Anna Steigemann

• Technische Universität Berlin

Die Globalisierung ist zur allgegenwärtigen Gewissheit geworden. Doch wie zutreffend ist das Konzept »Globalisierung«, wenn zeitgleich nationale Grenzen gestärkt und transnationale Freihandelszonen ausgeweitet werden, wenn auf unterschiedlichen scales Territorien überwunden und zugleich territoriale Abgrenzungen neu gesetzt werden? Aktuelle Verände...

Die Globalisierung ist zur allgegenwärtigen Gewissheit geworden. Doch wie zutreffend ist das Konzept »Globalisierung«, wenn zeitgleich nationale Grenzen gestärkt und transnationale Freihandelszonen ausgeweitet werden, wenn auf unterschiedlichen scales Territorien überwunden und zugleich territoriale Abgrenzungen neu gesetzt werden? Aktuelle Verände...

Unbehaust Wohnen ist ein zentraler Teil der Geschichte und Theorie des Wohnens und wird dennoch häufig vergessen, verborgen, zum Diskurs allein von Spezialist_innen gemacht oder als ein ,Anderes' zu einem sichernden und ,eigentlichen' Wohnen verhandelt. Dem positiv gedachten Wohnen als Existenz und Heim/at steht also immer auch ein unbehaustes Wohn...

Based on an extensive ethnography of the economic and social life in Berlin-Neukölln, the paper asks how a changing demographic and social structure affects the social life but also the urban renewal on two iconic but contested streets - “the Arab street” Sonnenallee and adjacent Karl-Marx-Straße. The effects of migration - and particularly of the...

Urban research in Germany has started to address the socio-spatial distribution and architectures of so-called collective accommodation for asylum seekers, refugee camps, and new forms of ethnic segregation triggered by refugee movements in recent years. The spatial practices of refugees themselves within these processes have not yet been a subject...

In contrast to urban centers in the western part of Germany, urban arrival infrastructures for international migrants in the federal state of Thuringia developed very recently and are mostly still in the making. Here, asylum seekers confront shrinking municipalities that are neither socioculturally nor in terms of physical infrastructure and govern...

If one walks down Karl-Marx-Straße in the Neukölln district of Berlin, for example observing the street life at the busy crossing of Rathaus Neukölln, the intersection of one subway line and several bus lines, one can see shoppers, residents, local employees, and commuters on their way to work or nearby schools squeezing out of the subway exits. Mo...

This chapter analyzes data from interviews and observation with regard to the precise features that make businesses sites for interaction, and eventually, for community. More precisely, I aim to determine the distinct material and social features that support sociability and interaction among customers, staff, and owners. The data and concepts gene...

The following subchapters provide background and contextual information on each of the investigated businesses. In order to understand the social space, the social processes that occur within the space, and their actors, a description of the business design and spatial outlay is provided. The different parts intertwine each case’s description with...

This chapter brings together the lessons learned about how store owners and their businesses foster positive interactions – a social “more” – among neighborhood residents. It substantiates the appropriateness of viewing store owners as socially important figures whose business activities contribute to local social life – by building places where co...

The previous chapter discussed how the sampled businesses’ socio-spatial features offer “more” to the businesses’ customers and employees. This chapter shifts its focus on to the business owners themselves, examining how their social practices generate and maintain a particular socio-spatial context. On Karl-Marx-Straße, local business owners are n...

Having established the historical and structural context for Karl-Marx-Straße’s contemporary daily life as well as for local businesses’ survival, this chapter elaborates further on the underlying theoretical concepts that informed the selection process of certain businesses along Karl-Marx-Straße in order to explain why businesses are special site...

In this open access publication, the social cohesion of urban neighborhoods and their residents is examined, which is often viewed as vulnerable since increased mobility, individualization, wider socio-economic and demographic changes have fundamentally altered the basis for everyday social interaction in urban neighborhoods. Anna Steigemann gives...

The context and direction for this study was guided by the premise that storekeepers are important figures in neighborhood life, from which the three sets of sensitizing concepts were derived to help set the context and direction for my study. I combine the concepts of public characters and third place and use the nexus between them. It is often pu...

Zwei Jahre nach dem »Sommer der Flüchtlinge« 2015 sind viele Flüchtlinge im Alltag angekommen. Mancherorts wurde gegen die Aufnahme von Asylsuchenden Unbehagen formuliert - doch warum erfahren Flüchtlinge innerhalb ihrer Nachbarschaft oftmals Ablehnung? Die Beiträger_innen des Bandes nähern sich dieser Frage für Thüringen und beobachten dabei, wann...

With the increase of refugee movements since 2014 in Europe and the Near East, the debate of how to plan appropriate shelters and emergency accommodation has gained a new momentum. Established techno-managerial approaches have been criticised as inappropriate and the professional community of planners and architects was increasingly drawn into deba...

Das Paradigma der schrumpfenden Stadt hat in Thüringen wie in allen ostdeutschen Bundesländern die Vorstellung von der Entwicklung der Stadt geprägt und dazu geführt, dass der demographische Wandel als entscheidender Faktor angesehen wird. Konsequenterweise ist dieser Prozess von zum Teil stark rückgebauten Infrastruktur- und Versorgungseinrichtung...

The transformations of economic structures as well as of transportation and communication means have altered neighborhood-based interaction in the last decades. Therefore most urban studies argue that local neighborhoods have lost their function as places of sociability and solidarity. But if one looks at the more semipublic local contact sites and...

In 2015 more than one million refugees were seeking protection in the EU, the majority fleeing war and violence in the Middle East and heading towards a few EU-member states like Austria, Germany and Sweden. This is a small number compared to the overall prob-lem of persons being forced to leave their homes because of war and persecution. In 2016 t...

Increased ethnic diversity, a high degree of differentiation in income and education levels as well as lifestyles and related the socio-spatial changes have changed not only residential and commercial neighborhood structures, but also the range and level of local interactions and leisure time activities - with wide implications for neighborly coexi...