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Die Autor_innen Ray Forrest, Sin Yee Koh und Bart Wissink adressieren in ihrem Beitrag ein für die internationale Stadtforschung wichtiges Thema: die aktuell zu beobachtende Tendenz der sozialräumlichen Ausdifferenzierung in Städten, welche mit einer intensiver werdenden sozialen Ungleichheit und räumlichen Fragmentierung einhergeht. Empirischer Gegenstand ihrer Beobachtung ist die sozialräumliche Konzentration extrem reicher Menschen in urbanen Agglomerationen. Die Autor_innen formulieren ihre Beobachtung auf pointierte Weise und skizzieren fünf zentrale Punkte für die Analyse dieses Phänomens: die Herausarbeitung (1) seiner neuen, anderweitig nicht bekannten Merkmale; (2) der mit der Elite der Superreichen verbundenen Infrastrukturen sowie (3) der Politiken der (städtischen) Regierungen, die dazu beitragen, das Phänomen entstehen zu lassen; (4) die Bezugnahme auf Theorien der Neoliberalisierung als Rahmen für die Analyse des Phänomens sowie (5) die Berücksichtigung der lokalen Besonderheiten des global beobachtbaren Phänomens der Konzentration von Superreichen in bestimmten Städten und Stadtteilen.

Recent city planning and urban sociology widely discuss the emergence of what city planners, academics, and journalists call the creative city (cf. Florida 2005; Landry 2000). In the context of this much debated concept, empirical research is needed to analyse its implications for the city, understood as (built) place of the social, and for the overall structure of society. So far, studies have focussed mostly either on the impact of cultural developments on cities (cf. e.g. Jayne 2004; Liep 2001; Montgomery 2004; Scott 2000)or on political ecommendations of how to transform cities towards creative cities (cf. e.g. Bianchini and Landry 1994; Carta 2007; Florida 2005; Landry 2006). What's missing are studies analysing the concrete planning approaches that are used in cities which integrate the creative city concept as programmatic element in their city development plans. Additionally, this new form of planning and transforming cities is hardly put in context with greater structural changes of society. My paper presents findings of my empirical research which I conducted in the course of the last two years in the cities of Dublin (Ireland) and Gothenburg (Sweden). The focus was on the political dimension of creative city planning. In so doing, I studied how planning authorities programmatically integrated the concept of creativity in local city development strategies and how that affected the built environment and the city's relation to and impact on overall societal changes. With qualitative interviews with city representatives and planning authorities, participant observation, and photographic documentation, planning strategies, their realization, and their effects on the built environment were studied. Photographic archive material and planning documents served as additional material. Evaluating the broad range of material, several interesting findings were made. One of the findings is that the Triple Helix concept is used as an underlying concept for present city planning and urban transformation. In the city of Gothenburg, the concept is explicitly used in order to transform an old industrial part of the city, the former dockyards, towards a new and sustainable inner-city quarter. That implies focussing on certain parts of the knowledge-intensive economy â which can be subsumed as belonging to the creative class and the creative industries respectively, as Florida or Howkins define them (cf. Florida 2004, p. 328; Howkins 2004, p.88ff). The strategies of the local planning authorities aim at integrating the Lindholmen Science Park in the city of Gothenburg and at enhancing the quarter's infrastructure and reputation. In Dublin, the Triple Helix concept is an implicit part of the planning strategies in selected inner-city quarters. A prominent example is The Digital Hub, a cluster for digital media enterprises which is thought to enhance the city quarter in economic and social terms. Thus, the paper analyzes the characteristics of these particular planning approaches and contextualises them both with traditionally used concepts such as the integrated urban regeneration approach and with the overall programmatic strategy of the creative city. Additionally, it describes how the concept is used as a means to meet the underlying objective to assure the cities' character as a place of the knowledge society (cf. Bell 1973; Drucker 1993). Both the city of Gothenburg with its Science Park and the city of Dublin with its Digital Hub can thus be described as paradigmatic cities of the knowledge society. In this sense, the paper presents a macro- and a micro-perspective on present social developments in Western Europe. On a macro level, the role of cities in and for the knowledge society is brought into focus. On a micro level, local strategies and concrete planning approaches are presented to give a clear picture of two case studies. ; Madrid

In her book "Fragmented Dhaka. Analysing Everyday Life with Henri Lefebvre's Theory of Production of Space," Elisa T. BERTUZZO aims at using Henri LEFEBVRE's concept of space and his suggestions for the study of spatial structures and practices in an empirical study. The city of Dhaka, for BERTUZZO a rural "mega city," serves as a laboratory for studying the spatial practices of everyday life and specific representations of the city. This qualitative study is thought to counteract the lack of research literature on Dhaka and takes a postmodern perspective on the process of urbanization in Bangladesh's capital by highlighting heterogeneity and ambiguity. LEFEBVRE's concepts of space are transferred into a qualitative research design in a generally convincing way. However, the presentation of the results loses some of its clarity due to the abundance of the empirical findings. Although there is some conceptual "fuzziness," this does not narrow the significance of this innovative study.

Der Entwicklung und dem Einsatz visueller Methoden der empirischen Sozialforschung in der Geographie wird in der Fachdiskussion zunehmend Bedeutung beigemessen. Die Debatte wird dabei nicht zuletzt durch den weitestgehenden Konsens getragen, dass sich die Geographie - obwohl ein Fach mit einer Vielzahl visueller Forschungsgegenstände - bislang vorwiegend qualitativ-textlicher oder quantitativ-statistischer Methoden bedient. Der Verwendung von Bildern und insbesondere Filmen als multisensualen Stimuli zur Analyse von raumbezogenen Handlungen und Wahrnehmungen wird dagegen bislang nur bedingt Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt. Der vorliegende Beitrag möchte dieses Defizit aufgreifen und eine neue Methode vorstellen und diskutieren, die sich der 3D-Videotechnik sowie qualitativer Interviewtechniken bedient: den Virtual Urban Walk 3D. Die Methode des Virtual Urban Walk 3D stellt die Kombination des qualitativen Interviews als bekanntem und erprobtem Erhebungsinstrument mit einem neuen Stimulus dar, einer 3D-Filmsequenz mit Surround Sound. Die Filmsequenz ist dabei dem realen Durchlaufen und visuell-akustischen Erleben von Stadträumen aus der Ich-Perspektive nachempfunden und ermöglicht es den ForscherInnen, den Interviewees möglichst realitätsnah einen ihnen zuvor unbekannten Stadtraum visuell und akustisch erleben zu lassen. Das Medium Film erlaubt es dabei, alle ProbandInnen den völlig gleichen multisensualen Eindrücken bezüglich eines Raumausschnitts auszusetzen. Die vorgeschlagene Methode schließt damit an existierende Forschung zur Verwendung visueller Materialien in der qualitativen Forschung an ( Harper 1988; Dirksmeier 2007; Lynch 2007; Pink 2007b), geht aber durch die Verwendung von 3D-Filmsequenzen mit akustischer Realkulisse entscheidend darüber hinaus. Auf der Grundlage der Erkenntnisse eines Pretests wird der vorliegende Beitrag sowohl die Vorstellung der Methode als auch die kritische Diskussion ihrer Vor- und Nachteile sowie ihre Weiterentwicklung fokussieren.

The coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and associated public health measures continuously alter our everyday lives and routines. Here, we focus on social infrastructures of local provisions and the role they perform within cities under shutdown. Social infrastructures of local provisions such as supermarkets remained functional in Germany even during repeated shutdowns as they were perceived as essential for everyday life. Supermarkets hence turned from mundane sites of provision to sites where we could witness how infrastructures are deeply entangled with the microfoundations of urban social life. Based on auto-ethnographic accounts covering the period from March 2020 until May 2020, we explore how these spaces became primary sites through which to experience the changes caused by the pandemic. Writing from inner-city neighborhoods, we highlight the need to attend to the ambiguous role of design, objects, and materiality to adjust collective social practices and urban conviviality in the times of COVID-19.