Samuel Mössner

Living the green city: Freiburg’s Solarsiedlung between narratives and practices of urban sustainable development.

The solar settlement (Solarsiedlung) in Freiburg, Germany, has been widely hailed as an eco-city or green city neighbourhood and a blueprint for sustainable urban development. However, as there is a noticeable lack of critical analysis of what constitutes Solarsiedlung as an “eco-city”, this paper studies narratives and practices of sustainable urban development. First, we look at Solarsiedlung as a best-practice model – a narrative that was produced and perpetuated by architects, urban planners, investors and academics celebrating this neighbourhood as a technologically leapfrogging, economically sound and socially integrated project. Second, we explore the everyday practices and lived experience of the residents in Solarsiedlung. Bringing together these two perspectives, we contribute to a more comprehensive understanding and critical reading of the interplay between the ecological, economic and social dimensions of sustainable development as seen from different viewpoints. Findings indicate that Solarsiedlung as a best-practice model is embedded in growth-oriented neoliberal strategies that are in conflict with the everyday practices and lived experience of the residents. Our findings put into question the widely assumed transferability of best-practice models in sustainable urban development.

Sustainable Urban Development as Consensual Practice: Post-Politics in Freiburg, Germany

Mössner S. Sustainable urban development as consensual practice: post-politics in Freiburg, Germany, Regional Studies. This article starts with the premise that eco-cities are and reflect political processes. Consequently, eco-city models are not objective manuals to a more sustainable urban world, but depend from political context. Drawing on empirical insights from the sustainable urban development in Freiburg, Germany, this article first traces the political process of modelling urban sustainability, and then shows how consensus-building appears as a political strategy whose aim is to depoliticize sustainable urban development and to relocate political decisions made in this context outside societal debate. The article contributes to a perspective that highlights the political dimension of urban sustainability.

Greenest cities? The (post-)politics of new urban environmental regimes:

Urban areas are increasingly recognized as strategic sites to address climate change and environmental issues. Specific urban projects are marketed as innovative solutions and best-practice examples, and so-called green cities, eco-cities and sustainable cities have emerged worldwide as leading paradigms in urban planning and policy discourse. The transformation of cities into eco-cities (Kenworthy, 2006; Roseland, 1997) is often based on big data and – widely varying – indicators that should proof the success of urban climate governance (Bulkeley, 2010). The European Commission with its ‘Green Capital’ program, Britain’s ‘Sustainable City Index’, France’s ‘EcoCité’ scheme, the US-American’s ‘Greenest City’ ranking developed by WalletHub’s, the US and Canada ‘Green City Index’ sponsored by Siemens – these programs are all examples of public and private initiatives aimed at identifying and ranking the ‘greenest’ city or cities according to a competitive rationality. They are mostly quantitative approaches, based on ‘hard’ and ‘scientific’ indicators that allow cities to be compared according to their efforts in sustainable urban development. Using these indicators, cities worldwide have increasingly promoted sustainability initiatives in order to position themselves advantageously on the global scene (Chang and Sheppard, 2013; Cugurullo, 2013; Swyngedouw and Kaika, 2014; While et al., 2004). These urban ranking efforts tie into the fact that sustainability has become a metaconsensual policy term (Gill et al., 2012), resting upon broad support from diverse sectors of society. Promoted at first as a way of bringing forward an ecological urban agenda connected to social development, sustainability has lost much of its transformative potential. By now, even car manufacturing in Germany, oil pipelines in Alberta, Canada and nuclear power plants worldwide are being politically justified with reference to sustainability and climate change prevention. Despite controversial national positions regarding the processes, pace and extend of implementing environmental policies – a divergence that became very evident, for example, during the 2009 United Nations

Quartiermanagement in der post-politischen Stadt

Ende der 1990er Jahre ruckte die Quartiersebene (wieder) in den Blick von Politik und Wissenschaft. Diese (Neu-)Ausrichtung war bedingt durch die Erkenntnis, dass „die Folgen der okonomischen und gesellschaftlichen Veranderungen am Ubergang ins 21. Jahrhundert“ (Kronauer/Vogel 2002: 1) vor allem in den Quartieren „wie in einem Brennglas“ (ebenda) bundelten. Nicht alle Menschen konnten von den Restrukturierungen stadtischer Arbeitsmarkte gleichermassen profitieren. Und durch die nicht-Integration in den (lokalen und geregelten) Arbeitsmarkt, nicht-Eingliederung in stabile, soziale Beziehungen und die Ausgrenzung gegenuber politischen Beteiligungsstrukturen verstarkten sich Exklusionsprozesse, in deren Folge Personen nicht nur raumlich an den Rand der Gesellschaft gedrangt wurden (Bohnke 2006).

Mensch und Gesellschaft

Aus sozialgeographischer Perspektive ist es interessant zu beobachten, wie Menschen innerhalb von Gesellschaften – in sozialer, aber auch in raumlicher Hinsicht – ihren Platz finden bzw. wie ihnen dieser Platz zugewiesen wird. Wie und weshalb kommt es zu einer Herausbildung von sozialen Gruppen und wie vollziehen sich Prozesse der sozialraumlichen Ausdifferenzierung? In diesem Kapitel soll gezeigt werden, wie eine sozialgeographische Perspektive dazu beitragen kann, Mensch und Gesellschaft in deren wechselseitigen Bezugen zur raumlichen Umwelt zu untersuchen. Zunachst werden einige Grundbegriffe der Sozialgeographie vorgestellt. Anschliesend werden Entwicklungslinien und theoretische Perspektiven der Sozialgeographie skizziert, bevor anhand einer Reihe von Beispielen nachvollzogen werden kann, wie es zur sozialen Differenzierung kommt und welche Rolle dabei raumbezogene Aspekte spielen.

SETTING THE GROUND FOR GLOBAL CITY FORMATION: NEOLIBERALISATION AND LOCAL ELITES IN FRANKFURT ON THE MAIN

Abstract This paper approaches the global city concept from a local perspective taking into account the political action of local elites in times of urban neoliberalisation. Drawing on the empirical research carried out in Frankfurt (Main), we argue that the very beginnings of the global city formation were less a result of global processes superseding local ones, as is often argued, but rather emerged out of local political action contested by local protests. In the first part, we will revisit the global city concept and contrast it against a critique of urban neoliberalisation. The second focuses on reviewing the history of urban restructuring in the Frankfurt Westend during the 1960s and 1970s. We suggest that the transformation of the Westend into a “strategic site of global control” (Sassen 2011) has been constructed as a narrative in order to legitimise local forms of real estate speculation, marketisation of commodification. Our paper tries to unfold the logics and strategies of such neoliberal urbanisation by critically reflecting upon historical events since the 1960s

Local Governance ohne Vertrauen: Die „Contratti di Quartiere“ in Mailand

In funf Quartieren in Mailand wurde zwischen den Jahren 2003/2004 ein integriertes Entwicklungsprogramm initiiert, betitelt als „Quartiersvertrag“ (Contratto di Quartiere II) 1. Ziel dieses nationalen Forderprogramms ist die Verbesserung der allgemeinen, sozialen Lebenslagen der Bevolkerung sowie die Aufwertung der baulichen Infrastruktur in den Quartieren. Hierfur wurde ein Vertrag zwischen den kommunalen Verwaltungssektoren der Stadt Mailand, der Regionalverwaltung der Lombardei, der Eigentumergesellschaft des offentlich-finanzierten Wohnungsbestands ALER2 (Aziende Lombarde Edilizia Residenziale), den Anwohnern und ihren Interessensvertretungen und weiteren zahlreichen, zumeist lokal agierenden Akteuren geschlossen. Aus der offiziellen Broschure, die von der Stadtverwaltung Mailands zu Informationszwecken herausgegebenen wurde, liest sich die Zielsetzung der Quartiersvertrage wie folgt: