Suchergebnisse

Dieser Artikel reflektiert die Diskussionen und gemeinsamen Ansätze, die in zwei Workshops 2013 und 2015 in Athen und Frankfurt zu Austerity Urbanism in Griechenland und Deutschland stattfanden. Mit Bezug zu Fallstudien über die krisengeschüttelte Stadt Athen betonen wir die Wichtigkeit eines Verständnisses von Austerity Urbanism als inhärentem Bestandteil eines breit angelegten neoliberalen Transformationsprozesses, der sich in vielfältiger Weise auf das soziale, wirtschaftliche und politische Leben auswirkt. Außerdem gehen wir davon aus, dass wir mit der Betrachtung von Austerity Urbanism anhand der zueinander dialektisch ins Verhältnis gesetzten lokalen und nationalen Kontexte, signifikant dazu beitragen können, die Geographien von Macht und Ungleichheit zu verstehen, die auf jeder Ebene sichtbar werden – vom europäischen Maßstab bis zum Alltag.

Austerity has led to a growing interest in smallscale urban practices that engage community groups in participatory placemaking as an alternative to developing government or commercially funded parks and urban spaces. These approaches draw on bottom-up tactics to empower local community groups to take ownership of small communal spaces but are also often supported strategically by small financial grants provided by local and national governments. In this article, we draw on de Certeau's theory of strategies and tactics to explore the relationship between topdown strategies and bottom-up tactics in urban placemaking in response to the politics of austerity. We explore this process through critical analysis of our own participatory action research project to engage in the ideation and implementation of a community run, 'Pocket-Park'. We argue that the complex interplay between participatory bottom-up tactics and more formal top-down strategies provides an approach to placemaking that uniquely facilitates creative practice and allows for a resurgence in noncommercialized public placemaking. We identify a process of manoeuvres (or strategic tactics) between de Certeau's two concepts in which key participants undertake a translational process, to unlock the resources needed to support tactical placemaking.

With the rise of austerity urbanism, contemporary urban governance has been described as "rule by accountancy." Yet the intricacies of accounting practice have been underexplored in the austerity urbanism literature. Drawing on insights from critical accounting studies, I interrogate accounting practices as political exercises that draw people and institutions into ties of obligation (accountability), shape social relations, and structure the conditions of urban life. Through this lens, practices of accounting can be understood not just as a technocratic tool of the financialized state, but as a contested terrain of urban political struggle. Examining the case of austerity-driven water service disconnections in Detroit, this paper chronicles how accounting practices are both deployed by the state to justify water disconnection and used by activists seeking to expand water access in unprecedented ways. I find that while the austerity urbanism literature is correct to identify accounting as a tool in the advancement of the austerity agenda, accounting is also a means to organize against the diminished expectations of life under austerity.

The article looks at contemporary urban activism as it mobilizes around policies and conflicts characteristic of the comparatively privileged Western cities of the global North. It first analyzes the particularities of neoliberal urbanism and its implications for (divisions between) urban social movements, and secondly looks at how today's movements might move beyond their current predicaments, which lie in the tensions between more and less privileged movement groups occupying rather different strategic positions. Corresponding to the widespread trend of creative city politics, a sector of urban movements has flourished that benefits from innovative policies fostering alternative and (sub)cultural activism; on the other hand, various movements mobilizing around the intensifying trends of austerity urbanism have largely remained at a distance from leftist, autonomous and countercultural movements. The divides are beginning to be bridged in new forms of (post-)Occupy collaborations that bring together austerity victims and other groups of urban 'outcasts' with (frequently middle-class based) radical activists, allowing both to acknowledge their differences. This, it is argued, constitutes a necessary condition for struggles against the exclusivity of neoliberal urbanism to be effective.

ABSTRACTA surge of forcibly displaced migrants into Europe in 2015 culminated in what has been referred to as the 'refugee crisis'. As the continent's top destination country, Germany has been widely praised for its welcoming culture while heavily criticized for failures of integration. This is particularly true of Berlin — a city that has absorbed the highest number of war refugees in Europe, many of whom remain without stable accommodation. Despite its significance, the scholarship has largely neglected the housing question within the European refugee crisis. The aim of this article is to cast a critical light on the complexities and contradictions glossed over by the refugee crisis trope. Drawing on the Berlin case, the author argues that resettlement initiatives need to be understood against the backdrop of austerity urbanism, particularly its insistence that markets can meet housing demand. By focusing on three types of shelter provisioning for refugees, the article reveals the multifaceted and nuanced ways in which the Berlin government, refugees and grassroots organizations contest, produce and navigate the moving frames of austerity urbanism in search of stable housing.

Aufbauend auf den Erfahrungen zweier Workshops zu (urbaner) Austerität in Griechenland und Deutschland diskutiert der Beitrag die (unterschiedliche) Geschichte und Geographie der Austerität mit besonderem Blick auf die Regionen Frankfurt/Rhein-Main und Athen. Die Erfahrungen der multiplen Krise seit 2008, die sich in Griechenland vor dem Hintergrund einer austeritätspolitischen "Shock Doctrine" und in der BRD im Kontext eines langfristigen Projekts der "scheibchenweisen" Austerität entwickelten, eröffnen dabei die Möglichkeit, die Debatten um urbane Austerität einem kritischen Blick zu unterziehen. Der Beitrag sieht insbesondere im Bereich der Krisen der (urbanen) sozialen Reproduktion sowie der Krisen der (städtischen) Politik und Repräsentation weiteren Forschungsbedarf.

Aufbauend auf den Erfahrungen zweier Workshops zu (urbaner) Austerität in Griechenland und Deutschland diskutiert der Beitrag die (unterschiedliche) Geschichte und Geographie der Austerität mit besonderem Blick auf die Regionen Frankfurt/Rhein-Main und Athen. Die Erfahrungen der multiplen Krise seit 2008, die sich in Griechenland vor dem Hintergrund einer austeritätspolitischen 'Shock Doctrine' und in der BRD im Kontext eines langfristigen Projekts der 'scheibchenweisen' Austerität entwickelten, eröffnen dabei die Möglichkeit, die Debatten um urbane Austerität einem kritischen Blick zu unterziehen. Der Beitrag sieht insbesondere im Bereich der Krisen der (urbanen) sozialen Reproduktion sowie der Krisen der (städtischen) Politik und Repräsentation weiteren Forschungsbedarf.

Altres ajuts: ESRC/ES/L012898/1 ; This paper explores neoliberalisation and its counter-currents through a six-case study of austerity urbanism in Spain and the UK. Applying Urban Regime Theory it highlights the role of urban politics in driving, variegating and containing neoliberalism since the 2008 crash. Variegated austerity regimes contribute to strengthening neoliberalism, but with limits. Welfarism survives austerity in felicitous circumstances. And, where contentious politics thrive, as in Spain, it holds out the potential for a broader challenge to neoliberalism. In contrast, austerity regimes in the UK cities are strongly embedded. The legacies of past struggles, and differing local and regional traditions form an important part of the explanation for patterns of neoliberalisation, hybridization and contestation.

The decline or withdrawal of funding for targeted regeneration initiatives in England, linked to the wider programme of austerity in public finances, presents major challenges for deprived neighbourhoods. Government's expectation is that the demise of most neighbourhood-focused regeneration initiatives will be offset by the increased involvement of a host of local, voluntary and private-sector actors as part of a wider programme of localism in which civil society assumes responsibility for public policy and service delivery functions previously exercised by the state. This paper assesses the scope for and likelihood of this radical transformation by considering the experience of four neighbourhoods in Manchester. Through a programme of interviews with a range of stakeholders, the paper explores the implications posed by recent policy reforms for levels of resident activism and engagement, and considers the degree to which neighbourhood actors can build capacity in order to contribute meaningfully to future regeneration efforts. The paper concludes that sustained intervention is needed to ensure that raised levels of social capital resulting from past policy initiatives do not dissipate. Developing community capacity in deprived neighbourhoods, the paper concludes, requires concerted and concentrated policy intervention that is at odds with government's current emphasis on laissez-faire localism. © Henry Stewart Publications.