam and Berlin, tracing the hybridization of the neoliberal wage-labor nexus in the context of food delivery, cleaning and care platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern on-demand mobility concepts have the potential to drive the mobility transition. Increasing attention is being paid to DRT (Demand Responsive Transportation) services that enable the bundling of trips with the help of dynamic routing algorithms. Many providers use a stop-based operating concept for this purpose. The transport between so-called virtual stops promises a higher fraction of shared trips and shorter vehicle detours. The aim of this paper is to investigate multiple stop network designs and their impacts on the efficiency of the operation. For this purpose, three stop network generation approaches were derived from literature and applied to the simulation environment MATSim. A scenario in the city center of Berlin is simulated, where all inner car trips are replaced by DRT. Comparing the stop network design against a door-to-door service, the results suggest a trade-off between a reduction of vehicle kilometers (up to 18%) and increased walking distances (up to 250 meters on average). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the incorporation of formerly existing built environment and natural elements was studied in eight housing estates from the interwar period in the Weimar Republic as a part of broader research on landscape transformations. The data on the original state of land development were collected using the comparative cartographic analysis method. The analysis was supplemented by a comparison with iconography, such as aerial photographs, orthoimagery, and, in some cases, manually drafted plans. The results suggest that pre-existing conditions significantly influenced the functional dispositions and urban layout of the estates. These findings add to our understanding of the development of housing estates of the interwar period in the Weimar Republic and the posture of designers and urban planners towards the natural conditions of the respective project sites. This work can be valuable for adding to existing guidelines or principles of urban planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper examines the phenomenon of residential segregation in Berlin over time using a dynamic clustering analysis approach. Previous research has examined the phenomenon of residential segregation in Berlin at a high spatial and temporal aggregation and statically, i.e. not over time. We propose a methodology to investigate the existence of clusters of residential areas according to migration background, age group, gender, and socio-economic dimension over time. To this end, we have developed a sequential mixed methods approach that includes a multivariate kernel density estimation technique to estimate the density of subpopulations and a dynamic cluster analysis to discover spatial patterns of residential segregation over time (2009-2020). The dynamic analysis shows the emergence of clusters on the dimensions of migration background, age group, gender and socio-economic variables. We also identified a structural change in 2015, resulting in a new cluster in Berlin that reflects the changing distribution of subpopulations with a particular migratory background. Finally, we discuss the findings of this study with previous research and suggest possibilities for policy applications and future research using a dynamic clustering approach for analyzing changes in residential segregation at the city level.

AbstractThis article deals with the analysis of persistence in tourism in three European cities, namely, London, Manchester and Berlin. We consider hotel occupancy rate data with data beginning at October 1997 (in London), at March 2004 (in Berlin), while those in Manchester start at January 2006. All data ends at February 2024. Fractional integration methods are used, and the results indicate changes in the persistence pattern of the series due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Thus, before the pandemic, the results indicate that the integration order was less than 1 in the three series, implying transitory shocks. However, with the inclusion of data from 2020 to February 2024, the order of integration substantially increases in all cases, and the unit root hypothesis cannot be rejected, implying the permanent effects of shocks. Our results show that the effect of Covid-19 has been especially significant in hotel occupancy rate data in the three cities analyzed, indicating that strong policy measures are needed to reassume pre-crisis trends in the tourism industry.

This paper examines the phenomenon of residential segregation in Berlin over time using a dynamic clustering analysis approach. Previous research has examined the phenomenon of residential segregation in Berlin at a high spatial and temporal aggregation and statically, i.e. not over time. We propose a methodology to investigate the existence of clusters of residential areas according to migration background, age group, gender, and socio-economic dimension over time. To this end, we have developed a sequential mixed methods approach that includes a multivariate kernel density estimation technique to estimate the density of subpopulations and a dynamic cluster analysis to discover spatial patterns of residential segregation over time (2009-2020). The dynamic analysis shows the emergence of clusters on the dimensions of migration background, age group, gender and socio-economic variables. We also identified a structural change in 2015, resulting in a new cluster in Berlin that reflects the changing distribution of subpopulations with a particular migratory background. Finally, we discuss the findings of this study with previous research and suggest possibilities for policy applications and future research using a dynamic clustering approach for analyzing changes in residential segregation at the city level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When an architectural argonaut whose creative life was spent on a quest to open more possibilities for architecture meets another, a special mutual respect is instilled. Peter Cook, Archigram co‐founder and doyen of the Architectural Association (AA) in the 1980s, recalls his initial encounter and some of the moments he has shared with Lebbeus Woods over the decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Displacement from one's home is a contested issue, not only in actual urban politics but also in urban research. Empirical studies rely on rather different notions of displacement, which makes a coherent picture of the phenomenon difficult to obtain. In this article, we first deal with the conceptual ambiguities in the debate on displacement so as to carve out an empirically viable definition of direct displacement that focuses on the decision-making process before a relocation. We then present and discuss our own empirical findings on displacement. Finally, we reflect on possible conclusions one could draw from these findings in relation to housing policy. Our empirical results come from a survey we conducted of more than 2,000 tenants who had recently moved from their homes in Berlin, Germany. We found that more than 15% of the respondents had experienced direct displacement. A rent increase after refurbishment or the selling of the property proved to be the most common triggers of displacement. Addressing these particular issues therefore appears to be critical to curbing displacement in tight housing markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Google announced, in October 2018, that it would not pursue its plan to open a Google Campus in Berlin-Kreuzberg, the local anti-gentrification protesters were triumphant. The retreat was widely seen to be the result of a 2-year-long fight between the tech company and local activist groups. Next to the usual gentrification issues, the protests had additionally addressed what Google as a company stands for and focused on their data policies and the underlying (economic) rationale. The article asks what role this additional critique played in the protests. It will begin with a brief introduction to the key concepts before retracing the history of the planned Google Campus in Berlin as well as of the protests against it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we argue that it is analytically productive to think about the professionalization of hosting on Airbnb in terms of (commercial) gentrification. More precisely, we believe that rent gap theory is helpful to advance our understanding of why and how professionalized hosting has become an increasingly salient phenomenon and for centering the active role of Airbnb as a platform operator. We develop the notion of platform-scale rent gaps to explain the economic logic that drives Airbnb to professionalize its hosts and gentrify its platform. We then discuss Airbnb's professionalization programs and tools, showing how some of its most substantial resources primarily cater to large-scale property managers who, like Airbnb itself, seek to identify and close rent gaps on the platform. This consequently creates the conditions for uneven business development opportunities among hosts, which we illustrate by focusing on how two different types of hosts have sought to professionalize their business in Berlin. Finally, we conclude by speculating on the relationship between the gentrification of the Airbnb platform and urban gentrification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarly debates about the 'difficult heritage' associated with National Socialism typically rest with the preservation, memorialization or eradication of the visible remains of the Third Reich. Heritage, though, is more than a tangible place or object. It is also a process of social and cultural engagement where acts of remembrance (or concealment) reflect contemporary politics and social values. The tension between a distinct sense of historical place and the present-day reality of a voided landscape is illustrated keenly through a case study of Adolf Hitler's Berlin Führerbunker. Despite being physically absent from today's cityscape, Hitler's bunker has long generated both concern about the potential for becoming a neo-Nazi pilgrimage site, and curiosity among international tourists, keen to see where the Nazi dictator met his end. Tracing tourist activity since 1945, and exploring recurring efforts to contain, destroy or expose the site, this article posits that the Führerbunker has become an effective countermemorial, its very absence from the contemporary cityscape sparking public discussions among visitors and fostering a critical, grassroots reflection upon the challenges of handling legacies of dictatorship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a contribution to the growing scholarly debate on literary representations of gentrification, this article explores a tendency of contemporary, Berlin-set fiction to depict accelerating gentrification processes as an imminent apocalypse. While earlier gentrification fiction frequently centered on the struggles of a male character, this article turns to recent female-authored and female-centered narratives of gentrification, thus highlighting the relevance of gender for literary gentrification studies. Based on readings of four novels by German and US-American authors, the main contribution of the article is the delineation of a new hybrid subgenre of gentrification fiction and dystopian fiction—the accelerated gentrifiction. A further major finding is the identification of a standardized female gentrifier character type as an essential feature of this subgenre. The relative flatness of these protagonists results from their shared lack of action and emotional response when facing the consequences of complex social and ecological issues such as accelerated gentrification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Designing architectural interventions for many species that function and are hospitable for a variety of occupants, creating convivial habitats at a range of scales, is a preoccupation of Brooklyn‐based Harrison Atelier. Founder and principal Ariane Lourie Harrison leads us through some of the design collective's award‐ winning projects. As well as encouraging animal inhabitants, the firm's architecture is also smart, observing and recording activity to register data often not previously available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Geopolitica(s): Revista de Estudios Sobre Espacio y Poder is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Political Science Studies / Studia Politologiczne is the property of University of Warsaw and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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Die Urteile des Oberverwaltungsgerichts Münster vom 13. Mai sind ein Meilenstein in der aktuellen Debatte über den Umgang mit der AfD und wurden häufig als Vorbedingung für ein Parteiverbotsverfahren gesehen. Über die antirassistische Seite der Debatte liest man allerdings wenig. Zum Schutz von Personen, die von Rassismus betroffen sind, scheint ein Verbotsverfahren bei entsprechender Beweislage damit mehr als geboten.

The City in the Book: Materiality and Form in Irina Liebmann’s Documentary Portrayals of Berlin This article considers the relationship between urban materiality and literary form in three documentary portrayals of Berlin by Irina Liebmann: a book of interviews with East German tenants, Berliner Mietshaus (1982), the photo-essay Stille Mitte von Berlin (2002) and the autofictional novel Die Große Hamburger Straße (2020). I use and develop Andreas Mahler’s model for analysis of the “discursive constitution” of urban literature to investigate how various linguistic and formal expressions are used in the texts to represent the material properties of two urban entities: the tenement building and the street. My analysis shows how urban materiality is discursively constituted through referential elements and “material isotopy” (frequent use of materially connotated concepts), as well as through other linguistic means that can be connected to the materiality of the portrayed places such as the structure, layout, typography and interpunctuation of the text. In two of Liebmann’s texts, a further spatio-visual dimension arises through the inclusion of her own photographs of dilapidated buildings, closed-up shops and empty lots in East Berlin in the 1980s. The findings of my investigation demonstrate how Liebmann’s documentary portrayals of Berlin contribute to making visible the fluctuations in how different material circumstances – for example standard of living – are valued in different contexts, as well as to a renegotiation of hegemonic narratives about the city’s historic materiality. Finally, a diachronic comparison between the three texts shows that specific material entities such as streets and buildings in the old center of Berlin have been charged with new meaning after 1989 due to the fundamental alterations to the material conditions of the city through a rapid gentrification process.

The article is a collectively written piece about the rise and development of the Worker Center Berlin. The center was founded in 2022 by a group of activists, workers and researchers, involved in various ways in the struggles around the gig economy in Berlin, mainly targeting Gorillas and other delivery platforms. Since then, the group has managed to use the office of Gorillas’ work council to offer counseling, organizing tools and a space for socializing to precarious migrant workers. The article describes the founding process and the current situation of the Worker Center Berlin. It addresses both the strengths and the challenges of the initiative.