16844

WiSe 16/17: From Squatters’ Capital to Creative Metropolis

Jens Manuel Lutz

Information for students

Is this course suitable for you? This seminar is open to students from all academic fields who are interested in the social production of cities. You should be interested in reflecting critically on the role of capital, state and social movements in shaping urban development. The aim of this seminar is to investigate the recent history of urban social movements in Berlin to provide insights into why and how Berlin was co-shaped from below. The city is still in the making and thus the seminar invites participants to develop not only a better understanding of why there is struggle but also to articulate a position on whose city it should be?

Workload and Assessment: In order to obtain 5 ECTS credits, you will have to

attend the course regularly (at least 13 out of 16 sessions);
study the weekly course materials (all texts in English);
participate actively in the discussions;
join a student team of 2-3 to co-facilitate one the sessions;
write a short protocol for one of the sessions;
pass the final written exam (90 minutes).

Comments

Subject: Berlin has undergone intense changes throughout the last three decades morphing from frontier city in the cold war era into Europe’s trendiest metropolis. Berlin’s development, however, is not only a result of shifts in political and economic systems on a national and global scale, but is also the result of local struggles. The city’s inhabitants have shaped the city, demanding and proposing their own urban visions and alternatives which often clashed with plans and projects of powerful elites and capital interests. This history of urban contestations contributes to the specific qualities of today’s Berlin: each generation of urban social movements has protested, resisted, and produced particular outcomes manifest in buildings, urban practices, sites of struggles, and policy changes.

Program: Drawing from urban studies literature and research on urban movements the seminar will introduce an understanding of urban social movements, their emergence and their impacts on urban development. The seminar will use different media, academic articles, movements’ pamphlets, and one excursion to cover some distinct historical phases and changing themes of urban contestations in Berlin:

the 1980s squatters’ movement in West-Berlin and squatting in re-unified Berlin in the early 1990s;
struggles against mega-projects and for free spaces in the emergent global and aspiring creative city;
struggles against gentrification, rising rents and for more citizen’s participation.