Virag Molnar

Reconfiguring Private and Public: State, Capital and New Housing Developments in Berlin and Budapest

This article explores how new planned housing developments have contributed to the restructuring of public and private space in contemporary Berlin and Budapest, two cities whose globalisation was complicated by major political and economic transformation during the past two decades. It draws on and extends research on gated communities to develop a relational approach that more adequately captures international variations of this housing form and the interplay of public and private space, actors and strategies, a new configuration of which defines the latest wave of these developments. Through this perspective, it is demonstrated how and why planned housing developments in Berlin and Budapest are different from the cases most frequently discussed in the gated community literature, and also from each other. The comparative case study highlights how housing offers an excellent research site to grasp the reconfiguration of the state and the complexity of private and public at the local level.

Reframing Public Space Through Digital Mobilization Flash Mobs and Contemporary Urban Youth Culture

Flash mobs have spread, like wildfire, across the globe in recent years fuelling new uses of urban public space. The media has wondered if these events are simply pointless pranks, creative public performances, or mass social experiments in community building. Existing research emphasizes only the vital role of digital communications technology in the mobilization process. In contrast, this analysis shows through a broad range of examples from New York, London, Berlin, Budapest to Tokyo that these nascent forms of collective action are also important to examine because they provide insight into the intersection and interaction between new communications media and changing uses of physical urban space. It situates flash mobs in a historical context, constructs a basic typology of flash mob activity based on extensive Internet research, and theorizes it as a new form of sociability. It also explores how these examples of urban creativity have inspired commerce and politics to rediscover urban space, increasingly borrowing the organizational techniques of flash mobs in marketing campaigns and social protests.