Housing in the Margins - (Ijurr Studies in Urban and Social Change Book) by Hanna Hilbrandt (Paperback)
About this item
Highlights
- Housing in the Margins offers a theoretically informed and empirically detailed exploration of unruly housing practices and their governance at the periphery of Berlin.
- About the Author: Hanna Hilbrandt is assistant professor of social and cultural geography at the University of Zurich.
- 192 Pages
- Social Science, Sociology
- Series Name: Ijurr Studies in Urban and Social Change Book
Description
Book Synopsis
Housing in the Margins offers a theoretically informed and empirically detailed exploration of unruly housing practices and their governance at the periphery of Berlin.
- An original empirical contribution to understanding housing precarity in the context of the German housing crisis
- A novel approach to theorizing the nexus of informality and the state in ways that bridge analytical divides between debates about Northern and Southern states
- An innovative account of urban development in Berlin that contributes to the limited discussions of urban informality in Euro-American cities
- A theoretical understanding of the ways in which negotiations and transgressions are embedded in the making of urban order
- A historically informed narrative of the development of allotment gardens in Berlin with a particular focus on housing practices at these sites
From the Back Cover
Critical shortages of affordable housing force people into housing precarity across the globe. Housing in the Margins is an exploration of unruly housing practices and their regulation in the context of the German housing crisis. Through ethnographic research on the ways in which Berliners dwell in allotment gardens (despite a law that prohibits housing at these sites) it illustrates how these gardeners negotiate the possibilities of residency with the local bureaucracy, gardening associations and amongst themselves. This analysis highlights the contested terrain of enacting regulations and the exclusions that these negotiations entail. Building on postcolonial urbanism, anthropology of the state and critical legal geography, the book draws attention to the power of negotiations in the governance of urban space, thereby outlining how the state is constructed and performed in the everyday.
About the Author
Hanna Hilbrandt is assistant professor of social and cultural geography at the University of Zurich. Her research explores marginality and exclusion in housing and urban development as well as socio-spatial inequalities in the context of global economic restructuring. Focusing predominantly on Mexico City and Berlin, her work pays close attention to the everyday politics of city-making and the structural constraints in which such practises are inscribed.
