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Global market competition and the political responses to globalization transform urban societies and states, and thus the cultures of capital cities in contemporary Europe. Vienna's cultural district Museumsquartier and the planned Humboldt Forum on Berlin's Schlossplatz illustrate two of the most controversial sites of urban reconstruction in Central Eastern Europe since the 1990s. Tracing the processes of their political emergence through more than a decade of heated public debates, this book narrates the metaphor-rich and engaging stories about these old European capitals facing change. It

While political economic perspectives of urban globalization tend to generalize the economic pressures upon socio-political transformations of cities, recent European research has stressed the institutional context of urban collective action. However, the structural bias of the European city model merely complements the criticized economization by a culturalist essentialization of urbanity, and thus fails to conceptualize political agency. In order to elaborate the theoretical foundations of a political counterhypothesis to urban globalization, this article clarifies the different historical and normative conceptions of institutional structure and agency in the urban context. Most research of cities implies — more or less implicitly — a common urban ideal which associates centrality with a local integration potential of plural societies. However, distinguishing between a historically embedded empirical category, a normative model of public space, and an analytical ideal-type of political agency helps to overcome the static structural conception of an essentially European urban culture and problematizes the role of knowledge models in reflectively constructing urban realities. Therefore, a dynamic and contextual relation between political economic functions, historic heritage, and normative frames might contribute to an open-ended comparative framework of urban collective action that can be applied to any ordinary city across and beyond Europe.

While urban political economy tends to generalize the functional economic pressures upon socio-political transformations of cities, European research has stressed the importance of historical context and political institutions. Both perspectives' references to urban culture imply either an economization or an essentialization of urbanity, and thus an underconceptualization of political agency. Whether defined economically, politically, or socio-culturally, most research of cities implies - more or less implicitly - a common ideal of urbanity which lies in the integration potential of plural societies. Urbanity, the spatialized ideal of modernity, and cities, its contextual realizations in place, are the two complementary sides of a reflective process which is locally specific as well as globally entangled. At least to enable a counterfactual to either the economicfunctionalist globalization hypothesis or the historic-culturalist European assumption, empirical research should conceptualize this urban process as plural, contextual, and thus open-ended collective action. To approach the structure and agency aspects of urban culture in mediating state transformation, the debates about new institutionalism, social movements, and modernity serve to conceptualize a comparative framework of urban politics beyond the European context. Instead of adding yet another competing model or even a 'meta-model', the 'City without Qualities' aims to reduce the complexity of the contemporary urban debate by dismantling some of the fashionable urban 'buzzwords' to their basic analytical concepts.

Global capital -- or rather the political responses to globalization -- transform cities & states, & particularly capital cities as urban centers of state politics. Responding to as well as actively constructing a climate of economic competition, urban policy makers use symbolic flagship strategies to promote economic development & at the same time mobilize collective political action. But the plural nature of capital city culture not only promotes collective mobilization to overcome political economic interest conflicts. Its deep symbolic meanings can also enhance contestation & conflict beyond the initial regeneration plans. The political controversies about Vienna's new cultural district 'Museumsquartier' & the deinitialmolition of the 'Palast der Republik' on the Schlossplatz in Berlin illustrate how the leaders of two different European capital cities struggle for a collective basis of political action. The article enquires into these capital cities' diverse institutional potential for governing plural deliberation processes & thus reflexively responding to their changing functions as symbolic centers of transforming states. In this plural context of state-transformation, cultural policy as a government strategy is challenged by cultural politics as a plural interaction. This questions the relationship of cultural & power as a structural representation or a motive & resource of agency. Externally determined political economic changes of the urban context find reflection in urban cultural politics through a dynamic, fluid, & open-ended process of institutional self-transformation. References. Adapted from the source document.