Governance and politics
International migration
Inequalities
Urban and environmental movements
The series is explicitly interdisciplinary; the Editors judge books by their contribution to the field of critical urban studies rather than according to disciplinary origin. We are committed to publishing studies with themes and formats that reflect the many different voices and practices in the field of urban studies. Proposals may be submitted to Editor in Chief, Walter Nicholls ([email protected]), and further information about the series can be found at www.ijurr.org.
Walter Nicholls
Manuel Aalbers
Talja Blokland
Dorothee Brantz
Patrick Le Galès
Jenny Robinson
Acknowledgements
This book project has accompanied me for almost a decade. Many people, places, and institutions have shaped this journey and have to be thanked. I shall start by acknowledging the many respondents who were generous enough to open the doors into their lives and take time to answer my questions. I hope this book lives up to the ethical challenge this trust has posed.
Housing in the Margins started as my PhD thesis and the biggest thanks go to Allan Cochrane, John Allen, and Clive Barnett, who supervised this project and made the work on it a truly enjoyable experience. Allan Cochrane provided me with profound advice. I would also like to thank him for his incessant encouragement and belief in my work. Now that I myself am supervising PhD students, I am immensely grateful for being able to look back on such a valuable experience. John Allen’s thought-provoking commentary inspired me to think more precisely about my claims, and his ideas shaped my postdoctoral life probably more than he knows. Clive Barnett’s stimulating critiques always opened up new perspectives. My thanks extend to the Open University for providing me with financial, organizational, and intellectual support. At the OpenSpace Research Centre, I encountered great seminars, the opportunity to discuss my ideas, and fantastic companions who shared information, lunches, train rides to Milton Keynes, and after-work hours. In particular, Darren Umney listened and made me laugh, often via email, throughout three years of postgraduate research. At University College London, I was able to participate in the Stadtkolloquium group, where I would particularly like to thank Tauri Tuvikene and Susana Nevez Alves for joint conversations and first publishing experiences.
During my first fieldwork period in Berlin, I was welcomed as an associate fellow at the Center for Metropolitan Studies, and I would like to thank its staff and PhD fellows for their generous support. I developed much of my thinking by participating in its graduate school. The critical advice and companionship at the Center have been extremely valuable. Thanks also goes to the NYLON research network for two years of inspiring debate and special thanks to Christine Hentschel, whose shared enthusiasm for urban studies and tango made academia a much richer experience. At the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space (IRS), where I spent my first postdoctoral period, I would particularly like to thank Matthias Bernt for sharing his detailed insights on urban development in Berlin.
I want to use this opportunity to thank Monika Grubbauer at the HafenCity University Hamburg, who made further empirical research and the development of my PhD into a book possible in the first place. To be sure, she always had my back, especially by creating time for me in which I could write. Perhaps more importantly, I could not have been luckier to find such fruitful and formative exchange. I would also like to thank Karin Wildner for her visionary mentorship throughout my postdoctoral years in Hamburg.
Many friends supported me throughout this project, in particular, Hilke Berger, Maya Ifland, Steffanie Hofrichter, Nihad El-Kayed, Hannah Schilling, and Josefine Fokdal. Some deserve special mention: Coco Wolf Gediehn was a wonderful companion in the hunt for an allotment plot; Jenny Jungehülsing listened to my endless worries and ideas about the thesis; Francesca Weber-Newth shared in the ups and downs of my life between Germany, the UK, and many conferences, putting immense efforts into reading various drafts, and becoming a dear friend on this intellectual journey. Thanks also go to Michael Berger for contributing the book’s cover photo as well as some of the other images I use in this book. I am deeply grateful to Jacobo Rodriguez Mendoza for his unfailing and generous support, as well as his encouragement and inspiration. Finally, I would also like to express my gratitude to my family, Johanna, Eckhart, and Moritz Hilbrandt, for their patience and emotional support.
I feel honored to be able to publish this book in the SUSC series and thank Jennifer Robinson and Walter Nicholls for their editorial support. I am also grateful for Erin Troseth’s important contribution in copy-editing the final draft of this book, as well as for the support of Wiley.
Chapter 1 Introduction Housing in the Entanglements of Formality, Informality, and the State
Taking the train from Schönefeld airport, a visitor to Berlin rides through a vast area of urban allotments.1 Still on the periphery, the train follows the East–West divide that long defined the city, if not much of the world. Straight ahead, at a distance, a passenger can spot the tip of the Berlin TV Tower – the symbol of former East Berlin that marks today’s city center. Green garden plots, seemingly endless along both sides of the tracks, are cluttered with small and colorful allotment huts [Lauben].2 I have been asked if these sites are the “slums” of Berlin – or if people live in these huts. Certainly, from a distance, their spatial and social order is difficult to grasp.
This book delves into the everyday governance of housing at these sites. More particularly, it explores the gardeners’ scattered, unruly, and precarious dwelling practices as well as the multifaceted and frequently contradictory efforts to regulate them. It examines these negotiations with an interest in learning about the mechanisms through which room for maneuver is gained and constrained in the everyday (re)production of urban order and the exclusions these processes entail.
One way of approaching this task is by framing the practices under examination through the notion of informality. Since the 1970s, researchers have used this concept to describe the unauthorized construction and inhabitation of urban space, particularly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America (ILO, 1972; Hart, 1973; Hann and Hart, 2011). These themes remain, as Tonkiss writes, “a major plot-line in the story of contemporary urbanization” (2012: 55), although today, critical scholarship employs the notion of informality to consider the ambiguities of state regulation, rather than the phenomena that lie beyond the oversight of state institutions (Roy, 2009a; McFarlane, 2012). In this critical understanding, the concept provides a starting point for describing the scene above through the incoherencies of state and urban governance in regulating housing at these sites.
Another way of approaching the theme of this book is by exploring the enactment of rules in everyday practices of regulatory enforcement. Dwelling in Berlin’s allotment gardens breaches the rules of the law, but it is also marked by other forms of intense regulation. Rather than being characterized through spontaneity, the construction of allotment huts is embedded in long-standing traditions of city life. Sheds transgress building codes but are organized strictly on clearly fenced plots. Although buildings are erected without permits, they are systematically serviced with water and electricity. Their residents exceed use rights, but they comply elsewhere with registration commitments. A closer look at the housing situation in the gardens provides insights into the ways in which transgressions
