Badlands: Marginal Spaces and Urban Marginalities in (Post)Colonial France and West Germany

Christiane Reinecke (Universität Leipzig)

In urban topographies, some neighbourhoods are usually considered urban badlands: zones of marginalisation and tension that should be avoided. In order to explore the spatial dimension of social inequalities in Western European societies, the presentation traces the history of two such problem zones in the second half of the 20th century. It points to the influence of urban modernisation projects and decolonisation on urban marginality and on how it came to be dealt with by activists, social scientists, housing authorities, and the inhabitants in (post)colonial France and West Germany. It proposes to historicise urban inequality as a situated (and constantly shifting) assemblage of practices, knowledges and experiences.

Date:

December 05, 2018

Venue:

Internationales Kolleg Morphomata
Weyertal 59
50937 Köln