The Game of Urban Regeneration: Culture & Community in London 2012 and Berlin's Mediaspree 9783839444863

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Francesca Weber-Newth The Game of Urban Regeneration

Urban Studies

Francesca Weber-Newth (Dr.) is a British-German sociologist based in Berlin, Germany. Having worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Humboldt University Berlin, she is currently responsible for public participation in the redevelopment of the former airport Tempelhof.

Francesca Weber-Newth

The Game of Urban Regeneration Culture & Community in London 2012 and Berlin’s Mediaspree

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de © 2019 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover layout: Maria Arndt, Bielefeld Cover illustration: Francesca Weber-Newth Printed by docupoint GmbH, Magdeburg Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-4486-9 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-4486-3 https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839444863

Capital… is what makes the games of society – not least, the economic game – something other than simple games of chance… Pierre Bourdieu

Content

Acknowledgements  | 9 Preface  | 11

1 Introduction  | 15 What is Urban Regeneration? | 18 Contemporary Urban Planning Paradigms | 21 Resistance to Urban Regeneration | 25 Ways of Seeing Urban Regeneration  | 29 Case Studies | 33 Aims and Structure of the Book | 44

2 Urban Development Policy  | 47 London & Berlin as Political Spaces  | 47 London & Berlin as Economic Spaces  | 50 The Challenges of Globalisation & Practices of Neoliberalism | 55 The Evolution of British & German Urban Policy | 58 A European Focus on Social Exclusion | 64

3 The Game of Urban Regeneration  | 67 Bourdieu’s Conceptual Framework | 68 The Playing Field of Urban Regeneration | 74 Players & Strategies | 79

4 ‘Culture’ in Urban Regeneration  | 91 Culture in Politics & Theory | 91 How Planners Conceive & Make Culture | 97 How Theory Defines Culture  | 99 History & Culture: Competing Narratives | 102 Materialising Culture | 131

5 ‘Community’ in Urban Regeneration  | 145 Community in Politics & Theory | 145 Diy Urbanism as ‘Dynamic Community’ | 155 Protest Networks: Re-Inventing the Language of Community? | 185

6 Conclusion  | 205 The Instruments of Battle | 206 Concluding Remarks | 213

References  | 215

Acknowledgements

This book would not exist without the advice, friendship and love of many people. transcript have been a pleasure to work with. Thank you for the incredibly smooth cooperation, especially Jakob Horstmann for being supportive of the project from the first telephone call onwards. The manuscript began as a doctoral dissertation at the University of Aberdeen, and I owe many thanks to my supervisors Janet Stewart and David Inglis for their incisive feedback (whether in person, via email or Skype), for steering me in the right direction, and ultimately for the freedom to move to Berlin to carry out research in 2011 – where I have remained ever since. During my PhD, the Center for Metropolitan Studies (CMS) at the Technical University of Berlin provided me with an intellectual home and a desk for over three years – I am incredibly grateful that the term ‘visiting research fellow’ was stretched so generously. A huge thank you goes to Dorothee Brantz for making the fellowship possible, and to Elizabeth Asche and Frau Nickel for making me feel welcome from day one. My office mates Emily Bereskin, Manuel Lutz and Baris Ülker made it a stimulating and jolly place to work. Paul Jones of Liverpool University was my external viva examiner, and from his close reading of my text and astute critiques and comments, I was able to draw new insights for editing the manuscript. During my fieldwork phase in London I was motivated and inspired by fellow researchers (and activists) working on the topic of London 2012, especially Isaac Marrero-Guillamón, Jude Bloomfield, Chris Dorley-Brown, Adelita Husni-Bey, Paul Watt, Hilary Powell, Michelle Johansen, Richard Brown and Penny Bernstock. Through collaborations (newspaper articles, public talks, a poem-walk) I saw the breadth of imaginative ways to articulate critique, which has left a lasting impression on the way I understand, appreciate (and practice) communication.

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I worked as postdoc at the Humboldt University’s cultural and social geography department during the revision from dissertation to book manuscript. Ilse Helbrecht, chair of the department, influenced me with her mantra that research must go beyond ‘the edge’ of what we know – and reassured me that 8 hours sleep are necessary. My colleagues, the KuSo team – Barbara Richter, Beatrice Walthall, Carolin Genz, Christoph Sommer, Friederike Enssle, Henning Füller, Holger Wilcke, Lewis Asante, Oliver Grübner, Peter van Gielle Ruppe, Sebastian Schlüter – were a great bunch to theorize with. Although I didn’t discuss this book with my students, they nevertheless reminded me, on a weekly basis, why academia is so important. I owe my interviewees many thank yous. They shared their stories with me – and this book would not have been possible without their generosity. I was never happier than when out with my Dictaphone, trying to piece together the complexity of urban development through their perspectives. My close friends in London and Berlin have encouraged me, continuously, in different ways. Hanna Hilbrandt not only commented on chapters, but also made conferences and life in Berlin a treat. Jessica Griggs and Anne Briggs have been on the other end of WhatsApp whenever work or life needs some careful evaluation. Cheri Neilson and Judith Gärtner were there to make sure my mind and body remained in sync, by means of regular runs around Tempelhof. I owe special thanks to Alex Gabbay, Arianne Reiche, Carolyn Whitten, Claire Stancliffe, Diana Abbas, Jenny Slattery, Johanna Schlaack, Julia Rawlins, Kat Gordon, Kate Harwood, Katie Herbert, Laura Williams, Luke Posthelthwaite, Marianne Hofmann, Mark Thomlinson, Michael Berger, Patrick Barton, Richard Brand, Ruth Mayer, Tim Gärtner, Tom Feltham, and Vicky Zalin for reminding me that there is also life away from my laptop. Inge and Ian, you are uniquely fantastic. I have inherited from you boundless curiosity and stubborn genes – without which these 200 pages would surely not have materialised. Nico, you caught me by surprise, thank you for being my number one cheerleader. Berlin, January 2019

Acknowledgements

P reface A month before the final manuscript for this book was due I visited Hackney Wick Fish Island, the London case study. The neighbourhood is close to where I grew up in North London and since my fieldwork began there in 2012, I felt as if I had grown to understand many of its quirks and contradictions. I had a grasp on its social history and had become familiar with its residents and future development plans. Yet when I visited the neighbourhood this time, having been away for 18 months, I found I had underestimated the speed of change, despite being aware that I had seen these plans in the making. While many of my favourite spots remained – for example, the view from the (now refurbished) Overground station, the cover image of this book – my eyes widened when I saw ‘warehouse style’ apartments for sale, advertising roof gardens, concierge and a gym. I squirmed at the word style, knowing that 2 years ago there was in fact a warehouse here. Putting aside this initial, unfiltered response at the pastiche (which relates to one central idea in the book; the commercialisation of culture), the bigger question I asked myself was: Is the analysis in this book still relevant? Precisely because of these changes – material and social – this book remains more relevant than ever. It is the mechanism producing these visible changes that is important, and which lies at the heart of the book’s analysis. In other words, only by understanding how, why and for whom these very tangible neighbourhood changes were made, can we make any reasonable evaluation, or critique, or demand a different path. So while this book represents a particular snapshot in time – an analysis of how culture and community as concepts appear in urban regeneration, and what they mean for different stakeholders – the point is that it also lays bare a pattern of urban regeneration that has implications beyond the case study neighbourhoods, and beyond London and Berlin. I don’t want to regurgitate the conclusions here (feel free to skip straight to chapter 6). In a nutshell, this book demonstrates the difficulty planners face negotiating priorities; irresolvable contradictions in scale (global strategic goals? local needs?). In practice, an alignment with a ‘growth first’ logic means that neighbourhood needs can never be met. In a sense, then, the book is a call to strengthen critical accounts of structural inequalities. It remains a collective task to keep the conversation going and provide new empirical insights. A considerable challenge is not falling into the

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same trap as those we critique. For example, there is a danger in idealising Berlin as a site for alternative lifestyles and experimentation and exoticizing the city’s situation. Unreflective hype can contribute to the end of these freedoms, spurring precisely the kind of neoliberal tendencies that are problematic. Since completing the fieldwork, I have worked between academia and more practice-based urban development, which has given me new perspectives on operationalizing policy. Berlin’s municipal government has set unprecedented targets for the construction of new housing and has simultaneously adopted a new agenda around citizen participation. If the book has a ‘take away’ in this context, it is an appeal for dialogue between civil society, government, and business. Citizen participation in urban regeneration projects should be transparent and efforts should be made to include hard-to-reach groups. The consequences of exclusion – or ‘leaving people behind’ – are evident not only in the UK Brexit referendum results of 2016 but also with the election of President Donald Trump. This is a stark illustration of what is at stake – social justice, and ultimately democracy.

Figures Chapter 1 Figure 1.1 Figure 1.2 Figure 1.3 Figure 1.4 Figure 1.5 Figure 1.6 Figure 1.7 Figure 1.8 Figure 1.9 Figure 1.10 Figure 1.11 Figure 1.12 Figure 1.13 Figure 1.14

Urban intervention, Hackney Wick Fish Island Placard against the Mediaspree developments, Berlin Map of London Map of Hackney Wick Fish Island & 2012 Olympic site Wick Village Wallis Road Lea Navigation Canal with White Building Hackney Wick Overground station Map of Berlin Map of Rudolfkiez & Mediaspree development plans RuDi Community Centre Renovated block with Zwingli church Lautizia residential housing block Stralauer Allee

Acknowledgements

Chapter 4 Figure 4.1 Figure 4.2 Figure 4.3 Figure 4.4 Figure 4.5 Figure 4.6 Figure 4.7 Figure 4.8

Forman’s Riviera Eton Manor poem, Olympic site Trowbridge Estate Senior Citizens Trowbridge Estate Towers (undated) Ron Barnes (1974) A Licence to Live The White Building, Hackney Wick Fish Island Oberbaum City, BASF tower in the background Facade of Oberbaum City

Chapter 5 Figure 5.1 Figure 5.2 Figure 5.3 Figure 5.4 Figure 5.5 Figure 5.6 Figure 5.7 Figure 5.8 Figure 5.9

Stour Space during Hackney WICKED Festival Vittoria Wharf event flyer Clays Lane Estate prior to demolition Clays Lane Live Archive, Supplement Gallery Holzmarkt site Board at the entrance of the Holzmarkt site Demonstration against Mediaspree developments Mediaspree Versenken flyer Alessandra Chilá’s photograph of Hackney Wick

All images are the author’s own unless otherwise stated.

Abbreviations BBC B-plan BSR CDU CON CPO DCMS EU

British Broadcasting Association Bebauungsplan (development plan) BEHALA Berliner Hafen- und Lagerhausgesellschaft (Berlin Dock and Warehouse Company) Berliner Stadtreinigungsbetriebe (Berlin Municipal Refuse Collection) Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (Christian Democratic Party of Germany) Counter Olympics Network Compulsory Purchase Order Department for Culture, Media and Sport European Union

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e.V. FDP GDR GLA GLC GmbH GuK HWFI IBA IOC LB LCC LDA LLDC LOCOG LTGDC ODA OPLC PPP SenStadt SED SPD UDC UK V&A WWII

Eingetragener Verein (registered association) Freie Demokratische Partei Deutschlands (Free Democratic Party of Germany) German Democratic Republic Greater London Authority Greater London Council Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung (Ltd, limited liability company) Genossenschaft für Urbane Kreativität (Cooperative for Urban Creativity) Hackney Wick Fish Island Internationale Bauaustellung (International Building Exhibition) International Olympic Committee London Borough London County Council London Development Agency London Legacy Development Corporation London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games London Thames Gateway Development Corporation Olympic Delivery Authority Olympic Park Legacy Company Public-Private Partnership Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung (Senate Department for Urban Development) Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany) Urban Development Corporation United Kingdom Victoria & Albert Museum World War Two

1 Introduction

A wooden board is stuck into the soil of a new, smartly designed concrete flowerbed. The board transforms the flowerbed into a grave, and this was clearly the intention of its creator. Scrawled in red paint, the epitaph reads “HACKNEY WICK R.I.P” (see figure 1.1). What does this urban intervention represent? The angry voice of a displaced artist, no longer able to pay her rent? A political response to oncoming gentrification, lamenting the bygone ‘community’ of the area, symbolically killed by Olympic-led regeneration? A sign of the neighbourhood’s vibrant artistic ‘culture’? Or can we interpret it as the embodiment of bottom-up localism, vandalism, or NIMBYism? Perhaps all of the above. Speculating on the origins and meanings of this small-scale urban intrusion provokes many possible stories but, whatever narratives we may imagine, the intervention tells us something about the ambiguity and tensions between urban regeneration as a policy and how it is experienced within neighbourhoods1. The newly installed street furniture into which the wooden intervention is planted represents the ‘new face’ of regener1 | Throughout the book I refer to practices, interactions and negotiations in the neighbourhood context. I use this formulation to make a point about the scale at which I am referring to, rather than as a way to assert ‘this is real’ or suggest that ‘the local’ provides evidence of truth. Thomas F. Gieryn (2006) has highlighted some of the contentions associated with proximity-as-evidence. In reference to the Chicago School of urban studies (1918 -1932), Gieryn argues that by conceptualising the city as a laboratory, field-site and consequently a “truth-spot” – ‘place’ is used to legitimise scientific claims and ‘being there’ becomes part of claiming authority (Gieryn 2006: 6). My reference to neighbourhood, street, and even city should therefore be understood within the context of critical analyses of ‘place’ in relation to empirical credibility.

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ated Hackney Wick Fish Island: the flowerbed and adjoining seat were conceived by public realm specialists muf architecture/art and funded by the government quango London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC). The playful reconstruction of space was intended to encourage a new perception and use of space, catalysed by London 2012 Olympic investment, but evidently at least one voice remained critical. Figure 1.1 “Hackney Wick R.I.P.” Sign planted into a flowerbed, Hackney Wick Fish Island, August 2012

There are similar signs of discontent in Germany’s capital, Berlin: red letters sprayed onto a wooden board. At a demonstration against the Mediaspree developments along the River Spree, a woman holds a placard that reads “NEE, NEE, NEE…MEDIASPREE” (“No, No, No…Mediaspree”, see figure 1.2). In contrast to the anonymous Hackney Wick sign, the author

1 Introduction

makes herself known, the subject of the protest is named, and the sign is one of many within an organised demonstration. But there are also many unknowns. The sign could represent a critique of Mediaspree for a wide variety of reasons, including the architectural style of new buildings, lack of public space along the river, or the displacement of subcultures. However, fundamentally, the placard can be analysed as a symbol of a wider discourse against Mediaspree-led regeneration, which is transforming brownfield land along the River Spree. Therefore, despite obvious differences, there are important parallels between the interventions in London and Berlin: both interventions, read as symbols of discontent, challenge the normative conception that urban space is being ‘revitalised’ or ‘regenerated’ – being given new life. Figure 1.2 “NEE, NEE, NEE…MEDIASPREE” (“NO, NO, NO… MEDIASPREE”), sign displayed during a demonstration against the Mediaspree developments along the River Spree, Berlin, July 2013

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Urban regeneration is represented in urban policy as salvation for individuals and their communities – ultimately creating “a city of the future for all” (Thomas and Imrie 1999: 106, italics added). The changes associated with post-Fordist economic restructuring, specifically the decline in industries such as coal, steel and textiles, mean that industrial spaces such as docks and factory landscapes largely lose their original functions. Articulating these broad economic shifts, urban policy seeks to re-calibrate urban space to suit the needs of global economic activity in which capital is mobile. In this process investors are attracted, the knowledge economy is stimulated, and a new social and spatial ecology is catalysed. In the last thirty years or so, large-scale regeneration projects (sometimes referred to as ‘mega projects’) have become an increasingly popular means of implementing these changes and spurring economic growth (Harvey 2008). However, the two photographs above indicate that urban regeneration – specifically urban regeneration via large-scale investment projects (in this case London 2012 and Mediaspree) – does not always represent salvation for individuals and their communities. The notion that urban regeneration brings new life remains contested. This inherent tension was the focus of activist and urban researcher Jane Jacobs (1961/1992). Jacobs provided an important critique of 1950s urban planning, and was perhaps the first researcher to make explicit the ambiguity between perceptions of the life and death of urban space. While urban policy focuses on a language of positive terms to characterise urban regeneration – life, rebirth, revival, revitalisation and renewal – for some individuals and groups urban restructuring means the end of previous uses and functions, and consequently the ‘death’ of certain places. The images above thus provide a starting point for insights into the complex relationship between neighbourhood spaces and large-scale urban change. This book argues that the way in which ‘urban regeneration’ is understood and experienced by different people tells us for whom urban space is conceived and produced.

W hat is U rban R egener ation ? Urban regeneration is an urban policy agenda, a political discourse, a metaphor and a social construction. Textbooks typically define urban regeneration as any development or reconstruction within cities and

1 Introduction

towns (Tallon 2013: 4), or in economic terms, as reinvestment in disinvested spaces (Porter and Shaw 2013: 241; Slater 2011; Smith 2006). It often includes multiple objectives, encompassing wide-ranging economic, physical, cultural and political spheres, and should therefore be seen as a set of processes; a method and practice shaped by the public and private sectors, or partnerships between them (PPPs). Policies often include a mix of housing, health services, ‘community empowerment’, economic restructuring, image marketing and physical infrastructure changes. As such, urban regeneration strategies have become a tried and tested strategy for central governments hoping to catalyse brownfield redevelopment, re-valorise deprived inner city neighbourhoods and promote social cohesion (Lees 2008). The term ‘urban regeneration’ reflects the idea of the city as an organism, with local areas (body parts) requiring intervention to be healed, repaired or re-generated. In the last two decades urban policy has imagined regeneration as the means to achieve social inclusion, with increasingly formulaic ‘offthe-shelf ’ policies pursued in the hope of catalysing urban dynamism and economic profit (Porter and Shaw 2013). It is regarded as evidence of a commitment to social justice and sustainable progress and ultimately, to achieving a more equal society. Yet, urban regeneration relies on the construction of an ‘urban problem’, usually poverty or deprivation, that policy can remedy (Porter and Shaw 2013). Crucial here is the western European experience of economic restructuring – the transformation of nation states from Fordist production and industrial landscapes to post-industrial spaces of the service sector. Factories and warehouses that once served as productive industrial spaces fell into disrepair, with the physical and social impacts highly visible. Unemployment, poor infrastructure and disused sites justify the focus of policy interventions on “poor people, poor places” (Furbey 1999: 440). Some, by now classic, urban sociology texts have analysed the influence of business over urban policy (Friedland 1982), and displacement of marginalised residents and small businesses from neighbourhoods (Gans 1962). More recently, scholars from varying disciplines have highlighted the ‘dark side’ of regeneration by analysing its intersection with gentrification and social exclusion (Bader and Bialluch 2013; Lees 2008; Porter and Shaw 2013; Slater 2006; Smith 2002). They have not only illuminated the everyday experiences of marginalised groups within spaces of regeneration (Bernstock 2014; Kennelly and Watt 2012), but also the struggles

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against regeneration policies (Colomb 2009) and the ways that art practices can challenge the production of top-down consensus (Powell and Marrero-Guillamón 2012). Critical urban scholars demonstrate that urban regeneration is not “for all” if government policies focus on the creation of competitive cities, attracting investment and middle-class populations to inner-city areas, rather than tackling structural inequality (Weber-Newth et al. 2017). In this sense, urban regeneration policies that serve the interests of more affluent and highly educated populations challenge the “right to the city” of low-income residents (Lefebvre 1974/1991). The negative consequences of urban regeneration, including increased land values, displacement and social exclusion mean that urban regeneration can be analysed as a euphemism for gentrification (see Lees et al. 2013 for a detailed discussion of gentrification as the leading edge of neoliberal urbanism). While attracting middle-class and ‘creative’ populations to the city is often seen as a valuable (economic) strategy for ‘saving’ neglected areas (Florida 2005), Loretta Lees argues that there is a “poor evidence base for positive gentrification”, suggesting instead that “gentrification is part of an aggressive, revanchist ideology designed to take the inner city for the middle classes” (Lees 2008: 2457). While critical scholars do not dispute that re-investment, jobs and infrastructure are needed in these areas, many question the agenda on which the policies of regeneration are founded, since inner-city poverty and deprivation are also significant barriers to a global city status. According to this perspective urban regeneration is embedded in political ideological visions, which are masked by narratives of ‘inclusion’, ‘community’ and ‘participation’. Put simply, while state intervention aims to catalyse market reinvestment, the consumption-orientated ‘remedies’ do not necessarily help those most in need 2 . Along these lines Mark Featherstone describes regeneration as 2 | It is important to note the contextual and cultural disparities between discourses of gentrification in the UK and Germany. Gentrification is a much-debated topic in Berlin, with both policy makers and academics engaging in lively public debates about the dangers of displacement (Bernt et al. 2013; Häussermann and Kapphan 2000; Holm 2006; Krätke and Borst 2000; Mayer 2003). The value of tenant rights (Mietrecht) in Berlin is a sign that while gentrification may be an unstoppable force, there are some mechanisms that prevent its use as state policy. In London “super-gentrification” processes are underway (Lees 2003: 2487) whereby gentrification is a normative process, promoted by policymakers.

1 Introduction

a “‘language game of post-Thatcherite hyper rational utopianism’ which constructs the de-industrialised city as a business to be saved through the advance of market principles” (2013: 181). This is an important analysis, particularly because narratives of derelict post-industrial wastelands are at the heart of both the Berlin and London case studies explored in this book. This book sits within a tradition of critical accounts of urban regeneration asking the fundamental (if not always overt) question: urban regeneration for whom? A starting point is an understanding of urban regeneration as produced (Lefebvre 1974/1991) by what John Mollenkopf (1981) calls the ‘pro-growth coalition’ of investors, developers, businesspeople and policy makers as well as by activists, academics and local residents. To contextualise the London and Berlin case studies, it is important to consider urban regeneration as typically planned and practiced via planning paradigms, and these are the focus of the next section.

C ontempor ary U rban P l anning Par adigms There are three contemporary urban planning paradigms, which are particularly valuable in framing the analysis in this book: the mega-project, the tourist city and the creative city. In European cities, mega-projects (also referred to as ‘large-scale urban development projects’) can be seen as a strategy to defy global competition. Their defining features are their scale, development for a mix of uses, combination of public and private financing, and primary goal of economic development (Lehrer and Laidley 2008; Moulaert and Sekia 2003). Although contemporary mega-projects are inheritors of the large-scale projects of the 1950s and 60s, the ‘new’ mega-projects of the last 10 years display distinct differences to their modernist forefathers (Diaz Orueta and Fainstein 2008), often with a more sensitive approach regarding community displacement and environmental impacts. Nevertheless, critiques of contemporary mega-projects (such as highways, airports or Olympic sites) focus on the fact that they are initiated top-down, tend to displace existing residents and primarily serve business interests. Some critics suggest that the mega-project planning paradigm is so ingrained – an inevitable new urban reality – that discussion of alternative planning practices is rare. Erik Swyngedouw’s notion of ‘post-political’ urban governance (2007) provides one perspective on why this could be the case. Large-scale regeneration can be seen a com-

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ponent of neoliberal urban politics, which does not come under political scrutiny, precisely because it is intrinsically part of an agenda that crosses party allegiance. Large-scale regeneration is therefore a ‘taken for granted’ model of urban growth that need not be challenged, at least at the decision-making level. Mega-projects are typically conceptualised within the frame of tourist-led regeneration, thus spanning the circle between tourism, culture and regeneration. The tourist city is imagined by planners as a stage for consumption and pleasure “saturated with signs and images to the extent that anything can become represented, thematised and made an object of interest” (Featherstone 1991: 101). City authorities aim to attract visitors to an area, catalyse local economies and attract further business and real-estate investment. This involves re-constructing land use so that short-term visitors have an attractive, unique and locally distinctive city to visit, with all the necessary amenities: accommodation, restaurants, leisure activities and ‘authentic’ cultural activities (see Füller and Michel 2014 on ‘new urban tourism’ in Berlin-Kreuzberg). This relies on a strong city identity or brand, which the tourist industry can sell to a national or international market, often based on cultural heritage (such as markets, museums or cafés) and physical structures (such as churches or museums as architectural sites of interest). However, research shows that attempts to produce a city for tourists often sanitises a city’s identity and the messy realities of its citizens (Porter and Shaw 2013: 245). Neil Smith argues that “gentrification proceeds in a tense affinity with tourism” (1996: 36), describing this shift in the political economy as “the new urban frontier” in the “revanchist city”. Overlapping with the logic of the tourist city, culture-led regeneration endorsed via the creative city relies on the marketing of place and city branding, focused on drawing out the symbolic capital of culture in cities. Concretely, this can involve historical preservation, museum refurbishment and the promotion of art galleries, but can also include promoting café and market culture. Fundamentally, culture and ‘creativity’ are favoured as tools for urban regeneration due to the equation that money follows culture. The creative city has thus been presented by policymakers as a key to solving the ‘urban crisis’ (Florida 2002, 2005; Krätke 2004), by spurring local economic development (Kunzmann 2004) and catalysing investment. While the creative city agenda was deemed innovative in the mid-1990s, culture-led regeneration has now become a popular policy strategy and global planning initiative. However, there has been sustained

1 Introduction

critique of the creative city agenda. Culture-led policies primarily serve the real estate industry, fundamentally translating the value of culture into an economic asset. Richard Florida (2002) has been a key figure in promoting the idea of the measurable economic value of creativity and culture, epitomised by his ‘creativity index’. The index demonstrates how easily the symbolic capital of culture in cities can be instrumentalised, reduced to evaluation (Campbell et al. 2017), and how this can lead to the rating and ranking urban environments; a “powerful means of controlling cities” (Zukin 1995: 1). The paradox of marketing the creative industries as part of a regeneration strategy is not only that these industries commodify culture and catalyse neighbourhood gentrification (including their own displacement) but also that regeneration projects, which claim distinctiveness because of artists or ‘creatives’ living in the neighbourhood, “become a parody of the unique” (Zukin 1982: 190). How exactly the ‘creative class’ are defined, and by whom, are urgent questions, especially when talking about a ‘creative class’ frames a target group for urban planners (Rosler 2010). Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello (1999/2005) argue that the notion of ‘creativity’ represents the harnessing of artistic critique by capitalism, thereby neutralising the subversive potential of the aesthetic strategies and ethos of counterculture, transforming them into new forms of control (this is an important feature of consumer culture, see for example Arnould and Thompson 2005 for an overview of consumer culture theory). This analysis and critique is important when considering the seductiveness of ‘creativity’ strategies within prevailing neoliberal development fixes: “Creativity strategies presume, work with, and subtly re-make the neoliberalized terrain of urban politics, placing commodified assets like the arts and street culture into the sphere of interurban competition” (Peck 2007: 11). The approach to ‘solving’ urban decline by creating ‘creative quarters’ not only displaces artists and subcultural groups but also overlooks those who are not characterised as ‘creative’ at all: often former factory workers, whose workplaces are the sites of the leisure activities of the ‘creatives’. Therefore people with the least socio-economic and ‘creative’ capital (Krätke 2012) have the most to lose in the cycle of rapid reinvestment after disinvestment. This tension between attracting new cultures (often media and IT professionals) and building on the cultures already present (local artists and existing working class residents) is an

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ambiguity explored extensively in the empirical discussion, with a focus on how urban policy-makers deal with these paradoxes. The three contemporary planning paradigms discussed here provide a fundamental basis for the analysis of the case studies in chapters four and five. Both London 2012 and Mediaspree in Berlin were conceived as mega-projects, aiming to catalyse local investment. In London, the Olympic Games as a ‘mega event’ aimed to attract international attention (Roche 2006); the wider goal was to bring Stratford and the East End into the (tourist and investor) imagination as part of wider London, particularly by marketing the area as a place to consume. Westfield shopping centre is a sign that the area is symbolically ‘safe’ for visitors. This involved ‘de-risking’ East London (Smith 2014), for example with the security and surveillance infrastructure built for 2012, much of which has remained (Fussey et al. 2011). In Berlin ‘staging the city’ through tourism-led marketing and regeneration (Colomb 2012b) was especially relevant post-1989 in bolstering the image of the new capital city of Germany. Aligning with this, Mediaspree developments were initially conceptualised as a megaproject, planned between public and private partners and following the formula of privatising land and providing subsidies for developers. In both the London and Berlin case studies, disinvested spaces were appropriated by alternative cultures, which flourished in post-wall Berlin and edge-land Hackney Wick Fish Island. In both cases the spaces of former industrial production were reimagined as spaces of freedom for alternative cultural expressions, although not always free from the production of economic capital. In London and Berlin these existing (lucrative and ‘cool’) cultures were to some extent marketed to create an identity (or brand) for the neighbourhoods, a means to attract investment and catalyse urban development. In Hackney Wick Fish Island former industrial buildings had been attracting artists since the 1990s, which became relevant and interesting for those working on the spatial planning around the London 2012 Olympic site. In Berlin, which is often promoted as the “creative capital” of Germany (Colomb 2012a), Regionalmanagement Mediaspree branded the existing alternative cultures along the River Spree to catalyse investment for waterfront real estate (see also Krätke 2012: 163 for a detailed discussion of the cultural economy in Berlin). However, while planning professionals work with guiding principles for urban change, these are not always accepted at neighbourhood level – this is the focus of the next section.

1 Introduction

R esistance to U rban R egener ation Protest and resistance to urban regeneration signal dissatisfaction with the agenda and practices of urban planning, and often demand citizen inclusion in the process (see Castells 1983 or Mayer 2013 for a detailed discussion on the history and development of ‘urban social movements’). Contemporary urban struggles often challenge neoliberal urbanism (Novy and Colomb 2013: 3), specifically neoliberal planning paradigms such as the mega-project, tourist-city or creative city. While ‘participation’, ‘democracy’ and ‘transparency’ are typical demands in resistance against urban regeneration – political, economic and cultural context plays a significant role in the different national expressions of resistance. In Berlin there is currently a lively debate concerning the future of the city and the potential of informal, bottom-up interventions in Berlin’s urban development. Three examples demonstrate the potential of activism on the city’s urban policy and planning. The first example is the tenant initiative Kotti & Co., a protest group that has not only gained attention from the media but also drawn wide support from politicians and academics. Kotti & Co. set up a ‘gecekondu’ protest camp in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district in May 2012. The camp was open 24 hours per day and made a statement against the Berlin Senate’s 2011 policy of uncapped rent increases for privately-owned subsidised housing (social housing). While the political demands of the group are specific, the wider political message concerns displacement, gentrification, new forms of segregation, and the role of migration in the future of Berlin (Kotti & Co. 2014). A second urban planning debate centres on Tempelhofer Feld, the former airport that was opened as a park in 2008 and has since become the temporary home of various ‘pioneer’ projects organised by the Senate. A referendum in May 2014 decided whether the park should remain entirely free from development, or whether the 386-hectare inner-city space can afford Randbebauung (developments on its borders) as a means to alleviate housing pressure in Berlin. With 65 percent of voters deciding to keep the park 100 per cent free from development (in line with demands from the citizen initiative 100% Tempelhofer Feld), the debates have frequently raised questions around what kind of community is able to appropriate the space, now and in the future. One of the interpretations offered on the referendum is that citizens used their vote not merely to counter the specific development plans for Tempelhof but also as a more general form

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of protest against the top-down tendencies of the Senate’s urban development policy (Haben und Brauchen 2014). A third debate in Berlin focuses on the policies of Berlin’s Liegenschaftsfond, the company whose task it is to sell publicly-owned real estate. Since 2011, the citizen initiative Stadt Neudenken (Rethink the City) has pushed the Senate to reconsider its policy of selling state-owned land (often in the city centre) to the highest bidder, demanding that the development and allocation of publicly-owned real estate be used as an instrument to foster social and cultural diversity. More recently, the citizen initiative Stadt von Unten (City from Below) increased this pressure on the city, specifically promoting affordable housing and increased participation. Since 2015, the state-owned real estate company (Berliner Immobilienmanagement GmbH) has taken over the management and sale of state-owned land, with the aim of improving transparency. While it remains questionable whether this signals a new (more socially-orientated) politics concerning real estate, in two cases – Haus der Statistik and Dragoner-Areal – the sale of state-owned land/property to a private investor was prevented or reversed. These mobilisations suggest a convergence: “Berlin is currently experiencing a remarkable rise of protests and social movements struggling for the ‘Right to the City’ across many different arenas” (Bernt et al. 2013: 206). However, a particular cause for concern for scholars and activists in Berlin is the role of ‘creatives’ within protest groups, specifically the instrumentalisation and co-option of subcultural milieus, integrated into city marketing discourses. Johannes Novy and Claire Colomb (2013) have been critical of ‘The Right to the City’ slogan in its use by artists and so-called ‘creatives’. They suggest this struggle reflects the fight for their corner of city space rather than a collective struggle for public good. The protest coalition formed in opposition to the Mediaspree scheme – Mediaspree Versenken (Sink Mediaspree) – demands a fundamental change in the direction of planning policy, a communicative and participative approach, and in the past has used creative methods to demonstrate for “bottom-up urban planning” (Initiativkreis Mediaspree Versenken 2018). The initiative should be considered both within this “new wave of urban policy disputes” (Holm and Kuhn 2011: 656) and problematised within critical accounts of ‘creative’ struggles. In London there is a different landscape of protest against urban planning. While there are inner-city spatial struggles concerning processes of displacement and state-led gentrification (for example, debates

1 Introduction

over the gentrification of Brixton market), the struggles must be contextualised within London’s “super-gentrification” (Butler and Lees 2006). In London, citizen resistance has mobilised against one of the largest urban regeneration infrastructure projects in the UK: the development of a High Speed Rail (HS2) between London and Birmingham. STOP HS2 is a campaign group that is active in protesting against what they call a ‘white elephant’ project, primarily focusing on the cost of the project for taxpayers and the environmental damage the new train line would cause. However, rather than necessarily focusing the campaign against top-down or neoliberal urbanism, the focus of the anti-HS2 mobilisation is specifically against the development of London’s commuter belt into the so-called ‘green belt’. Founded on environmental concerns, the HS2 resistance is therefore a discourse on sustainability rather than socio-economic disparity. While an environmental consciousness is also of high importance for Berlin (particularly in protests against the BER airport development), the contrast with Berlin is evident: while the government strategy of (economic) growth in the Berlin cases is fundamentally challenged by protesters, in the UK case growth is presented as the desirable option, a strategy the protesters would support. Colomb comes to the conclusion that there is “(small) room for manoeuvre in contemporary London for local actors to mobilise and regain control over the impacts of gentrification on their neighbourhood and work towards more equitable urban redevelopment outcomes” (2009: 158). After London won the bid to host the 2012 Olympics in July 2005, the space for dissent and activism was narrow given the global political and economic mechanisms underscoring the Olympic movement and the IOC. While the Olympic Charter regulations refer primarily to a timeframe leading up to and including the month of ‘games time’, they also have significant implications on wider processes, including the mechanisms of how land was acquired (Compulsory Purchase Orders), the way that space was regulated in the seven years leading up to the Games, and the Olympic-led urban regeneration (eviction and gentrification) processes. The extra-governmental legal frameworks and militarisation of space for the Olympics has led some scholars to describe the situation as a ‘State of Exception’ (Marrero-Guillamón 2012a). Security, surveillance and branding were so tightly controlled that the status quo laws of Britain were overruled with the new regulations of the ‘host city contract’ in the

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Olympic Charter. Crucially, one clause bans “any event that could have an impact on the successful staging of the Games taking place” within a 3 kilometre radius of the Olympic site, which essentially amounts to the temporary outlawing of protest. This indicates that protest mobilisation within the London 2012 context had very little (legal) space in which to manoeuvre. Resistance and direct-action protests against Olympic-led urban regeneration were largely fragmented: they typically related to local issues, and received only sporadic media and academic attention. Protests ranged from early struggles against the Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) of the Clays Lane Housing Cooperative and a separate struggle against the eviction and demolition of the Manor Garden Allotments. The Counter Olympic Network (CON) organised a demonstration against the commercialisation of the Games (July 2012) and various local groups protested against the loss of local public land (for example, the Lammas Lands Defence Committee). Similar to the protests against Mediaspree developments, an interesting facet of London 2012 dissent was the artistic interventions, particularly those originating in the case study neighbourhood Hackney Wick Fish Island. The message from this brief overview is that Berlin and London have similar tendencies but also different cultures of citizen-action; historical context has shaped the current nature and form of activism against urban planning. The relationship between the city (or national-level) and borough-level administration differs in the two contexts, and this shapes the negotiating power of grassroots protest. In both contexts it is important to consider that while there are moments of possible disruption and manoeuvring within the process or game of urban regeneration, its rules are largely defined by neoliberal urbanism and a competitive growth agenda. As Susan Fainstein points out, within a competitive global system lower-income communities “can achieve positive results from specific projects, but they rarely can define the types of projects developed” (2010: 123). The empirical chapters four and five will bear this out, while showing that there are ways of refining these claims – particularly in terms of the specific way neoliberal agendas are expressed and negotiated in Berlin and London. The next section gives an overview of the way this book approaches cities and urban change.

1 Introduction

W ays of S eeing U rban R egener ation Cities are ‘laboratories’ for policy formation, strategic nodes of global finance, labour and communication (Zukin 1982; Arnstein 1969; Saunders 1979/2007). Yet cities are also the sites where these global processes spring to life through the lived experiences of urbanites. Consequently, the aim of this book is to reveal both generalised insights of the global process ‘urban development’ (macro theory), while unravelling exactly how these processes are experienced subjectively and shaped within the neighbourhood context (micro insights). Both of these frames – macro and micro – are needed in order to make sense of what urban regeneration is and what it does. This book takes a qualitative approach. A qualitative way of seeing has implications for the role of the researcher within the research process. As Clifford Geertz states: “What we call our data are really our own constructions of other people’s constructions of what they and their compatriots are up to” (1973: 9). With this in mind, a researcher plays an interpretative role, not merely reporting or describing the views of participants but also integrating and interpreting these views in relation to what they have observed and read. The data produced for this book, collected primarily during fieldwork between 2012 and 2014, expresses different ways of understanding the ambiguities of the social world: through recordings, written text, observations and images. This palette of different ways of seeing is crucial, but considering who is heard and understood is paramount. This book aims to bring to the fore perspectives that are often excluded, something that the discipline of sociology has long championed (see Hammersley 2000 for a full discussion on partisanship and bias in social research). Following this perspective, this book is an investigative enquiry that takes a critical, interpretative approach, unpicking power dynamics within the process of urban regeneration, assuming that ‘reality’ is produced by unequal social relations. My attentiveness towards power dynamics developed in the course of, and via the research process. I entered the field in an inductive tradition (Gray 2014: 17), without any preconceived theoretical frame in mind. However, while listening, observing and recording the experiences of urban regeneration in London and Berlin, I increasingly found that the empirical material made sense when framed by theories that read social life as constituted by competitive power struggles, par-

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ticularly those that see power intersecting with language and discourse (Fairclough 2013; Jacobs 2006; Wodak 1999). Eminent contemporary social theorists have demonstrated that language is a reflection of power (Foucault 1972; Habermas 1987). These theorists problematise the idea of straightforward meaning, revealing that language practices interact with other social practices; language constitutes and produces the concepts and categories we use to make sense of the world (Hastings 1999: 10). While these critical theories provide a basis for the research, I found Pierre Bourdieu’s analysis of human action, competition and domination, and use of the ‘game’ metaphor (1980/1990) the most valuable way of making sense of the empirical data, because it provides a theory of practice including both action and agency. The work of Pierre Bourdieu is central to this book, and ‘speaking Bourdieuse’ (Wacquant 2014) has guided where this book goes. Urban scholars have drawn on Bourdieusian theory – not only in terms of language and power, but also the concepts of ‘capital’ and ‘distinction’ – to recharge debates on gentrification and social inequality (Allen 2008; Butler and Watt 2007; Savage 2011; Wacquant 2008; Watt 2008). Cautious not to fall into the trap that Loïc Wacquant describes as “empty Bourdieubabble” (2018: 100), I employed what can be called a ‘Bourdieusian methodology’; not only did I employ Bourdieu’s theories in a final stage of analysis, but during fieldwork I had already begun to see and understand the dynamics of urban regeneration in terms of a ‘war of words’. Language is deployed and manipulated by individual actors for strategic purposes within the ‘game’ of urban regeneration. Bourdieu makes a fundamental point about the power of rhetorical constructions. Words – or more specifically, the use of words as tools for ideological manipulation – can determine the course of individuals’ everyday lives. Bourdieu makes this point by taking the concept ‘the people’ as a lens. Bourdieu shows why claims to speak about, on behalf of and for ‘the people’ are political: the ambiguities of the noun ‘people’ allows for rhetorical play, often for the purpose of legitimising one’s political ends (Bourdieu 1990/2007: 152). The vulnerability of the word ‘people’ to endless manipulation, to shifting and self-serving interpretations, can be translated to other concepts as a way to explain mutations of power: who is going up and who is going down. This fundamental idea of words as strategic tools for power lays the basis for this book, translating into the discussion of different actors’ understandings of “culture” and

1 Introduction

“community”3. By discussing constructions of Culture and Community as linguistic practices linked to power via ‘habitus’ and ‘capital’, Bourdieu’s theories provide a common link throughout this study. This book brings two cities, Berlin and London, into conversation through a comparative methodology. Comparative urbanism is defined as developing knowledge, understanding and generalisation beyond the case of one city (Nijman 2007: 1). My understanding of ‘comparative’ is as exploratory rather than exhaustive: replicability is not a central concern, however external validity (or generalisability) is crucial, as analysis of similarities and differences between two cities (cases) makes it possible to recognise spatial processes (elements of convergence) and judge their relevance. Comparative approaches are especially useful in linking cities together through spatial flows (Robinson 2011). A central idea of the book is to analyse mega-project development like any other growth-orientated urban development scheme (Raco 2012), as a way of preventing policymakers from depoliticising (and consequently rationalising) Olympic-led development. The comparison is a way to challenge the fetishisation of Olympic development as unique, and consequently opens up space for analysis that focuses on common mechanisms (process and structures) within urban regeneration. The location of the case studies in London and Berlin is crucial. There is a common conceptualisation of London as a “global city” (Sassen 1991/2001) and hearth of neoliberalism (Massey 2007: xiii). In contrast, Berlin is often perceived as a city recovering from its socialist past, financially unstable and lacking the economic drive that defines London (Bernt et al. 2013). This deep, substantive difference provides rich ground to ask: is there a common experience in processes of urban regeneration despite these divergent contexts? There is political intent not only in choosing to compare Olympic and non-Olympic development but also in comparing London and Berlin. Understanding Berlin as a city comparable to others cities – despite its particularly turbulent history of division and reunifica3 | When I use the terms “culture” and “community” I describe the way various social actors imagine and use the concepts: I see these as shifting categories with contested meanings and do not intend to reify the terms. However, in the proceeding chapters I will omit the inverted commas so as not to distract the reader, but capitalise when referring to Community and Culture specifically as concepts, as opposed to how actors describe them.

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tion – reinforces the point: a tale of two cities (and cases) typically deemed ‘incomparable’ is valuable precisely because it questions the existence of symbolic barriers that shield the object from scrutiny. The case study approach was chosen because it allows the intensive examination of a social phenomenon – urban regeneration – within a social system or systems (Swanborn 2010: 13). The social systems or ‘cases’ are two neighbourhoods: Hackney Wick Fish Island in London and Rudolfkiez in Berlin. Focussing on two cities in two different countries, this book takes a multiple, cross-cultural perspective. The specific choice of neighbourhoods provides an insight into the everyday ‘backstage’ reality of large-scale urban development schemes. Importantly, the London and Berlin case studies do not ‘represent’ urban regeneration, and I do not claim that the case studies are a (quantitative) ‘sample’ of two. However, the cases produce narrative thickness and context-dependant knowledge from which we can learn something about the process of urban regeneration and its ambiguity (Flyvberg 2006). By highlighting the commonalities between Olympic-led and ‘ordinary’ urban development, the case study method is not only exploratory and descriptive, but also explanatory. While developing the research design it became increasingly clear that a comparative case study approach towards regeneration spaces, using the bounded neighbourhoods Hackney Wick and Rudolfkiez, would not suffice if taking seriously a relational sociology (Lefebvre 1974/1991; Massey 2005). Current comparative urbanism understands cities as relational (Dear 2005; Lees 2012; Ward 2008) rather than fixed and bounded spaces or discrete units (McFarlane and Robinson 2012: 770). Consequently, I shifted my understanding of ‘case study’ to include spaces outside the bureaucratic boundaries of Rudolfkiez and Hackney Wick Fish Island. In doing so, a more valuable comparative analysis can be made between regeneration processes in Berlin and London. The emphasis on processes, rather than a comparison as such, means that the similarities and differences between the cases are secondary to mechanisms and dynamics. Nevertheless, the substantive difference between the cases provides the rationale for the research: comprehensive Olympic-led development in London had a tight timescale and vast public investment, while in Berlin the Mediaspree development can be described as ‘typical’ fragmented private investment with an extended-timeframe. The similarities between Hackney Wick Fish Island and Rudolfkiez are that both neighbourhoods are affected by deindustrialisation and were

1 Introduction

once seen as the borderlands of the city, geographically and economically separate from London and Berlin’s inner-city experiences. Both neighbourhoods have a high percentage of working-class residents, many of whom have lived and worked in the areas during the time when industry was booming. In spatial terms the two neighbourhoods are also similar: despite being well-connected by public transport, both neighbourhoods remain isolated ‘islands’, cut off from surrounding areas by infrastructure.

C ase S tudies The two case study neighbourhoods – Hackney Wick Fish Island in London and Rudolfkiez in Berlin – offer a way of seeing urban regeneration processes, sites for analysing the negotiation of urban regeneration policy. They provide a way of understanding what Culture and Community mean for different stakeholders, and how this produces settings of power and violence. In the following, key characteristics of each neighbourhood are outlined, with emphasis on infrastructure, historical development, and recent changes catalysed by the adjacent large-scale regeneration projects London 2012 and Mediaspree.

Hackney Wick Fish Island, London Hackney Wick Fish Island (HWFI) is located in East London (see figure 1.3), adjacent to the London 2012 Olympic site (see figure 1.4). The neighbourhood is wedged like an island between the Lea Navigation canal (see figure 1.5) and the busy A11 dual carriageway, cutting it off from surrounding areas – Old Ford, Bow and Victoria Park – and giving it an island feel. Nevertheless, the area is well-connected to central London via the Overground (see figure 1.6), but other infrastructure such as a post office, supermarket or bank are absent. The neighbourhood is bisected by the Hertford Union Canal: its northern half is Hackney Wick (London Borough of Hackney) and its southern part is Fish Island (Tower Hamlets).

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Figure 1.3 Map of London

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Figure 1.4 Map of Hackney Wick Fish Island and the London 2012 Olympic site

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1 Introduction

While Olympic planners described the area as a “gritty industrial edgeland” (Design for London and London Legacy Development Corporation 2013: 43), the area has a mix of low-rise 1990s social housing (see figure 1.7), warehouse structures built around 1900, and new high-rise residential developments (see figure 1.8). Census data (Greater London Authority 2011b) scores Wick ward and Bow East ward – of which Hackney Wick and Fish Island are part – as two of the most deprived in London (40.8% and 47.5% of dependent children live in out-of-work households respectively, compared with a national average of 18.1%). Over half of the households in the neighbourhood live in social housing and health indicators score the residents of Hackney Wick ward as worse than the borough average (London Borough of Hackney Policy and Partnerships 2014: 4). Figure 1.5 (left) Lea navigation canal with The White Building on the left, May 2018 Figure 1.6 (right) Hackney Wick Overground station, tip of Canary Wharf in the background, May 2018

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Figure 1.7 (left) Wick Village, low-rise social housing in Hackney Wick, February 2013 Figure 1.8 (right) Wallis Road, new residential housing block on left, May 2018

Historically, poverty has defined the development of Hackney Wick, the northern half of the neighbourhood. This is evident in Charles Booth’s East End poverty maps (Survey into Life and Labour in London 1889), in which many of the residential streets in Hackney Wick are classified as dark blue, representing inhabitants who are “very poor” with “chronic want”. These terraced streets were demolished after WWII bomb damage and replaced by the Trowbridge Estate, comprised of low-rise bungalows and, most strikingly, seven twenty-one-storey tower blocks. The towers were built by London County Council (LCC) in the late 1960s, who envisioned working-class community lived out in ‘streets in the sky’. In the 1980s and 90s (as little as 20 years after they had been constructed), the flats were perceived as high-rise slums and were demolished, replaced by low-rise housing. This demonstrates that urban professionals have been concerned about poverty (and moral disorder) in the neighbourhood since the 1880s, in each phase hoping that urban planning could remedy the situation. Crucially, this history also indicates the recurring problematisation of (working-class) culture and community in the neighbourhood by urban planners, a theme that is reflected in current development discourse. Currently HWFI sits in an ambiguous space. While some claim the area remains a deprived and grim East London backwater, others see the area as the cutting-edge of East End ‘cool’, spurred by the buzz of artists and new cafés. Tellingly, fashion magazine Vogue promoted HWFI in their culture section as the next ‘hotspot’ (Vogue 2011). The current socio-spatial form of HWFI is the result of several processes. From the mid 1800s until

1 Introduction

the 1970s HWFI was a thriving industrial area known for manufacturing dyestuffs, plastics, and petrol. Industrial decline resulted in these heavy industries being replaced by light industries such as printing, giving the neighbourhood the nickname Printers Paradise (muf architecture/art 2009). In the 1990s much of this light industry was displaced, resulting in many of the former factory structures gradually being used for other purposes. The availability of affordable ex-industrial spaces in the 1980s and 1990s, physical isolation, and lack of public and private investment provided an unregulated space, attractive to many (Marrero-Guillamón 2012b: 11). Collectives took on leases in former warehouses, allowing them to design and self-build so-called ‘live-work’ spaces (Brown 2012). While fine artists, photographers and designers have a visible presence in the area, the neighbourhood can be socially and spatially divided between working-class communities and cultures in the northern half (represented by the social housing estates Trowbridge Estate and Wick Village) and ‘creative’ communities and cultures in the southern part (largely based in warehouses, many now re-functioned as live-work studios). This mix of different cultures and use of space is most stark in Fish Island where Omega Works, a luxury canal-side development, sits 200 metres apart from a poultry abattoir. The relationship between the different social worlds in Hackney Wick and Fish Island – and their respective roles within urban regeneration policy – is a key part of the discussions in the chapters that follow. Given its location directly adjacent to the London 2012 Olympic site, Hackney Wick Fish Island is part of the so-called Olympic Fringe. The implications of being part of the Olympic Fringe are spatial, social and economic; far beyond investment in re-paving roads, laying new pavements and installing street furniture. When London won the Olympic bid in 2005, the idea was to demolish many of the existing warehouses and industrial structures in the area. The neighbourhood was planned to house a mix of dense high-rise blocks, mainly residential units that could be marketed as high-end waterside living, a typical marker of property speculation. At this stage there was little concern for existing communities or architectural structures. However, in 2008 there was a U-turn in policy when the Creative Potential report (muf architecture/art 2009) commissioned by the LLDC showed that the neighbourhood was not in fact the lifeless, dead-end place initially presumed. The researchers found thriving businesses in the warehouses, as well as over 600 art studios

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housing “the highest concentration of (art) studios in Europe” (Budish et al. 2010). Since the publication of the Creative Potential report, the area has been newly conceptualised as a ‘creative quarter’ (London Legacy Development Corporation 2014: 3) with urban planners holding back on the plans for demolition, instead focusing on retaining art studios and “valuing what is there” (Design for London and London Legacy Development Corporation 2013: 18). The aim is to ‘open up’ the community and make its artistic cultures visible. Given the increased interest in the area as a cultural hub, many residents were fearful of a surge in private development, especially post-Olympics, yet ‘regeneration’ as such has remained piecemeal. The role of public planning and investment has significantly increased since the Olympic Games in 2012. Since September 2012 HWFI has been under the planning control of the LLDC, which brings the northern and southern areas under one set of planning regulations (together with the Olympic Park). Olympic planners conceive of the communities in the Olympic Fringe spilling into the Queen Elizabeth Park. The idea of ‘connectivity’ between the Fringe and the Olympic site is embodied in the construction of bridges across the canal as a means to support an integrated development between existing communities and new developments (London Legacy Development Corporation 2014: 15).

Rudolfkiez, Berlin Rudolfkiez, similarly to Hackney Wick Fish Island, is located directly in the shadow of a large-scale regeneration scheme. Rudolfkiez, which is part of the borough Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, lies north of the former East Docks (Osthafen), next to the Mediaspree developments (see maps, figures 1.9 and 1.10). Similar to HWFI, Rudolfkiez lies between various infrastructural barriers, also giving the impression that it is a socially and spatially bounded island. On the neighbourhood’s southern border is the four-lane road Stralauer Allee, with the remaining three sides enclosed by railway lines: the city’s circular line (Ringbahn) and underground (U-bahn). The neighbourhood (also known as Stralauerkiez, Stralauer Viertel, and Quartier Rudolfplatz) is often described as a village in the middle of the city (Friedrichshain-Magazin 2012), particularly in contrast to surrounding neighbourhoods such as the Boxhagener Kiez, which has become well-known for its bars and nightlife. The word ‘kiez’ in the compound Rudolfkiez can be translated as ‘neighbourhood’, but

1 Introduction

also reflects a specifically Berlin concept of dense tenement blocks characterised by a mix of uses, the spatial practice of inhabitants, and a strong social and cultural life (Colomb 2012b: 247). Figure 1.9 Map of Berlin

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Figure 1.10 Map of Rudolf kiez and Mediaspree development area

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Comparable to HWFI, Rudolfkiez has been characterised by its “rather difficult social-structural conditions and significant deficits in urban planning” (SPD Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg 2008: 1). The child poverty of Stralauerkiez falls within the broad range that is defined as ‘average’ for Berlin, between 9.72 - 52.07% (Senatsverwaltung für Gesundheit und Soziales 2013). This indicates that while the neighbourhood is seen as a ‘problem’ area, the ‘problem’ is related to unemployment and poverty in an ageing population (Bezirksamt Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg 2012: 20), connected with post-Wall restructuring. Unlike HWFI, there are only a few artists’ studios in the area. While the developmental history of HWFI has been shaped by the issue of poverty and fear of moral decline, what makes the case study Rudolfkiez particularly interesting – and relevant for current debate on planning and ‘regeneration’ – is that during the Cold War the neighbourhood belonged to East Berlin. This historical (socio-spatial) context still shapes the Kiez today. Between 1961 and 1989 the neighbourhood found itself immediately behind the Berlin Wall, forming a buffer-zone behind the industrial Osthafen of the GDR. During this time the East Dock was the ‘workshop’ for building the East German capital: building materials for the construction of Alexanderplatz entered the city via the East Dock. This strategic importance meant that it was hermetically sealed off from public access. Consequently, the biggest change to the area in recent history was the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. The fall of the Wall signalled the end of an identity-shaping institution at the heart of the neighbourhood: the OSRAM/NARVA light-bulb manufacturing plant (Glühlampenwerk). The factory had an imposing spatial effect on the neighbourhood, comprising a vast red-brick complex of five interconnected blocks. However, most significant was the social value of the factory to the neighbourhood’s residents. In the 1950s the factory ran its own housing cooperative, which also provided employees with healthcare and social activities. Rudolfkiez was, and still is, fondly known by insiders as the Lightbulb City (Lampenstadt). When the plant finally closed in 1993, a victim of the effects of re-unification, over 5,000 employees were instantly unemployed (Wiebel 2009: 17). Many of these employees were residents of Rudolfkiez, and many came from families with several generations of light bulb factory workers (Friedrichshain-Magazin 2012). Its closure therefore had an immediate

1 Introduction

impact not only on the economic base of the neighbourhood but also on its social vitality, the effects of which can still be felt today. The RuDi Kiezladen (literally translated as ‘RuDi neighbourhood shop’) was a bottom-up community initiative that helped unemployed residents return to work and provided legal advice for those receiving, or hoping to receive, government benefits. There were also top-down measures to try to stimulate local social and economic activities. An example is URBAN II, an EU programme that funded the building restoration for the now fully established RuDi Community Centre (RuDi Nachtbarschaftszentrum, see figure 1.11), which now largely caters for senior citizens. The industrial context of Rudolfkiez and its relationship with current urban regeneration visions are a crucial part of the discussion in the empirical chapters that follow. In recent years Rudolfkiez has seen private investment (see figure 1.12) and various initiatives aimed at upgrading the area and bringing in a new, younger population. The residential housing block Lautizia (a pilot project for ecological building, see figure 1.13) has been presented as the future of the area, bringing young families to the neighbourhood. In addition, the state agency lokal.leben has tried to stimulate economic vitality in the neighbourhood through an initiative to match empty commercial premises with potential new businesses. However, Stralauer Allee, the busy dual-carriageway, still separates Rudolfkiez from Berlin’s Osthafen (see figure 1.14), meaning that the infrastructural barriers of the Cold War period (and the notion that the East Dock is a ‘no-go’ area) are still tangible, rather than dissolved in the collective memory of many residents, particularly the senior citizens.

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The Game of Urban Regeneration

Figure 1.11 (Top left) RuDi community centre, June 2018 Figure 1.12 (Top right) Renovated block next to the Zwingli church, June 2018 Figure 1.13 (Bottom left) Lautizia housing block, June 2018 Figure 1.14 (Bottom right) Stralauer Allee with Coca Cola headquarters on the right, June 2018

Rudolfkiez is located directly behind a key section of the Mediaspree waterfront development scheme. Mediaspree was initially an economic consortium contracted by the Berlin Senate. Established in order to market a waterfront area as a media cluster in post-unification Berlin, it stretches 3.7 kilometres on both sides of the River Spree, encompassing both eastern and western parts of the city. The consortium was composed not just of businesspeople and entrepreneurs, but also the Borough Councils and the Land Berlin who collaboratively thought about how to promote jobs and stimulate economic prosperity in a deprived area. Part of the Mediaspree strategy was to flag up the ‘cool’ cultural grassroots structures that had established along the River Spree in late 1990s (including small techno labels and clubs) as a way to brand the Mediaspree scheme as cutting edge. Because many of these alternative cultural sites were illegal, using them to brand the space could be done without (formal) accusations of displacement.

1 Introduction

What makes Mediaspree a crucial part of Berlin’s development story is that it was planned as the largest development project since reunification: at around 450 acres it is eight times larger than the Potsdamer Platz development. Mediaspree’s anchor projects are O2 World and the Osthafen. The latter is now home to the headquarters of MTV Central Europe and Universal Music Germany. The earliest development plans for the area (Rahmenplan Hauptbahnhof/Spreeufer, Hemprich and Tophof 1994), which can be analysed as the starting point for the Mediaspree idea, were conceived in the years after the fall of the Wall and focus on the need to bridge the gap between East and West Berlin. However, given the fragmented and private-developer-led nature of the Mediaspree scheme, investors and developers did not conceptualise neighbourhoods surrounding the Spree as part of their remit. Without an overarching masterplan for the Mediaspree scheme, the infrastructural boundary of Stralauer Allee remains a significant barrier cutting the neighbourhood off from the River Spree, reinforcing decades-long historic division. This provides a stark contrast to the LLDC concern for bridges over the Lea Navigation canal in East London and ‘connectivity’ between existing structures and new developments. While Mediaspree developments since the mid-2000s – such as the nhow hotel, Coca Cola headquarters and Universal Music – make the former East Dock more attractive for pedestrians, the village-like Kiez remains largely separated from the waterside developments, with little attempt by state planners or private investors to loosen the boundaries between the two social worlds. The Mediaspree development with the biggest potential to loosen these boundaries was Oberbaum City, which can be considered – at least geographically – as part of Rudolfkiez. The global financial crisis and protests against Mediaspree in 2008 resulted in negative press and slowed investor interest in buying and developing along the Spree. However, in recent years waterside development is back on the agenda for private investors, symbolised by the amount of cranes active along the river. Among these are projects that evidently follow the Mediaspree logic of upgrading the area with high-rise structures for the media industry and offices for the service sector – for example, the construction of a tower-block that houses the new Mercedes-Benz headquarters and construction of Living Levels, a luxury residential high-rise. There are, however, developments along the Spree (both planned and existing) that have positioned themselves strongly against the ‘outdated’

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ideals of Mediaspree. Two of these projects, the Spreefeld housing cooperative and Holzmarkt scheme, are discussed in the empirical chapters.

A ims and S tructure of the B ook What are the mechanisms that produce the winners and losers of urban regeneration? This was the question that drove the research. This book argues that urban regeneration can be analysed as a ‘game’. In the game of urban regeneration, neoliberal norms provide the logic for winning, and those who do not adhere to the rules suffer. The subtleties and nuances of the game are explored in this book via the lenses of Culture and Community. Alongside economic vitality, Culture and Community are perceived within policy as indicators (and even evidence) of the successful regeneration of space, especially in the context of large-scale regeneration schemes. They are used to show that ‘regeneration’ is being created on a human scale, for ‘the people’ (Bourdieu 1980/1990: 150). In the game, Culture and Community are not just important pillars within policy documents and political rhetoric, but also within the language of activists and residents. Identifying which of these constructions are included in formal policy, which are dominant, and which are marginal(ised), reveals which individuals and groups benefit and which lose out in urban development. The definitions of Culture and Community are always in flux, with actors employing different strategies over time. Each definition is about including some groups and excluding others. The game of regeneration changes as new players and new paradigms enter, and as rules are (re)negotiated. The book is divided into six chapters. Chapter two outlines the context of the research, showing that while Germany and the UK have divergent histories, politics and urban policies, they share economic and political ambitions. Chapter three demonstrates why Bourdieu’s field theory is a valuable device for understanding the underlying power dynamics of the process of urban regeneration. Bourdieu’s key concepts are introduced, laying the foundations for analysing urban regeneration as a game, with players who ‘make moves’. The two conceptual lenses Culture and Community then give the empirical discussion its bifurcated structure. Chapter four documents how different actors play with definitions and uses of Culture in strategic ways, and how these constructions define the winners and losers of the game. Chapter five mirrors this, cataloguing

1 Introduction

how different actors use different rhetorical constructions of Community within the field of urban regeneration, and shows the effect of this instrumentalisation. In both empirical chapters Bourdieu’s language provides the theoretical thread that ties the discussion around the central concepts of ‘habitus’ and ‘capital’. Chapter six offers concluding thoughts; both predictable patterns that reproduce dominance and cracks in the system that define the game of urban regeneration.

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This chapter does the work of context setting. An insight into urban policy in Germany and the UK provides a basis for understanding how and why contemporary regeneration processes function as they do. Historically, Germany and the UK have developed different relationships between the State and civil society, and consequently different models of urban development. Despite this, development agendas in both cities are increasingly dominated by inter-urban competition (Harvey 1989; Krätke 2014b; Zukin 1998) and market-driven reforms (Brenner and Theodore 2005). The relentless rivalry between cities (Sassen 1994) has resulted in neoliberal urbanism (Peck et al. 2009) and gentrification as a global urban development strategy (Smith 2002). This lays the groundwork for theorising urban regeneration as a consensual process, but also shows that regeneration produces spaces of dissent, conflict, antagonism and exclusion, both intended and unintended.

L ondon & B erlin as P olitical S paces Divided city Berlin (1945-1990) and the subsequent reunification of the East and Western part of the city “remains one of the most formative events and experiences and is indispensable for understanding Berlin” (Bernt et al. 2013: 14). The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 saw Communism collapse and two political systems and societies collide overnight. The experience of four decades of division has particular relevance to contemporary architecture, planning and urban regeneration debates because of the continuing consequences of the division today (Bernt et al. 2013). From both a geographical and political perspective division and reunification led to a complete reordering of the city. Urban planning

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is considered one way to overcome both the Mauer in den Köpfen (wall remaining ‘in people’s minds’), as well as remaining east-west socio-economic disparities. As a newly united political space, and following the ‘Capital Contract’ in 1991, East Berlin’s institutions were disbanded, with structures and personnel from the west transferring to the east. This has led to what has been described as a “colonisation” of the East by elites in West Germany (Pickel 1992). Although this ‘colonisation/victim’ account may be exaggerated, the demolition in 2008 of the Palast der Republik (Palace of the Republic, the seat of GDR parliament), a social and political space at the centre of everyday life in East Berlin, is often seen as emblematic of the dominance of West German narratives and perspectives over the East (see Colomb 2007 for a full discussion). The current reconstruction of the Berliner Stadtschloss (Royal Castle) on the site of the former Palast has sparked academic and public debate as to whose narrative of history is being inscribed in the city (Binder 2009; Schug 2007). Current plans to develop the site around the Stadtschloss have sparked fresh debates as to the material processes of urban restructuring in Berlin’s historical centre, with some suggesting that the strategic transformation and privatisation of inner-city space (as currently planned) presents an outmoded trajectory and misguided symbolism (Think Berl!n 2014). Compared to Berlin’s radical political and geographical restructuring since the 1980s, central London’s topography has remained largely unchanged. As the uninterrupted capital of the UK, London has the highest population density in the country and also concentrated political, economic and cultural power (Couch et al. 2011: 10). Political power has been concentrated in Westminster for centuries, with an inherent link to the British monarchy. Within this continuity, however, there have been significant changes in the planning landscape, which affect the current development climate. One crucial change was the ‘Thatcherite revolution’ of London’s planning and structural utilities, which included the abolition of the Greater London Council (GLC), the administrative body for Greater London, in 1986. Until 1986 the GLC had been a Labour-led body responsible for coordinating social programmes, so its termination “reorientated policy away from direct assistance to lower-income groups and toward a trickle down strategy… [E]nsuring global city status with the financial industry as its cornerstone became the principle development goal of those in charge of governing London” (Fainstein 2010: 118). With

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no public body replacing the GLA, a vacuum was created, which was filled by mega-projects such as Canary Wharf. A new London-wide authority – the Greater London Authority (GLA) – was reinstated by the Labour Party in 2000 as a means to improve coordination between local authorities. As representative of the GLA, the role of Mayor of London is crucial when considering London as a political space, especially since the mayor’s office is responsible for producing the London Plan: the spatial development strategy for the city, including housing, retail development and regeneration. The directly elected Mayor of London and the London Assembly (the elected body of 25 members) who make up the GLA have an enormous amount of political power, which should be considered alongside that of the government. Nevertheless, the fact that the British State has been historically rooted in and tradition-bound to London is the focus of criticism, with claims that Westminster’s central power mirrors the unequal structure of British society, resulting in a “new hierarchy of belonging” (Back et al. 2012). These kinds of debates are broadly similar to the German debates concerning continuing east-west tensions: in both cities critical voices argue that elite political culture is intervening in planning debates, defining what constitutes ‘heritage’. Germany’s polycentric federal urban structure and Britain’s more monocentric structure provide a central political-administrative difference reflected in the nature of planning processes in German-British comparisons. Germany is a federal parliamentary republic, which means political power is divided between federal and state levels. While federal power lies in the Bundestag (parliament of Germany), the elected regional governments meet in the Bundesrat (representative body of the sixteen regional states). Urban regeneration policy is largely controlled at regional level: responsibility for planning is largely a collaborative exercise between the Gemeinden (local authorities) and the various government tiers. The relatively small size of the Gemeinden and the decentralised system means that policymaking in Germany has the potential for bottom-up planning (Couch et al. 2011: 47). In addition, the fact that Germany is a multi-party system means that coalitions frequently form in government and fluctuations between governments is common. Although the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) and Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) have dominated the political system since 1949, the Green Party (Die Grünen) and the Liberals (FDP) and more recently Die Piraten (Pirate Party) and Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) have had

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seats in parliament, due to the 5% election threshold. The consequence of this political system for urban regeneration is that policies tend to be consensual and stable rather than changing radically with each new government. In contrast to Germany’s federal government system, the UK is a unitary state, which, despite devolved powers (Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland), is still largely controlled by a London-based administration. Local authorities in the UK have less autonomy than those in Germany and have to work much more flexibly, according to changes in central government. Alongside the government, the private sector (sometimes in the form of Public-Private-Partnerships) and quangos also play significant roles in the formulation and implementation of urban regeneration policy (Couch et al. 2011: 19). The UK’s monocentric structure has resulted in disparity not just in terms of economic growth and employment rate, but also in high variation of living standards and social conditions. The disparity is typically expressed as a north-south divide. The polycentric, federal urban structure in Germany means that the high output cities of Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich are more significant economic hubs than the capital city, Berlin. The polycentric structure and devolved federal state political system means that there is no city that dominates, although the West German regions are much more economically productive than their Eastern counterparts.

L ondon & B erlin as E conomic S paces While Berlin is the capital city of Germany, it is still one of the poorest cities in the country. Matthias Bernt et al. highlight the paradox of Berlin’s economic crisis: “[the] most powerful country in the European Union has the relatively poorest capital” (2013: 16). The burden of debt in Berlin (Krätke 2004: 526) means that balancing the budget has historically been a consensual-political issue, with all parties motivated to boost the treasury through radical plans. This is a crucial point not just because it explains the cuts in welfare and wave of privatisation initiatives in recent years (most recently the privatisation of the public waterworks), but also because Berlin’s financial burden almost always underscores contemporary political perspectives on urban development. The bid to host the 2000 Olympic Games is just one of many examples of Berlin’s politicians

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aiming to reposition the city away from the image of division and poverty, fostering the idea of a ‘New Berlin’ (Till 2005) capable of leaving behind the voids (Huyssen 1997) and ghosts (Ladd 1997) of its past. The economic crisis affecting Berlin is largely a product of the division of the city and its location in the heart of former East Germany. With the fall of the Wall in 1989, and reunification in 1990, there was a complex process of disbanding East German industry and enterprises. Treuhandanstalt (often shortened to Treuhand) was the agency that took over all state property when the GDR collapsed, privatising East German state property as quickly as possible (for a full discussion see Roesler 1994). Despite over-optimistic projections of economic growth in the early 1990s, the economic base of the city was largely eroded, and high unemployment characterised the 1990s and 2000s (Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development 2003: 17). Now, 25 years since the fall of the Wall, the economic situation of Berlin is not remedied and Land Berlin (one of the sixteen German states) still receives significant federal subsidies, leading to a description of Berlin as “Metropolis of Poverty” (Bernt et al. 2013: 15). The phenomena of schrumpfende Städte (shrinking cities) in the former East shows the extent to which the reunification then collapse and privatisation of the industrial-base impacted social structures and demographic movement (Häußermann and Siebel 1988). Regeneration strategies as combative methods for tackling economic disparity are therefore a topic of discussion among academics (Lang 2012; Liebmann and Kuder 2012) and policy makers (Pfeiffer et al. 2000) alike. While under-population in Berlin is still a political concern, current discussion also focuses on the 250,000 new residents predicted by 2030 (SenStadt 2014: 2) and the significant demographic (and economic) growth these newcomers would catalyse in the near future. This paints a picture of Berlin as a city at the crux of change and lays the basis for politicians who promise the construction of around 10,000 new homes per year to accommodate this urban population growth (SenStadt 2014). However, because the image of Berlin as a boomtown is promoted most actively by the Senate Department for Urban Development (SenStadt), the political underpinnings and implications of these (optimistic) projections require critical evaluation. When considered within the theoretical frame presented in the next chapter, the notion of Berlin facing exponential growth in the near future can be analysed as a calculated and strategic ‘move’ within the game of urban regeneration.

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Urban regeneration in contemporary Berlin must be understood within a post-unification frame. The private market was crucial in the post-Wall reconstruction of Berlin, with the aim of attracting affluent people back to the city centre. Consequently, Potsdamer Platz located in the former Berlin Wall’s ‘no man’s land’ has been reconstructed as a centre for the service sector. However, the reconstruction of Potsdamer Platz as a national or even global service centre is arguably more aspiration than everyday reality. The firms located at Potsdamer Platz illustrate this: one of the largest companies, housed in one of the three skyscrapers, is Deutsche Bahn (not Deutsche Bank), highlighting that Berlin is not yet the financial capital nor global city (Sassen 2000) it aspires to be. The spatial structure of Potsdamer Platz also demonstrates the heightened importance of architecture in reunified Berlin, specifically questions as to what form the new Berlin should take. Bourdieu’s heuristic reminds us that architectural production is a space of cultural contestation (Jones 2011: 12), and through this lens the construction of Potsdamer Platz can be analysed as an attempt to unify and normalise Berlin’s centre. Jurgen Habermas (1995) was among those who questioned (re)construction of ‘continuity’ in Berlin, suggesting there was a danger that ‘normalising’ through city planning could encourage resurgent German nationalism and threaten a pluralist society. The Potsdamer Platz reconstruction has particular symbolic relevance because the history of the site reveals Berlin’s economic and cultural vitality. Potsdamer Platz did not only help to define Berlin around 1900 as a ‘metropolis’ in the international imagination but also provided ‘local’ sociologist Georg Simmel with the stimuli to theorise the metropolitan experience (The Metropolis and Mental Life 1905/1950). Before World War II, Berlin was the largest industrial metropolis in Germany and its economic prosperity was perhaps most visible at Potsdamer Platz, the busiest traffic intersection in Europe (Weitz 2007). Berlin’s heyday was in ‘the golden 1920s’ when the city boasted the latest technologies in transportation, communication and leisure. This resulted in the tempo of the metropolis (not just speed of traffic, but also accelerated social change) defining contemporary reflections on 1920s Berlin (Bienert and Buchholz 2012: 37). While Hitler’s Third Reich, World War II and the division of the city saw an end to Berlin’s vibrant and innovative culture, the political interest in Potsdamer Platz after the fall of the Wall demonstrates the power of architecture as symbolic capital.

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The vigorous construction work and multitude of cranes in Berlin’s historic city centre (Mitte) throughout the 1990s and 2000s – described as the “spectacularization of the building process” (Lehrer 2003) – demonstrates the urgency with which the capital city Berlin was rebuilt (Cochrane and Passmore 2001). The aim of city planners was to transform the Cold War desolation and return the post-Wall landscape to its pre-World War II dynamism. This means that urban regeneration in Berlin has a unique historical context. Urban development is not simply an attempt to signpost a newly healthy economy and prospects for the future, but also reflects the aim to revive the social status of Berlin as the thriving metropolis it once was. As Janet Ward states, “the once heavily bordered city of the Cold War era now wished to embrace the opposite image of unfettered, borderless global-cityness, hankering after an electronic-age equivalent of the worldcity label that Berlin of the 1920 not only attained but exemplified” (Ward 2004: 240). While Potsdamer Platz has become the symbol of the New Berlin, it has also introduced scepticism towards large-scale projects in the city, arguably the first in a series of unsuccessful mega-projects, the most recent example being Berlin Brandenburg (BER) Airport. While unemployment, poverty and failed development ideals have posed significant problems for urban policy, these conditions have also laid the foundation for alternative cultures to flourish, which can be analysed as recreating the dynamism of the 1920s. While Berlin’s poverty largely defines its role within Germany, London’s wealth defines its role within the UK and plays a significant part in its classification as a ‘Global City’ (Polinna 2009: 22). London was the financial capital of the British Empire – a node for transport, capital movement and commercial enterprise – and its current role can therefore be analysed as a continuation. Friedrich Engels wrote of London in the 1840s as a “colossal centralisation…[the] commercial capital of the world” (Engels 1845/2011: 47). Engels’ account indicates how early London’s commercial success came, hinting also at the fact that by the 18th century, the city already had over seven million inhabitants (Buer 2005: 22), a vast population size that is now just over eight million (Office of National Statistics 2013: 2). The City of London embodies London’s role as financial capital of Europe. The privatised city-within-a-city and so-called ‘Square Mile’ of bank headquarters provides a clear global image of the financial sector at the heart of British economic power. Canary Wharf is London’s second

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financial district, and in these former docklands it is evident that the fortunes of London, especially in the period after deindustrialisation, were built on privatisation, deregulation and marketisation. Saskia Sassen has described the City of London as the “equivalent to a free trade zone when it comes to finance” (2000: 27), corroborating Doreen Massey’s analysis that “[i]t was on the basis of finance that London reinvented itself from the 1980s on…Wider still, it was on the basis of the financial sector that London asserted a new imperial role” (2007: ix). Massey highlights that the financial sector is part and parcel of what has made London as an economic space, but also what has shaped London ‘the city’ in its wider sense. The financial sector levered the British economy out of its long decline, fostering what Massey calls “a new social settlement” of neoliberal economics as “popular common sense” (Massey 2007: ix). Recently, public debate has focused on the political and social ramifications of London’s commercial success, specifically its wealth generated via real estate investment. Media reports have highlighted that planning permission has been granted for 230 new high-rise buildings in central London, but critique has centred on the lack of public knowledge about this high number, including even the London Mayor’s staff (Moore 2014). The architectural form of London’s skyline reflects a self-confident economic space, representing decades of consistent private investment. The so-called ‘Shard’ (London Bridge) is one of the latest additions, an 87-storey skyscraper completed in 2012, jointly owned by a development company and the State of Qatar. The Shard indicates that privately financed construction in London functions as strategic capital investment for a transnational elite: the London financial market is deemed less risky than elsewhere, with economic growth and profit generally steady. The Irish Republican attacks on London between 1970 and 1999, marked a period that shook the confidence of London, especially the City of London, as bastion of economic capital. The restructuring of the City during and since the IRA bombings has led to architectural designs that aim to ‘protect’ the citizen, averting and minimising terrorist attacks – these measures have been dubbed London’s ‘Ring of Steel’. The consequence for planning and urban regeneration is significant because contemporary architecture in London is designed to channel and control citizens, creating a surveillance security state or ‘fortress London’ (Coaffee 2004: 202) where civic space is guided by the principle of protecting architecture (and image). This architecture of security is, however, not unique to London.

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The Berlin Wall (1961-1990), officially referred to as the ‘Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart’, represents the East German government’s security state and fortification, a measure which is still felt in the spatial structure of the city today, with ramifications for urban planning. In the same period as the IRA attacks in London, Berlin was the target of the Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraction), a West German far-left militant group commonly known as Baader-Meinhof Gang, which carried out operations against what it saw as a fascist state. While the state did not react to the attacks with architectural designs like London’s ‘ring of steel’, in both Berlin and London the common experience relates to the effects of politically motivated ‘terrorist’ bombings in shaping the way city space was perceived as being under threat. This brief exploration of London and Berlin as political and economic (and cultural) spaces provides the necessary basis for analysing how the two cities have experienced globalisation and practiced neoliberalism, and how this affects urban regeneration policies. The cross-national conversation is key to better understanding urban transformations and the possible agendas of urban regeneration.

The C hallenges of G lobalisation & P r actices of N eoliber alism Globalisation has been a crucial component in the restructuring of city space and shaping of urban policy. Globalisation is often defined as a historical process of increasing economic interactions and resource flows, but it also encompasses a full range of forces sweeping across the globe unhindered by the boundaries of the nation-state (Dator 2006: 13). However, the experiences and challenges of globalisation have been dissimilar in Berlin and London. Globalisation has the effect of concentrating resources and infrastructure in so-called “global cities” (Sassen 1991/2001); those cities considered important nodes in the global economic system. London’s economy, with the financial sector as its core industry, has grown as a result. Global city London embodies institutionalised global neoliberalism with Canary Wharf as the symbol of increasing free-trade economic flows through the city. Berlin’s divided history and the financial strains imposed by reunification meant that it experienced globalisation in a different way: it can

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now be seen as an aspiring global city, where neoliberal economics are part of the normalisation towards becoming a global city. The East Berlin experience (of post-socialist transformation) indicates another variation in the process of globalisation, in this case manifested in urban shrinkage, population flight and unemployment – a form of globalisation that was experienced predominantly in eastern European cities (Martinez-Fernandez et al. 2012). The different experiences and challenges of the “finance-dominated globalisation of today” (Massey and Rustin 2014: 201) demonstrate that a so-called ‘borderless world’ can lead to, and perpetuate, “uneven development” (Smith 1984), with some cities becoming extremely rich while others suffer decline. Further complicating the discussion, Pierre Bourdieu suggests globalisation is a rhetoric, a “myth in the strongest sense of the word…a powerful discourse” (1998: 34), arguing that while globalisation is often presented as the only path, there is an alternative. Consequently, it is important to explore the relationship between the process of globalisation in the neighbourhood setting and the discourse of globalisation. By understanding globalisation as a discourse of power, the ideological basis of globalisation is revealed: it is a process that benefits some and hurts others (Fairclough 2013: 207). This Bourdieusian analysis is useful when considering the parallel national discourses on globalisation in the UK and Germany, which cement the binary between ‘stasis’ and ‘growth’ that neoliberal reason sets out. Neoliberalism encompasses a wide variety of policies in various guises, for example the seemingly contradictory policies of ‘roll-back’ (freemarket thinking and deregulation) and ‘roll-out’ neoliberalism (statebuilding and regulation in government reform) (Peck and Tickell 2002). Despite the apparent paradox, neoliberalism can be seen as a “theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterised by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade” (Harvey 2005: 2). David Harvey points out the overlap between globalisation and neoliberal economic reason, indicating that neoliberal policies that champion entrepreneurial freedoms have flourished globally since the 1970s, becoming a mode of discourse that is incorporated in the common-sense way many of us understand the world (2005: 3). Precisely because neoliberal agendas set the context for growth strategies as a whole – particularly orientation towards welfare and

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therefore notions of inequality, social mix and gentrification – neoliberal logic is also ingrained in the ‘common-sense’ way many of us understand urban regeneration. In the UK, neoliberal policies initially emerged with ‘Thatcher’s revolution’. This included wholesale reforms of privatisation, deregulation and decreased state spending, policies that have proven largely durable since then. Some scholars suggest that neoliberalism has been limited in Germany, largely due to coalition politics (Prasad 2006). However, others claim that “Berlin does not exist as some rather peculiar sanitised bubble free from the taint of global city rhetoric and the threat of neo-liberal urban policy” (Cochrane 2006: 372). In Berlin, neoliberal austerity measures are evident in the restructuring of the Welfare State, specifically in the Agenda 2010 and the 2003 abolition (by an SPD government) of all housing-related subsidies (Bernt et al. 2013: 128). The banking scandal at the turn of the century can be seen as the catalysing factor; the Berlin Senate made private real estate speculations with public finances, which “permanently changed the framework of Berlin’s urban politics… The highest political aim for Berlin has since, and independently of current political power and governmental coalitions, been a balanced budget” (Bernt et al. 2013: 16-17). The scandals are an important contextual factor catalysing plans for Berlin’s exponential growth and tendency towards privatisation in the 2000s, and signal a complicated relationship between ideologies of privatisation and welfare. Bernt et al. offer a sophisticated analysis, suggesting that Berlin’s ambiguous relationship between shared beliefs and urban policies makes it an anomaly within a European context: In contrast to many other Western metropolises, there still exists in Berlin a shared belief – reaching far into conservative quarters – that displacement of low-income populations from the city center should be avoided; that a socially mixed city has to be preserved; that residents are to be involved in decisions that directly affect them; and that the local state is responsible for all this. Although the reality is often a different one, these convictions remain to date a significant influence on Berlin’s urban politics (2013: 18).

However, as the authors mention, the widespread view that social mix is important must be considered alongside the ‘reality’ of displacements, for example those that came in the wake of the construction of the Hauptbahnhof (central station), or the wholescale regeneration of Mitte. More

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fundamentally, this work reflects the need to account for divergent expressions of the pro-growth agenda, hence also divergent globalisations, neoliberalisms, or techniques of neoliberalism (Larner 2003: 511).

The E volution of B ritish & G erman U rban  P olicy Urban policy in Germany and the UK is variant and divergent. Differences in the speed of economic restructuring, the type of political administration and governance, and the relationship between central government and local authorities, mean that the ‘urban problem’ and thus ‘urban remedy’ (regeneration policy) approaches vary. However, despite different national trajectories, similar tendencies in UK and German policy orientation do exist; these divergent policy contexts and similar agendas will be outlined. Urban redevelopment took a radical turn in 1970s Berlin, with the large-scale demolition of Gründerzeit tenement housing (housing stock built after the founding of the German Empire in 1871) and the construction of dense high-rise social housing blocks (Bader and Bialluch 2013: 94). In the late 1970s, neighbourhood resistance and student protests began, particularly in the district of Kreuzberg, where this type of systematic demolition (Kahlschlagsanierung) was acute (Bodenschatz und Polinna 2010: 11). It was from the student protests, the militant squatter movement, and ideas about the value of old neighbourhoods and existing social structures, that a new type of urban regeneration paradigm was born in Germany in the 1980s. So-called behutsame Stadterneuerung (‘cautious’ urban renewal) represented the change of policy from demolition to preservation (Bader and Bialluch 2013: 100). The spatial scope of this perspective allowed for more locally sensitive, self-help oriented approaches to modernisation and emphasised social inclusion and environmental concerns. Spearheaded by the ‘godfather of behutsame Stadterneuerung’, architect Gustav Hartman Hähmer, it adopted mechanisms such as rent control, tenant participation and a slow approach to infrastructure upgrading, ideas that evolved in part because the economic crisis in Germany was not as acute as in the UK. The International Building Exhibition (Internationale Bauausstellung, IBA) in Berlin 1979-1987 showcased the concept and aimed to transfer the ideas and policies of this planning ‘innovation’ to a wider German and interna-

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tional context. In fact, the Internationale Bauaustellung GmbH “effectively institutionalised the civic actors who supported the protests against the earlier demolition protests” (Bader and Bialluch 2013: 99) indicating the high level of acceptance and formal integration the policies received in German urban planning. While behutsame Stadterneuerung did initially serve poor people’s interests, it has also been described as a “precursor of neoliberal urban policy” (Bader and Bialluch 2013: 100) because private actors were established as an important part of the urban renewal process. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent reunification of Germany in 1990 had a significant impact on planning agendas, national priorities and debates (Großmann 2007). During the state-socialist period, fixed low rents meant a lack of investment and maintenance of the housing stock and resulted in long-term decay, vacancy and demolition of 19th century tenement housing (Wießner 1999: 44). After 1990, East Germany and Berlin were open to capitalist urban development, a postWall euphoria that resulted in over-optimistic projections of Berlin’s quick evolution into a global city within the decade of the 1990s (Krätke 2001: 1779). As Janet Stewart put it: “[t]hroughout the 1990s, Berlin has been a city obsessed with architectural and planning issues” with the city itself as a quasi-exhibition, displaying ‘New Berlin’ (2002: 51). The vision of the new Berlin as a boom-town had the effect of hugely inflated real-estate prices and construction fever – as described above with reference to Potsdamer Platz – and consequently the city became one of the world’s largest building sites (Colomb 2007: 283). Ultimately, misguided projections of Berlin’s elevation to global city status resulted in increasing the city’s debt. In the 1990s, the national priority was to subsidise the East German Länder, which were most in need of financial aid. EU money also paid for city centre refurbishment, housing estate regeneration and developing infrastructure. The national initiative Soziale Stadt (Social City) was founded in 1996 and its implementation via the Quartiersmanagement (Neighbourhood Management) programme aimed at loosening the socio-spatial divisions in cities. Its wide scope, with themes ranging from education to employment and housing, approached policy and deprivation in an integrated way, with actors involved from various departments, different administrative levels and outside the public sector. Stadtumbau Ost (Urban Renewal East) and Stadtumbau West (Urban Renewal West) were attempts to improve public space, public buildings and infrastructure in Berlin. It was within this 1990s context, during the height of post-

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Wall euphoria when there was an inflated vision for the city’s growth, that the Mediaspree development project was born. Characterising the (early) Mediaspree developments as part of this national optimism is relevant, because it shows very clearly that economic imperatives underscored the regeneration agenda, also indicating that the Mediaspree developments were conceived within a specific economic and political context and narrow frame. As to the situation in the UK, the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 marked a political watershed and break in post-war British politics. UK regeneration policy in the 1980s can be characterised by deregulation and alliances forged between the conservative government and the private sector. Thatcher’s government set in motion strong economic growth in London, but also increasing inequality (Fainstein 2010: 116). New attention was given to the renovation of social housing estates in the late 1980s – parallel to the developments in Germany – but the development of so-called ‘property-led’ regeneration also defined the period 1979-1990. The ‘Right-to-Buy’ legislation pushed through government by Michael Heseltine, which allowed council tenants to buy their council houses at a discounted rate, is one example of policy that pushed the privatisation of state assets (Jones and Evans 2013: 3), with the aim of public profit. In the 1980s, the role of local authorities was marginal, because central government under Thatcher saw private investment as a solution for urban dereliction. Urban Development Corporations (UDCs) and so-called ‘enterprise zones’ were established to promote investment and economic vitality through low taxation and limited planning controls (Couch et al. 2011: 35). The London Docklands Development Corporation (1981-1998), a government quango, was one of these UDCs. Its task was to regenerate the former docklands of East London. As a planning body, it was able to override local control. One of the projects’ flagship venues, Canary Wharf, is now the centrepiece of international banking, and is often perceived as a planning success story (despite bankruptcy), because the developments transformed one of the most disadvantaged areas in London into an international employment hub. However, activism and local resentment at the lack of consultation (particularly felt by former dockworkers) during the planning and construction of London Docklands suggests that there were Cultures in Conflict, Worlds in Collision (Foster 1999), since development centered on national economic recovery via speculative real-estate development (Merrifield 1993: 1252). Parallels have been made between the

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Docklands development and the current Olympic developments (Minton 2012), with scholars suggesting that these “flagship exemplars of broader development ideologies and national state projects” tend to overlook the quality of life and level of deprivation that exists in London’s neighbourhoods (Imrie et al. 2009: 16). The late 1980s also saw the widespread demolition of social housing estates, in particular tower blocks, which were seen as unpopular, poorly constructed and anti-social. Some of these had only recently been constructed under Thatcher’s government, showing the speed at which perspective on housing, and regeneration more generally, changed. The Trowbridge Estate in Hackney Wick is an example: The Trowbridge estate was built amid the naivety and optimism of the 1960s. Today it embodies the pessimism of the 1980s. It is a monument to misery and insensitivity, which demonstrates only too clearly how that which can be fashionable but which is not rooted in the needs of the people can quickly become a disaster… It has been the policy of successive Conservative and Labour Governments since the 1930s to demolish slums, and it would be extraordinary if the concept of demolishing slums were now cast aside and those blocks were allowed to remain (Brian Sedgemore 11 November 1983, as cited in transcripts of Parliamentary Debates, Hansard 1983).

Lower density, low-rise bungalow housing largely replaced the tower blocks, demonstrating that the traditional terraced housing of pre-war Britain (the structures typically demolished in ‘slum clearance’) was actually seen as the stable social basis for healthy community interaction. With the election of John Major in 1990 came the decentralisation of regeneration and a new, active role for local authorities to play. It was under this Conservative government that the idea of competition was increased, with new initiatives such as the City Challenge (launched in 1991), in which cities had to bid for central government funding (Fearnley 2000). The Single Regeneration Budget (launched in 1994) continued this trend towards the competitive role of local authorities. Other funding streams such as the Heritage Lottery Fund, established by John Major’s government in 1994, also contributed to what can be seen as ‘regeneration’ initiatives (Campkin 2013: 169). In 1997, Tony Blair’s New Labour government was elected, hailing another phase in urban policy. The New Deal for Communities was the

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Labour government’s flagship regeneration scheme, set up in 1998, with the aim of 10-year-long investment to address deprivation in the poorest neighbourhoods. State drive for urban regeneration was also implemented through the so-called Urban Task Force chaired by architect Richard Rogers. Its task was to “identify the causes of urban decline” and achieve an urban renaissance (Urban Task Force 1999: 1). Central to the government’s vision was the ‘turn to community’ as the preferred mode of governance in urban regeneration (Imrie et al. 2009: 12). The Urban Task Force reports reflected the perceived erosion of ‘community’, civic engagement and social interaction, which could be remedied by fostering a sense of moral responsibility within communities and participation in local planning. In the late 1990s the common currency of concepts of ‘urban design’ and ‘sustainable communities’ reflected a focus on neighbourhood-scale renewal (Social Exclusion Unit 2001), and there was a push for reorganisation of inner city areas, with the aim of curbing urban sprawl and protecting the green belt. The founding of the Urban Task Force and the establishment of a government advisory committee on architecture from 1999 to 2000 (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment) indicates that planning and architecture ranked highly on the government’s agenda, marking “a feverish new appetite for the regeneration of cities, and one continued by successive governments and local authorities ever since” (Campkin 2013: 2). In Germany, the critical issue of regional imbalance remains, with some of the most economically successful cities in the west and ‘shrinking cities’ (demographic decline and low economic performance) in the east (Bernt 2009). This east-west disparity has shaped policy in the last decades and continues to do so today, arguably making for a more sensitive regeneration policy in regard to spatial inequality: policy innovation is more localised and ‘bottom-up’ in Germany (Couch et al. 2011: 47). However, initiatives that have tried to boost economic reconstruction and development in East Germany, such as the initiative Auf bau Ost (literally: Recovery for the East), which poured billions of euros into the restructuring and renovation of urban centres in the east, have been criticised for causing a decline of investments in the west (see Deutsch 2007 for a full discussion). Initiatives such as Aktive Stadt- und Ortsteilzentren (Active City and Neighbourhood Centres) have sought to address this bias, including areas in western Germany as well as regions and cities in the east. While scholars suggest that the ‘careful urban renewal’ instruments

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of the 1980s have not necessarily continued into current urban policy, some of its core principles concerning mixed inner-city neighbourhoods remain ingrained, at least in theory (Bernt et al. 2013: 18). Soziale Stadt and the Quartiersmanagement programmes are two policy mechanisms with a localism agenda that have continued since the 1990s. Active in over 600 areas, the government was granted a new cycle of funding by the EU in the period 2007-2013, including 17 million euros available for the programme in 2014 (Soziale Stadt website). The Stadtumbau initiatives that began in the 1990s continue to be a major policy effort, but the fact that the initiatives are “economically driven and globally focused” (Bader and Bialluch 2013: 93) means that there are concerns about its impacts. In the UK, the localism agenda of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition (elected in 2010), reflects a continuity with the previous Labour government’s ‘turn to community’ in regeneration policy. The Localism Act 2011 aims to boost local participation and marginalisation, with a “lasting shift in power away from central government and towards local people” (Department for Communities and Local Government 2011). The government presents the legislation as a means to devolve more power to councils and neighbourhoods, ‘empowering’ communities through greater control over local issues such as planning. In this sense, the UK focus on localism reflects the localism agenda of Germany’s Soziale Stadt programme (Hohmann 2013), converging in their focus on area-based urban regeneration, emphasis on active citizen participation and the involvement of local stakeholders. However, it seems that the Localism Act is likely to help only better-off communities, who are organised and have their own resources, and therefore will result in increased inequality and fragmentation (Colenutt 2011). Part of the Localism Act is the right for communities to list and bid for Assets of Community Value, and the right to develop neighbourhood plans – two policies that are relevant in the Hackney Wick Fish Island case study. The London Plan (Greater London Authority 2011a) is another important component of current urban regeneration legislation, because it provides the strategic plan for the city, written by the Mayor of London and published by Greater London Authority. Tellingly, the word ‘regeneration’ appears frequently in the document, but is not defined. Given its focus on economic growth, intensive use of land and ‘trickle down’ property-led redevelopment, the London Plan seems to promote neoliberal strategies of regeneration (Campkin 2013: 5).

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A E urope an F ocus on S ocial E xclusion The key question when comparing urban policy is how Germany and the UK will orient themselves in the future while social exclusion and segregation remain problems in both national contexts. A central concern for both Germany and the UK is the relationship between some ‘high achieving’ cities and neighbourhoods (where economic power is, for example, represented by high commercial tax revenues), and others, which are lagging behind (often measured in terms of high unemployment and large number of social welfare recipients). Social exclusion and deprivation, alongside the agenda for economic growth, remain key concerns for urban policy and focus for regeneration initiatives. This suggests there is a common concern, if not trajectory, to European urban policy: “In essence there seems to be a common concern to ensure that territories and certain social groups within the population do not become marginalised or excluded from the mainstream of national, regional and city life” (Couch et al. 2011: 44). With growing socio-economic inequalities and segregation, the task of urban development policies is to negotiate these problems of marginalised groups while simultaneously maintaining a global competitive edge. If a European aim exists, then it is the idea that people should not be disadvantaged by where they live in the European Union, although this notion of ‘territorial cohesion’ remains an abstract political objective (Faludi 2005). The idea of EU territorial cohesion shows that there is European and national consciousness that cities should not only be places for modernisation and economic growth but also spaces where social polarisation needs to be tackled. The problem is that these two ideas collide when transferred to policy, with ‘equity’ and ‘competitiveness’ often presented as opposite ends of a sliding scale (Fainstein 2010: 138). The more cities are motors for economic development, the more social and spatial divisions increase: “The effect of global city status…is to greatly sharpen income inequality, primarily as a consequence of growth at the top” (Fainstein 2010: 138). This is because policies tackling the physical manifestation of deprivation often focus on demolition and rebuilding of social housing estates, which is “violently destructive of homes, social networks, cultural forms of life, and long established mechanisms for economic survival” (Porter and Shaw 2013: 249). Chris Hamnett describes the causal relationship between economic growth and increasing inequality:

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The growth of inequality in London and in other world cities…is not an inadvertent or accidental by-product of their leading global role in financial, business and creative services or their peculiar industrial structure. It is a direct consequence of this role… To a very significant extent, the economy of the City of London and the salaries which are paid there generate massive inequalities (2003: 102).

Couch et al. (2011: 34) suggest that the incompatibility of economic growth and reducing deprivation can be tackled if policies are considered at their various regional, city and district levels. However, the interests of economic growth policies are not geared towards the excluded, which indicates that ‘business consultancy urbanism’ is disinterested in the city that does not feed international competitiveness (Amin 2013). The issue of scale is, however, an important aspect of urban policy: spatial scope is crucial precisely because policies aimed at strategic city-wide goals arguably miss the finer grain of neighbourhood-level problems and needs. The case studies in London and Berlin show the propensity of planners to scale their urban policies at the city level, with constructions of Community and Culture mirroring city rather than neighbourhood needs. Urban regeneration tends to focus on a spatial fix of physical environments, with a missing link to the actual causes of poverty (or ‘deprivation’): structural socio-economic inequality. Neoliberal ideology dominates contemporary conceptions of urban development, with the ideology of the Welfare State and ‘equal opportunities’ coming to an end in an increasingly entrepreneurial economic landscape (Harvey 1989). Urban policy (and thus urban regeneration) has a strong market-led imperative, which can be analysed as playing a central role in the reproduction of wealth and poverty and, intentionally or not, bolstering a system of structural inequality. Libby Porter and Kate Shaw conclude that “[v]ery little ‘benefit’ from urban regeneration flows to the poor at all” (2013: 249) but also suggest that “policy that counters the potential inequities of urban regeneration…is possible. We know that any and every element of equitable policy in urban regeneration has to be fought for” (2013: 256). This indicates the need to look at specific policies and strategies in particular cities and zoom in on concrete expressions of regeneration to provide a better picture of how these shifts in urban policy relate to practices in the neighbourhood context. In the following chapter, this contextual discussion will be structured within a theoretical frame. The chapter presents

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the analogy of urban regeneration as a ‘game’ (Bourdieu 1980/1990) and highlights the importance of language in who wins and loses.

3 The Game of Urban Regeneration

There is a large amount of academic literature on the nature of urban change, as the previous chapter indicates. It is rich in empirical detail (Colomb 2012b; Porter and Shaw 2013; Pratt 2009; Zukin 1982) and its political resonance (Sassen 1994; Smith 1984; Swyngedouw 2007), yet tends to focus either on the messy micro practices of social actors at streetlevel without a strong theoretical grounding or make theoretical claims about structural inequality from a ‘zoomed out’ perspective that abstracts the realities at ground level. This book offers a corrective by drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s key concepts, the relevance of which will be demonstrated in this chapter1. By developing an interpretive framework it brings analysis of micro-level practice into conversation with broader structural themes. I draw on Bourdieu’s ‘theory of practice’ (1980/1990) and analogy of urban regeneration as a ‘game’ (1994/2001), showing that urban regeneration is a relational process (Massey 2005) with a competitive dynamic, both at macro and micro level (Wacquant 2014: 16). Developing the analysis of the previous chapter, which reveals competitive ‘finance-dominated globalisation’ (Rustin and Massey 2014: 118) as the driving force behind urban regeneration, this chapter provides a critical framework for understanding urban transformations as a discourse and 1 | Bourdieu suggests four levels of field: the ‘field of power’, the broad field, the specific field, and agents in the field as a ‘field’ in themselves (Thomson 2012: 77). The all-encompassing ‘field of power’ represents the social world in its widest sense, and imposes changes on society such as globalisation, deindustrialization and neoliberal politics. This is made up of multiple smaller fields, with large fields again divided up into sub-fields: specialised fields with their own internal logics and rules.

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construction, where language plays a crucial role. It demonstrates that urban regeneration is a game that has rules, competition between players, and unequal outcomes. However, rather than the game being played on a level playing field, “the winners keep tending to win and the losers keep tending to lose” (Inglis and Thorpe 2012: 221, italics in the original). The aim of this theoretical chapter is to show how Bourdieu’s frame is useful in revealing and exploring these relations and dynamics.

B ourdieu ’s C oncep tual F r ame work Theor y of Practice & Symbolic Violence Bourdieu’s major methodological innovation is his ‘theory of practice’ (1980/1990). This theoretical account suggests that social life is structured by social constraint, but that actors simultaneously use their cultural resources (or ‘social capital’) in the face of these social constraints. Bourdieu’s intention was to reconcile the tendency of previous social theories to emphasise either the social (structure) or individual (action) in the analysis of how society is made and remade. Bourdieu’s theory (and crucially, his new terminology) explains social order as comprised and shaped by people’s practices. Social life involves the interplay between the three key concepts that constitute, and are constituted by, these practices: habitus, field and capital. These three terms can be described as a ‘methodological triad’ because they must be taken as an interdependent trio, invalid without reference to one another. The theory of practice conceives of human behaviour as a strategy or, as Michael Grenfell puts it, “an unconscious calculation of profit – albeit symbolic (in the first instance at least) – and a strategic positioning within a social space to maximise individual holdings” (2012: 44). Bourdieu therefore provides us with ‘thinking tools’ (Grenfell 2012: 47) to understand the social world as both social reproduction and social transformation. According to Bourdieu, symbolic domination and ‘symbolic violence’ are the mechanisms that produce and maintain social hierarchies and social inequality, and therefore underpin the theory of practice. Bourdieu defines symbolic violence as “the violence which is exercised upon a social agent with his or her complicity” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992/2007: 167). It therefore describes a system of power relations – the imposi-

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tion of symbolism and meaning on groups – that are experienced and accepted as legitimate. It is precisely because the symbolism and meaning is constructed and ingrained everywhere within society, reproduced even by those social actors that it dominates, that symbolic violence contributes to its own social reproduction (and inequality). This means that the socio-economic policies, principles and ideology of the state in advanced capitalist societies represent the interests of the dominant classes. These are embedded and deemed ‘natural’ in all aspects of social life, classifying and categorising the social world, therefore representing an instrument of power, domination and hence symbolic violence. Extending this analysis to the field of urban regeneration is valuable. Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic violence reveals the underlying domination within seemingly non-political everyday negotiations and relations. If members of the dominant class only need to live their everyday lives (according to the rules of the system) in order to benefit from their privileged position and reproduce hierarchies, then players in the game of urban regeneration only need to adhere to the neoliberal logic of the field to produce and reproduce advantage for themselves, and also simultaneously produce disadvantage and enact symbolic violence on others. Crucially, this system of domination appears legitimate – both to those who benefit and win, and to those who lose within the system. However, for these dynamics to be revealed in their detail, Bourdieu’s ‘conceptual triplet’ (Paradis 2014) of habitus, capital and field will now be explained in greater detail.

The Methodological Triad Bourdieu’s concept of habitus can be defined as an internalised cultural habitat that regulates the way individuals feel about being in the world and perceiving it. Bourdieu himself describes habitus as a “socialised body, a structured body, a body which has incorporated the immanent structures of a world or of a particular sector of that world” (1994/2001: 81). Habitus is a person’s predisposition, ‘common sense’ (Richardson and SkottMyhre 2012: 11), or ‘second nature’; shaping his or her unconscious sense of the possible, reasonable and desirable, and generating our practices. This means that individuals are socialised into a habitus that is expressed not just in mental but also in bodily terms and a person’s mode of everyday life. Linguistic and cultural competencies are internalised through local

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practices, which in turn are strengthened through these actions, creating a symbiotic relationship. Therefore, while habitus constrains people’s practices, it also allows creative responses to situations. Importantly, habitus is a “dynamic…set of schemata subject to ‘permanent revision’ in practice” (Wacquant 2016: 64). Habitus is neither entirely a product of our own agency, nor purely defined by structural constraints. Bourdieu’s concept of habitus consequently allows us to describe things that are often considered as ‘natural’ – for example, mediations, representations and dialogues – as aspects of culture. The value of the term habitus in analysing the processes of urban regeneration is to show the social world to be asymmetrical: habitus is a crucial element in (re)creating and (re)producing social spaces. Bourdieu argued that interactions between people occur in a social space or field1. The field describes a bounded site or microcosm, a human construction with its own distinctive logic, beliefs and specific rules – a redefinition of the conventional term ‘social structure’ (Inglis and Thorpe 2012: 217). There is a relationship of both conditioning and construction between habitus and field, so that the field does not only condition (or structure) the habitus, but vice-versa, the habitus also constructs (or constitutes) the field. Field is defined by Bourdieu as “a structured social space, a field of forces, a force field. It contains people who dominate and people who are dominated. Constant, permanent relationships of inequality operate inside this space” (Bourdieu 1998: 40-41 as cited by Thomson 2012: 72). Bourdieu also states that power defines field positions and people’s strategies. This highlights that the central characteristic of field is struggle and antagonism, and also shows that the social arena of interactions is not fixed. As Paul Jones puts it: “The field concept functions as an aide mémoire to remind researchers of…the relational nature of any social space” (2011: 13, italics in original). Therefore, while hierarchy is intrinsic in the field, agency and change are equally important in its definition. As Patricia Thomson states, fields “have their own rules, histories, star players, legends and lore” (2012: 67). The field is the site on which a competitive (social) game is played: high positions in the field are occupied by people with large amounts of capital relevant to that field, and these players dominate other players, whether in the field of culture, housing, academia or science. Similar to a football field, the social field consists of ‘positions’. Given that fields are not just related but also interdependent, someone well positioned in the economic field is also likely to

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be well-situated in the cultural field. This means that there are parallel mechanisms operating in different social fields, resulting in a certain amount of predictability about which agents are dominant in a field and the practices taking place within each field. For Bourdieu, understanding the field requires investigating how knowledge about that space has been produced, by whom, and for whose benefit. Crucially, there are mutualities working across fields. Bourdieu argued that ‘dominant fields’, such as the field of economics, can determine change and exert influence on other fields. Consequently, while urban regeneration is a field with its own distinct rules, the economic field to some extent drives the logic of the field. Within this book, the focus is on the influence of a neoliberal economic ideology on the field of urban regeneration, evident, for example, in liberal economic regulations such as providing tax breaks for businesses in development zones. However, it is not just other fields that can exert influence – external material shifts can also produce change within fields. Contextualising this within the field of urban regeneration, this includes the effect of deindustrialisation on altering the logic of regeneration, which may become apparent through changes in policy agendas (discussed in the previous chapter). ‘Game playing’ for Bourdieu is embodied practice; a semiconscious act. Unlike playing a board game or sport ‘game’ such as football, in entering the social field “one does not embark on the game by a conscious act, one is born into the game, with the game” (Bourdieu 1980/1990: 67). When Bourdieu talks about actors having ‘a feel for the game’ this means they do not fully reflect on interactions as ‘moves’, but rather have a feeling about how to act in a given context. A ‘feel for the game’ is gained through experience, “having the game under the skin; it is to master in a practical way the future of the game; it is to have a sense of history of the game”, which means that “[w]hile the bad player is always off tempo, always too early or too late, the good player is the one who anticipates, who is ahead of the game…she embodies the game” (Bourdieu 1994/2001: 81). What might be termed ‘social competence’ is most importantly learnt through practice. Using Bourdieu’s thought to frame the dynamics of urban regeneration reveals that players do not ask themselves consciously whether they would like to participate or not. The game of urban regeneration is a social field that people are naturally part of, for example, due to residential location in, or near, a dedicated regeneration scheme, or because urban development in some other way is part of an individual’s everyday life. Skill at game

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playing within the field of urban regeneration is largely dependent on a person’s ‘capital’, a concept that will be outlined next. Bourdieu’s concept of capital is closely related to power. In Bourdieu’s own words, capital is “what makes the games of society – not least, the economic game – something other than simple games of chance” (1986: 46). Capital can be described as the ‘currency’ with which individuals position themselves on a particular field of social life. On an individual level, capital is therefore an asset usually acquired over time that brings social and cultural advantage or disadvantage. It can also be understood as the ‘energy’ that drives the development of a field; the main medium or mechanism of field operations. Capital in its various forms – economic, social, cultural and symbolic – describes resources that are fundamentally connected to habitus: reflecting either those with ‘well-formed habitus’ (rich symbolic capital) or ‘ill-formed habitus’ (low symbolic capital). Bourdieu uses the term capital to show that the system of exchange is more than just the monetary exchange of the economic sphere. Bourdieu therefore made a broad distinction between economic capital (immediately convertible into money; mercantile exchange) and symbolic capital (wider cultural exchanges), although all forms of symbolic capital ultimately correspond to the logic of the economic field (including its inequalities and power relations). Bourdieu’s interest is not merely the unequal distribution of resources within society but the process by which the dominant classes monopolise and benefit from the resources and use them to maintain their dominant position by subordinating others. In The Forms of Capital (1986) Bourdieu outlines the two types of symbolic capital: social and cultural. Cultural capital refers to the cultural resources a person has, and is often equated with taste and the possession of ‘legitimate culture’, which could, for example, include knowledge of the arts. Rich cultural capital is therefore often connected with a high level of education. Cultural capital is important in the framework of this chapter as it is increasingly being used in urban policy as a way of thinking about city competitiveness and neighbourhood regeneration (Bridge 2006: 727). Within urban policy, cultural capital is often defined as a uniformly productive asset that everyone is able to mobilise, but Bourdieu demonstrates that cultural capital is linked to social capital, which refers to the network of relations a person has – not just to how many people the person is networked with but who they are networked with. Having rich social capital means being networked with wealthy and powerful people. This is

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important within the field of urban regeneration because it suggests that those networked with planners, architects and politicians will be better equipped to make confident, well-informed and skilful ‘moves’. Bourdieu stresses that one type of capital can be converted to another. This idea is valuable when thinking about dynamics in the field of urban regeneration because it helps to explain, for example, why an individual rich in social capital may ‘get ahead’ in the game without much economic capital. Following this logic, players without the ‘right’ capital for that (sub) field may feel awkward and uncomfortable and consequently ‘fall behind’ in the game. People entering a field will aim to accumulate capital, but those who enter with a lot of economic, social and cultural capital will have an advantage: “Quite simply, the higher class you are born into, the more advantages (in the form of capital) you will have at your disposal, and these advantages are crucial for the successful playing of all the games of social life” (Inglis and Thorpe 2012: 219). The value of Bourdieu’s thought for this study is related in particular to his ‘alternative’ language and terminology, which provides an analytical framework that can travel across scales, allowing analyses of micro-experiences, meso and macro structures (Wacquant 2014: 16). As Mike Savage suggests, “Bourdieu’s conception of field, habitus, and capitals is a theoretically powerful way of reorienting urban theory in ways which take account of the significance of flows and mobility, yet which embeds these in processes of social stratification” (2011: 512, italics in original). The idea that players start with different amounts of capital remains a powerful approach, showing that those with more to begin with are more likely to benefit in the game. Bourdieu’s concept of field offers a valuable basis for analysing urban regeneration as a sphere (or game) with an internal logic and competing forces – this interpretive frame can be used to capture the dynamics of neighbourhood interactions, and simultaneously say something about the political project of neoliberalism. Within this context, it is important to remember that Bourdieu’s project goes beyond academia (Jenkins 2013), because his work was undoubtedly a political project to fight on behalf of those marginalised in society (revealed explicitly in Pierre Carles’ 2001 documentary film Sociology is a Martial Art). The rest of this chapter puts Bourdieu’s language to practical use, creating an interpretive frame to analyse the empirical data in the following two chapters.

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The P l aying F ield of U rban R egener ation Urban regeneration is intertwined with global politics, urban policy and contemporary planning paradigms – specifically the construction of the ‘global city’ – but is also constituted through urban struggles and protest. Bourdieu’s field theory provides the tools to reveal the interrelation of all these elements. Bourdieu’s conceptual framework allows urban regeneration to be analysed relationally and scrutinised as a process; situated within a historical context, constituted by a web of multiple interactions with other fields (such as the fields of politics and economics), and part of a web of strategic and individually constituted factors. Analysis of urban regeneration not only benefits from a relational perspective but also from the acknowledgement that scalar talk has become an increasingly important aspect of regeneration discourse. As discussed (and critiqued) in the paragraphs and chapters that follow, urban regeneration is imagined, narrated and planned on various scales: neighbourhood, city, regional, national and global. Building upon what Henri Lefebvre termed the ‘scale question’ (1976), Neil Brenner talks about the social production of geographical scales which are historically and geographically contingent; “scalar hierarchies are a being profoundly rearticulated, reshuffled and redefined throughout the world economy” (2000: 362). More specifically, ‘scalar narratives’ are often used to justify and defend particular political projects (such as urban policies), particularly those that focus on taking advantage of ‘local’ strengths to achieve national economic competitiveness (González 2006). This indicates that geographical scales constitute a “primary avenue to power” (Smith 1995: 62), or as Doreen Massey (1993) puts it, new scalar configurations lead to highly contentious “power geometries”. Discussions such as these, which are attuned to the politics of scale, lay the ground for analysing the field of urban regeneration as a competitive space where actors use discursive strategies to justify and legitimise scalar political projects (discussed in detail in chapters four and five). Bourdieu’s ‘playing field’ is a valuable metaphor and frame because it allows urban regeneration to be read as a competitive social space with its own history and distinctive logic, beliefs and rules – with habitus and capital determining the positions that players occupy. But if urban regeneration is a field (and a game), a few important questions remain: what rules does it follow? Which players are present in Berlin and London?

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And what moves do they make? These questions are addressed in the remainder of this chapter.

Game Playing as Neoliberal Practice Bourdieu’s notion of game playing helps to demonstrate that the rules of urban regeneration follow the logic of ‘neoliberal urbanism’ (Peck et al. 2009). Social actors (or game players) are constrained by the agenda of free-market economic growth (part of social structure), but simultaneously can make moves (human action) such as the everyday practices that circumvent this agenda. Bourdieu describes neoliberal logic as a ‘strong discourse’, which is hard to fight because of its symbolic power and dominant economic choices that are orientated towards it (Bourdieu 1998: 95). Bourdieu shows that neoliberalism is a discourse that favours neoliberal game players and advantages those who are willing to abide by its rules. Game playing as neoliberal practice is laden with symbolic dominance. When a habitus matches the logic of the field this produces a feeling of being socially comfortable, and this is crucial when thinking of social reproduction, and specifically the reproduction of neoliberal urbanism. Furthermore, social fields, according to Bourdieu, are enacted by the social ‘agents’ who embody and reproduce them, which means the game endlessly produces and reproduces “the conditions of its own perpetuation” (Bourdieu 1980/1990: 67). Neoliberal urbanism is therefore not just produced and reproduced by a deliberate political programme, but is also constituted through the semiconscious practices of social actors. Winning a game, whether metaphorical or real, is equated with players knowing the rules and playing the game with skill. Using Bourdieu’s framework, winning and losing essentially describes how social actors’ habitus fits the logic of the field: only players with a belief in the game, willing to invest time and effort, can play and win. Smooth game playing and winning is therefore about the alignment of a set of expectations and mode of life within the structured social space. Unskilled game playing is when the internalised habitat of individuals jars or clashes with the logic of the field. The categories winning and losing must be understood as normative descriptors here because for Bourdieu the social game is unending (Thomson 2012: 78): there cannot be absolute or essential winners and losers.

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The terms winners and losers refer to the advantage and dominance of some players over others, symbolising hierarchy and relations rather than an endgame. This means that some players ‘get ahead’ quicker and further than others within the system, while others are left behind. When social actors lose the game of urban regeneration, they do not necessarily lose something in absolute terms in the immediate setting (although that is also possible), but lose a claim to space and a sense of belonging. Winning reflects making the city in one’s own image and implies a domination of one view of the city (and urbanism) over another. This is the fundamental reasoning behind any game: one player (or perspective) trumps the others. Given that the playing field of urban regeneration follows a neoliberal logic, the embodied practice of game playing can essentially take three possible paths, constructed here for analytical reasons. The first possibility is that social actors (individuals and communities) adapt and reinvent along the normative, ‘legitimate’ and state-endorsed path of neoliberal terms. I argue that in following this path, social agents use (and believe in) the language of ‘dynamic’ and ‘active’ citizenship. In this scenario, citizens negotiate the new possibilities in the field of ‘participation’ and benefit from following the rules and playing the game. This represents smooth or skilled game playing in which social actors are winners in the sense that they improve their position in the field. The sticking point here is that this submission to the neoliberal rules of the game carries a cost; by following one logic, any other ideology or logic is sidelined. The second possibility is that social actors are dominated by neoliberal terms, immobile and non-adaptive to the new language (and planning paradigm) of participation. This represents unskilled game playing and means that social actors are losers in the sense that their position within the field of urban regeneration declines. The third possible path is a radical rejection of the terminology and rules of neoliberalism: communities and individuals that take themselves out of the game altogether. These three possible paths form the fundamental basis of winning or losing the game of urban regeneration. In the realm of everyday (neighbourhood) interactions – making smooth (or skilled) moves within the game of urban regeneration requires social actors to make the ‘right’ constructions of Community and Culture. The game of urban regeneration involves terminology, language and words. Analysing how planners, politicians, residents and activists in the neighbourhood construct the concepts of Community and Culture dis-

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cursively reveals game playing practice, within the field of regeneration. Applied to empirical data, this interpretive frame helps to demonstrate that all social actors are somehow active in the production of construction of Community and Culture; the concepts are not only the deterministic outcomes of “neo-liberal statecraft” (Hohmann 2013: 3) but are also shaped by local desires. In this sense the Bourdieusian framework is essential in demonstrating the complexity of urban regeneration as it is lived on the neighbourhood scale as well as in relation to discursive constructs and policy agendas. Within the political and economic fields, Community and Culture are imagined as the strategic solutions to post-industrial urban decline. This means that to play (and win) the game of urban regeneration, players’ practices necessarily involve constructing definitions of Culture and Community that align smoothly with the language (and specific terminology) of normative urban regeneration rhetoric: active citizenship, participation and cooperation. Crucially, this is a language of consensus rather than confrontation or agonism, and highlights that smooth neoliberal game playing in the field of urban regeneration relies on consent, and in doing so shuts down options or alternatives in the political field. In a similar vein to Bourdieu’s agonistic theory of social life, and drawing on the idea that language structures and reflects power, Chantal Mouffe argues that fashionable terms such as ‘dialogic democracy’ and ‘cosmopolitan democracy’ are fraught with dangers because they refuse to acknowledge the antagonistic dimension of ‘the political’ (2005: 2). This reflects Bourdieu’s analysis that power relations will always structure social life. Players’ habitus and capital are essential components in the ground level constructions of Community and Culture. Habitus and capital are the deciding factors as to whether game playing is skilled or unskilled. Activating one’s social capital to manipulate strategic resources constitutes playing the game with skill, leading to competitive advantages. Actors and collectives play with different definitions, uses and understandings of Culture and Community and depending on the way these concepts are mobilised, either win or lose the regeneration game. Importantly, players’ constructions of Community and Culture are not consciously pre-conceived or rationally calculated, but rather learned, internalised and practiced. Skilled players have a practical sense of how to construct Community and Culture and their actions are guided by a ‘feel for the game’. In the game of urban regeneration, this might be as subtle

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as having the confidence to email or talk face-to-face with local councillors, articulating concerns to planners, or attending public consultation sessions. Unskilled players are unpracticed in the field, which narrows their potential for action, or as Bourdieu puts it, lack of capital “chains one to a place” (Bourdieu 1999: 127). Unskilled players may lack the capital to know which vocabulary to employ to their benefit, or may be unsure of whom to approach for complaints or legal help. Using Bourdieu’s framework, the skilful practices associated with the right presentation of ‘active’ and ‘dynamic’ Community or Culture are the result of the fit between habitus, social capital, and the field. Social capital, as Bourdieu defines it, is border creating and maintaining (as exemplified in differential constructions of Community and Culture). Exclusion is one of its key features. However, the disparity between Bourdieu’s power-laden definition of social capital and social capital as it used within urban policy is a theoretical sticking point – and an important element of the discussion in chapters four and five. Robert Putnam’s work on social capital, particularly in the controversial Bowling Alone (1995), stands in contrast to Bourdieu’s thought. I draw specifically upon Putnam’s definition here because it is renowned for providing a normative, politically instrumental account that forms a cornerstone of neoliberal ideology, underscoring the principles of self-help, community cohesion and sustainable communities (Fine 2002). According to Putnam, social capital represents trust, cooperation and therefore consensus in society: social relationships are seen as win-win. Policy-makers have seized upon this definition, equating social capital with ‘active citizenship’, a resource they can mobilise as a non-economic cure-all solution to social problems. However, in this account, which assumes that social capital provides a valuable function for society as a whole (and the free market economy), the question of whose interests society embodies is ignored. Adopting the celebratory definition of social capital, urban policy falls into the trap of analysing ‘vibrant civil society’ and civic action only as that which is hegemonic and constructed in a normative frame. Bourdieu’s analysis demonstrates that social capital is part of a strategic agenda for ‘getting ahead’ (Blokland and Noordhoff 2008) and playing the regeneration game with skill. If social capital is taking advantage of one’s own benefits above those of others, then in a fight for resources there will always be those included (because of social networks) and those excluded from the opportunities. As Gary Bridge argues, deploying cultural capital

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within the neighbourhood context is not value neutral: “The valorisation of one set of tastes in economic, symbolic and social terms results in the displacement of other tastes (‘working-class’ or ‘ethnic’)… [C]ultural capital is not a homogenous asset” (2006: 728). This indicates that social capital is not about equal opportunities but rather self-interest. Bourdieu’s account illustrates that while networks and connections are valuable in the local arena, they obscure the realities of the have-nots. This theorisation is a key part of the interpretive frame developed in this chapter, specifically the idea that social capital can further exclusion, and can also contribute to the production of winners and losers. The next section will show that social capital is used in different players’ constructions of Community and Culture, and how this contributes to symbolic violence within the field.

P l ayers & S tr ategies There are three competing ‘game players’ as reconstructed across Bourdieu’s writings: state agencies, private capital and citizens. The three categories are understood here as ideal types, used to provide a device and analytical aid to describe their game playing tendencies, rather than providing absolute or mutually exclusive groupings. Bourdieu suggests that in order to ‘see’ the ongoing construction of a field one must first map the agents or institutions that compete for legitimate forms of authority, and second analyse their habitus: the dispositions they have internalised (Bourdieu 1992: 104-5, as cited by Thomson 2012: 73). In order to ‘see’ the dynamics of urban regeneration – the ongoing construction of the regeneration field – this section also introduces the agents and institutions (the players) that are competing for authority in Berlin and London, which correspond to Bourdieu’s categories. I discuss the tendency towards specific forms of capital for each category in order to map the ‘fit’ between the urban regeneration field and the position of certain players. Establishing who the players are in London and Berlin and mapping the rules, resources, stakes and strategies, is a necessary step in preparing the ground for the more detailed empirical analysis in the chapters that follow.

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State Agencies A key player within the field of urban regeneration is the state and its agencies. For Bourdieu, the state is the holder of “a sort of megacapital”: a concentration of power, including capital of physical forces (such as the army or police), economic, symbolic, cultural and informational capital (1994/2001: 41). The state is both a ‘player’ and a field, sitting in an ambiguous position as a vehicle of the dominant class and potential agent for common good. Bourdieu argues that individuals who work for state agencies often present the views of the state as ‘natural’ and that this false objectivity masks the culturally arbitrary nature of policy and administration. State-trained individuals portray bureaucracy as an “organ of reflection” and a “rational instrument in charge of realising the general interest” (Bourdieu 1994/2001: 38), representing politics as a quasi-science, which people see as “logical, practical and neutral, rather than acknowledging a contested worldview and a challenge to the values inherent in it” (Bourdieu 2008: 60, as cited by Grenfell 2012: 254). Bourdieu maintains: “when it comes to the state, one never doubts enough” (1994/2001: 36). Furthermore, he suggests the state’s ability to legitimate itself can be described as the exertion of symbolic violence (Bourdieu 1994/2001: 40). The ability of the state to represent itself as conveying universal value is the foundation to its ability to empower itself as a powerful agent within the field (Savage 2011: 516). While the state claims to represent the interests of others – and is legitimated in doing so – Bourdieu’s analysis indicates that the socio-economic policies, principles and ideology of the state represent the interests of the dominant classes. The language of state agencies is crucial to the way urban regeneration is narrated and the ‘need’ for development is framed and justified. The previous chapter demonstrates that the normative interpretation of regeneration is largely expressed following the interests of an “urban growth coalition” (Logan and Molotch 2007). This corroborates with Bourdieu’s (1998) analysis of the state as associated with ‘fiscal capitalism’, profit and a neoliberal agenda. Bourdieusian thought provides the theoretical tools to analyse the language of the state as totalising and classifying – promoting a particular view of the social world. This means that state bureaucracies and their representatives can construct and produce “social problems” symbolically (Bourdieu 1994/2001: 38), for example, stoking fears of urban decline and dereliction. In turn, language plays a vital role in the

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construction of social capital both as the solution to the social problem of urban decline and more specifically as the remedy for individuals and groups with ‘problems’. The official language of social capital suggests that if some individuals and groups are able to practice civic action, activating their social capital to remedy their own problems, then those who are not able to do so are lacking. The terminology surrounding the concept of social capital bolsters the idea of civic action as ‘natural selection’ and consequently the understanding of the winners and losers within urban regeneration as ‘natural’. In this way the field of urban regeneration is largely produced and reproduced through the words and language of the state. The state employs language such as ‘flexibility’, ‘resilience’ and rhetoric of ‘sustainability’ (specifically ‘sustainable communities’) to bolster the political project of urban regeneration in such a way that if communities do not use this language they become disenfranchised. Consequently, players who are convinced of, and then use the words (concepts and terminology) that reflect the neoliberal logic of the field as employed by the state have the necessary strategic advantage and skill to win the game. At the same time, ‘civil society’ and community groups that are conflict-ridden, displaying agonistic social relations, are often de-legitimised as ‘uncivic’ rather than being analysed as a productive force (Mouffe 2000). This means that it is difficult to conceptualise protest within a narrow frame of collective activity that is exclusively ‘for the good of community and the nation’: the concept of civic engagement does not stretch to include these more disruptive relations between the state and society. As articulated by Ade Kearns: “The reality is that democracy depends upon struggle and conflict more than on the comfortable ‘civicness’ expounded by the proponents of social capital…” (2003: 44). The fact that protest jars with state accounts of productive social relations within the field of urban regeneration is one way to explain the divisions or tensions between players who are non-adapting, immobile and dominated, and those whose habitus allows them to reinvent according to the current logic of the game. Margit Mayer calls the avoidance and omission of adversarial movements the “blind spot in the social capital perspective” (2003: 118). Mayer suggests that current social capital discourse frames urban inequality in a narrow way that emphasises the financial potential of sociability, namely the potential of social (capital) transferring to economic (capital). She argues that “[u]rban disadvantaged groups are thus transformed from

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potential social movement actors demanding recognition of their social rights into ‘social capitalists’, whose ‘belonging’ is conditional on their mobilising the only resources they have as a form of capital” (2003: 125). Mayer’s point is that the normative, state-enforced language of social capital implies that everyone has access to capital, in whatever form it may be. She suggests this perspective is damaging because state belief and investment in social capital essentially paves the way for justifying gross inequalities in financial capital. This argument can be taken one step further. With the toolkit and language developed by Bourdieu, the omission of conflict and contestation from the normative (and politically resonant) conceptualisation of social capital represents symbolic violence: the repression of alternative forms of social capital. The process of omission represents symbolic violence because local social capital as conceived by Bourdieu is equally present and alive in conflictual situations, not merely those of consensus. This omission has real, exclusionary results within the game of urban regeneration. In both London and Berlin, as will be demonstrated in this book, communities and cultures that do not fit the language of the normative and neoliberal logic of social capital are excluded as co-producers of urban regeneration, because de facto conflict is aligned with unhealthy Community (and Culture). The communities and cultures that represent a version of social capital that does not fit into a neoliberal development agenda are overlooked, actively ignored and at worst, displaced. This process has the result of perpetuating the unequal distribution of resources. Thus far the state has been represented as a dominant force that enacts symbolic violence on citizens. However, it must be acknowledged that the state as an entity is more nuanced: there is potential for the state to act for the common good. As Bourdieu puts it, “[b]ecause it concentrates an ensemble of material and symbolic resources, the state is in a position to regulate the functioning of the different fields, whether through financial intervention… or through juridical intervention” (Bourdieu 1994/2001: 33). State agency game playing in the field of regeneration should, therefore, be analysed in its ambiguity. As part of the political elite, protecting dominant class interests, the state tends to play the game by reproducing the political ideals of neoliberal economics. However, the framework developed in this chapter has the job of recognising that state agencies also have the political and economic capital (power) to leverage socially equitable interventions and acknowledge that ‘the state’ comprises of

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citizens with the potential to make moves that could, potentially, dispute state ideology. In London, a key state player within the field of urban regeneration is the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), in charge of Olympic-led urban regeneration. As a team of planners, architects and designers these are highly skilled and educated individuals. The agency has state funding and can be described as relatively rich in economic capital. As a mayoral body with the task of regenerating East London, game playing for the LLDC involves finding the most effective drivers of development. In concrete terms this includes making the neighbourhoods attractive for citizens, developers and businesses. The role of the LLDC as landowner, developer and planning authority – not only for the Olympic site itself, but also surrounding areas – means that the Corporation has to negotiate various interests, including economic growth and a reduction of deprivation in the Olympic Fringe neighbourhoods. The latter is evidenced in the attempts not only to ‘stitch’ the Olympic Fringe neighbourhoods to the Olympic site and to create movement through Hackney Wick Fish Island via new bridges but also through the idea of convergence, the policy initiative that aims for host boroughs to reach the same socio-economic standards as West London within 20 years. The various commitments of the LLDC indicate their ambiguous position within the game of urban regeneration. The LLDC is a state agency with the material and symbolic power to effect policy and spatial change in the neighbourhoods surrounding the Olympic site, but it is constrained by the ideology that underpins the organisation as a whole, namely making London an attractive and profitable city. In Berlin, the key state player within the field of urban regeneration is the Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung und Umwelt (SenStadt). Similarly to London’s LLDC, the task of SenStadt is to guide the development of Berlin. A crucial difference between the LLDC and SenStadt is remit: SenStadt is a part of the Senate of Berlin and oversees all of the state-led development in Berlin rather than being a state agency focused on a specific area in the city for a given amount of time. As detailed in the previous chapter, the moves of SenStadt are underscored by the city of Berlin’s financial deficit. In this sense the logic of neoliberal economics is evident in the recurring emphasis Berlin’s Mayor Michael Müller on Berlin’s projected growth. This is captured explicitly in the idea that in the near future there will be an influx of people migrating to Berlin: “Berlin is

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a dynamic city: in 2012 alone, 164,577 people moved here... Demographers predict strong growth in the future, too” (Press and Information Office of the Federal State of Berlin 2013: 4). This idea is reinforced in the official Urban Development Concept Stadtentwicklungskonzept – StEK Berlin 2030 (2015). The language used to project the ‘Berlin Strategy’ reflects the neoliberal logic of active citizenship evident in London. The emphasis in formal documentation and on public platforms is that everyone in Berlin should actively form the city (aktiv gestalten). SenStadt call for the ‘capital city status’ of Berlin to be something that citizens think about actively and self-consciously as a way to attract important institutions, companies and non-profit organisations to the city. This statement reflects the “blind spot in the social capital perspective” as Mayer defines it (2003: 118), or “strange Newspeak” as Bourdieu and Wacquant conceptualise it (2001: 2). By promoting a selfhelp principle founded on neoliberal ideals, Müller ignores the conflict perspective and power dimension of social capital. Bourdieu’s heuristic reveals that the language propagated by SenStadt, while seemly banal in its technocratic and consensus-based language, should be analysed as part of the reproduction of neoliberal urbanism that is inherently political.

Private Capital Private capital is the second key player in the field of urban regeneration. This player, in the form of an entrepreneur, a small business or corporate company, can generally be defined by economic capital: wealth and financial assets. Private capital is therefore largely influenced by the logic of the economic field, the pursuit of profit, and the neoliberal ideals of competition, ‘efficiency’ and the free market. The most important forms of private capital within urban regeneration are multinational corporations and large development companies: those with the means to invest. These corporations have an abundance of financial capital that can be transmitted instantaneously through purchase, specifically buying and selling land and investing in development projects. Private capital is relied upon by the state to invest money into construction projects and this relationship (specifically of reliance) means that economic capital has the potential to generate political capital. Often, state investment is planned as a lure for even larger private capital investments, which further illustrates the relational dependency between

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private capital and the state. Bourdieu’s analysis reminds us that the logic of the economic field is not ‘natural’ or ‘inevitable’ and the profit orientation is part of the symbolic violence that underpins the reproduction of the economic field itself. Private capital can therefore be seen as shaped by the political programme of neoliberalism and largely colonized by neoliberal terms. Private capital is deemed a crucial driver of London’s Olympic-led urban development. The state openly relies on private capital on various scales, both private investment and Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). Stratford City (which includes Westfield Shopping Centre, Stratford Railway Stations and residential developments in the Olympic Park) is perhaps the most obvious manifestation of private capital transforming urban space within Olympic-led regeneration. The development shows that millions of pounds of private capital (primarily from the developers Westfield Group and Lend Lease) have been called upon to develop large-scale public infrastructure projects and encourage the capital flows around consumption. On the neighbourhood scale, entrepreneurial private capital is relied upon to stimulate the local economy, sometimes supported by the government planning body LLDC (for example, the use of local businesses to carry out regeneration work in the neighbourhood). Two players that can be described as embodying private capital in Hackney Wick Fish Island are discussed in the empirical chapters: the director of the fish smoking business Forman & Sons (chapter four), and the self-funded cultural space Stour Space (chapter five). Bourdieu’s framework provides the tools to describe these actors’ game playing as semiconscious, strategic and embodied in practice, but also entwined in the neoliberal language of entrepreneurialism. In Berlin, private capital in the field of regeneration is – similar to London – relied upon by the state for the regeneration of the inner city. However, given the financial pressures on the City of Berlin as outlined in the previous chapter, in Berlin there is even more reliance on private capital to fill the void left by long-standing city debt. The Mediaspree development and its spatial configurations make clear the power of private capital in the urban transformation, as exemplified by the MTV offices (and later the Coca Cola headquarters) acting as anchor projects for the scheme. This illustrates how the privatisation of space is driven by private capital investment. However, private finance in the field of urban regeneration embodies various types of capital. Two actors that embody private

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capital in Berlin are discussed in the empirical chapters: Holzmarkt e.V. and Spreefeld Cooperative, both developers. The empirical discussion of these two rather unorthodox urban developers demonstrates the slippage between cultural, political and economic capital. In both groups, founding members embody rich cultural capital, which has over a number of years and much game playing developed into economic capital and substantiated their role as official players within the field of urban regeneration in Berlin.

Citizens Citizens are the last key game players within the field of urban regeneration. The category ‘citizens’ includes residents, activists, community-managers and artists. Importantly, defining an individual or group as ‘citizens’ is not mutually exclusive with identifying them as another category of player, such as business-people (private capital); the model allows for hybrid roles. Bourdieu’s heuristic shows citizens to be a varied group, some of whom have the economic and cultural capital that lead to high positions in the field and benefitting from its logic, others who are less well positioned. Bourdieu’s framework demonstrates that there is often misrecognition of social privilege (a high position in field) as natural superiority rather than a learnt habitus. It is also important to note that the habitus of citizens has formed in different eras with significant implications for both their positions in the field of urban regeneration and the tendency for frictions or alliances between citizens. Within contemporary society, where the knowledge economy provides the internal logic of various fields, an older generation may be subjected to symbolic domination and violence resulting from a misfit between their habitus and the (new) logic of the field. Put simply, it is not necessarily a quantitative question, of how much social capital actors have access to, but whether they use it in a way that aligns with the visions of urban authorities. State authorities celebrate community initiatives and civil society networks that fit into the consensus-based version of social capital and fit snugly within the logic of growth. Often initiatives are defined as embodying ‘community resilience’ and precisely their ability to exude ‘dynamism’ means that these initiatives are commonly subsumed into the political agenda. This can be analysed as the instrumentalisation or co-option of community-knowledge and neighbourhood innovation because

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the emphasis is on transferring social capital into financial capital. The process of incorporation reinforces the new divisions in the city by differentiating between those that are deemed ‘dynamic’ and others – often the most isolated and disadvantaged – as inactive or uncooperative. In this way, normative conceptions of social capital are marginalising alternative forms of social capital (such as that exemplified in protest groups), which cannot so easily be labelled or marketed as ‘common good’. Bourdieu’s conceptual framework reveals that co-option can be understood as political: the alignment of certain players with the rules of the game rather than value-free participation and inclusion of some players into producing the city. Bourdieu’s thought also provides the language to analyse citizen participation that has been organised top-down as a tool for increasing confidence in the state and therefore as a tool for legitimation. In Hackney Wick Fish Island, the category ‘citizens’ encompasses various local groups within the field of urban regeneration, including activists, residents and businesspeople. Each group occupies a different position within the field, dependant on habitus and capital. One group of residents in the neighbourhood (discussed in chapter four) are the Trowbridge Estate Senior Citizens. This group can best be described as having relatively low economic and social capital because they live in council-supported housing and have no higher education. A second citizen group (discussed in chapter five) are the members of the Clays Lane Housing Cooperative, who, similar to the Trowbridge members, generally have relatively low economic capital, but as the analysis reveals, the relationship between economic capital and social capital is ambiguous, and sometimes surprising. Artists and so-called (often self-identified) ‘creatives’ form another citizen group in the neighbourhood. While their economic capital is often low, this group generally benefits from plenty of social capital, and the wide networks they establish mean that knowledge is frequently exchanged. The Hackney Wick Cultural Interest Group (CIG, discussed in chapter five) is an example of the power of cultural capital within the field of urban regeneration, reflected in the fact that the group includes not just residential ‘citizens’ but also business people, representatives of the local government, and LLDC planners. Another group of citizens competing in the field is the protest network Games Monitor (discussed in chapter five). The group is made up of dissenting citizens, and analysis of this group provides a case to show the limits of co-option and the value of ‘alternative’ social capital in producing knowledge. Bourdieu’s framework

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provides the tools to compare and contrast the positions of these citizen groups in London – the empirical data demonstrating the importance of having the ‘right’ sort of capital, appropriate to the particular game being played. While some cultures are deemed ‘active’ and innovative, members of subordinate groups are seen as vulgar. In Berlin, the category ‘citizens’ also encompasses various local groups. There is a similar disparity between citizens who have benefitted from new discourses of participation and active citizenship within the field of regeneration, and those who started the game with little capital and have not improved their lot. Equivalent to the Trowbridge Estate Senior Citizen members in London are the members of Rudi Community Centre (discussed in chapter four), who formed their habitus in the decades of industrialisation. Their age and educational levels mean they generally have relatively low economic capital. Bourdieu’s framework allows the empirical data from Berlin to point out that people are left behind within urban regeneration, despite claims of inclusion and democratisation. An even finer use of Bourdieu’s tools demonstrates that those left behind can often be made to believe that the reason they have not reaped the benefits of the process is a result of their own inadequacies and incompetence. Another group of citizens in Berlin are the protest group Mediaspree Versenken (discussed in chapter five) who rejected the normative frame of urban regeneration in Berlin as presented by the Mediaspree scheme. Bourdieu’s heuristic is valuable in revealing the ambiguities of this group, particularly over time, specifically in making sense of the messy intersections between ‘creative class’ habitus, protest and the dominant logic of the field. In contrast to the protest group, members of Holzmarkt e.V. (discussed in chapter five) have, fairly openly, adapted and reinvented themselves to suit the neoliberal logic of the regeneration game – they can be included in the category ‘private capital’ but can also be categorised as ‘citizens’. This flexibility of Bourdieu’s frame – making it possible to account not only for theoretical overlaps between game players’ roles but also for changing positions over time – makes Bourdieu’s language relevant and valuable for understanding the data. The interpretive framework developed in this chapter are used to frame the discussion of Culture and Community, offering the vocabulary to describe relations between the different social actors that will be encountered in the following chapters. Bourdieu’s conceptual framework allows a new gaze to be cast over urban regeneration processes, offering a way

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of thinking that simultaneously accounts for social hierarchies, symbolic domination and creative practices. The framework helps to demonstrate that symbolic violence is enacted within the field of urban regeneration, through language. The words and narratives propagated top-down import a worldview that supports economic growth, and has the effect of further marginalising processes, individuals and collectives standing in the way of this logic. The analogy of urban regeneration as a ‘game’ emphasises the dynamics of urban regeneration at different scales, showing that discourses and everyday practices are structured within, and governed by, a frame: the logic of the field. This chapter has provided the conceptual building blocks to show why the different game players’ definitions, uses, understandings and constructions of Community and Culture are key ground-level moves within the regeneration game, with habitus and capital crucial within this equation. The interpretive frame developed in this chapter provides the skeleton from which comparisons can be drawn between the London and Berlin cases, and helps reveal the domination inherent within urban regeneration, which is not only discursive but also entrenched in everyday practice. Exactly how language and everyday practices shape the winners and losers of the urban regeneration game is the topic of the next two chapters.

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This chapter documents and analyses what Culture as a concept means for different social agents in Hackney Wick Fish Island and Rudolfkiez. Through a Bourdieusian lens, it demonstrates that these multiple constructions of Culture produce scenarios of power, and fundamentally, symbolic violence. Culture is understood and strategically defined by the full constellation of players within the field: the state, private capital and citizens. In order to win in the game of urban regeneration, actors must frame Culture in a way that aligns with the creative city agenda, complementing and enhancing a competitive urban growth imperative. Consequently, the insertion of Culture into the game of urban regeneration is creating a hierarchy of belonging in which commodified ‘creative cultures’ have a claim to space. In the two development projects analysed in this chapter – The White Building in Hackney Wick Fish Island and Oberbaum City in Rudolfkiez – the ‘regenerated spaces’ are ultimately variations on the creative city paradigm, in built form.

C ulture in P olitics & Theory The period from the 1980s to the 2000s saw a ‘cultural turn’ in urban planning and policy (Miles 2005), since then Culture and ‘creativity’ were seen as valuable resources for urban development, specifically for the (economic) restructuring the post-industrial city (Amin 2006). As Peter Hall puts it, “[c]ulture is now seen as the magic substitute for all the lost factories and warehouses, and as a device that will create a new urban image, making the city more attractive to mobile capital and mobile professional workers” (2000: 640). The discussion demonstrates that parallel to the increasing weight of Culture within policy, critical scholars

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argue that Culture is marketed and neoliberalised (Zukin 1995) and used to engineer consensus (Peck 2005). Culture-as-resource, suggests Georg Yudice, is now “the lynchpin of a new epistemic framework” (2003: 1), co-opted and invoked to solve problems previously the province of economics and politics. My analysis shows that Culture can be a means of social ordering and a powerful method of control.

How Urban Policy Imagines Culture Since Richard Florida’s ‘creative class’ thesis (2002) the triad of culture, creativity and the city has been cemented within urban policy, especially within urban regeneration. Florida suggests that within urban development it is crucial to foster a climate of tolerance, a “people’s climate” rather than a “business climate” (for example, tax breaks and physical infrastructure). In this model, Culture is seen as an ‘asset’ or driver in post-industrial economies, stimulating economic growth and fostering new entrepreneurialism in a competitive global urban context (Florida 2005: 1). Florida’s ideas have resulted in policy makers being increasingly attuned to the demands of the new economy’s employees, eager to implement his three T’s: tolerance, talent and technology. In this context the creative city paradigm has been crucial within urban regeneration strategies, with policy makers keen to attract the ‘creative class’ in order to create competitive environments and catalyse economic development (Peck 2005). Cultural production is no longer seen as a ‘soft’ locational factor, but is now deemed a ‘hard’ economic factor key in attracting tourists and central to urban growth (Merkel 2011: 560). Florida seems to promote cultural and social diversity as part of an alternative globalisation rather than market-led strategy. However, there has been sustained critique of Florida’s thesis. One of the main points of contention is that prescribing particular ‘cultural’ activities for a space has the unwanted effect of displacing cultures that have grown over time (Catungal et al. 2009; García 2004). Other critics highlight that the ideas of the ‘creative class’ and subsequent promotion of Culture are more concerned with the marketing of an image rather than a substantive urban policy. They have suggested that the advancement of cultural and creative industries for an inclusive arts-led regeneration become a “quasi-social fact” without much proof (Lees and Melhuish 2013: 14), highlighting that

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there is very little information about the long-term sustainability of the initiatives. ‘Creatives’ as an analytical category – as used by policymakers and supported by Florida’s work – reveals how language within urban regeneration has powerful consequences. The category ‘creatives’ creates a distinction between those who are ‘creative’ and therefore whose presence can ‘save’ neighbourhoods from urban decline, and those who are not ‘creative’ and therefore redundant within formal regeneration schemes. As Claire Colomb and Johannes Novy (2013) highlight, the concept ‘cultural producers’ may therefore provide a more useable term. A similar argument is presented by Andy Pratt (2009), who makes the case for Culture in regeneration to be understood as ‘cultural industries’ rather than cultural consumption. The ‘creative industries’ featured alongside property speculation as a New Labour fixation (Hatherley 2010: 97). The UK government first took up the term ‘creative industries’ in the mid-to-late 1990s, connected with the election of Tony Blair’s government in 1997 and the notion of ‘Cool Britannia’. The creation of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) was a key constituent of this political ideology. This marked the transition from an ad hoc and speculative framing of Culture within politics to an instrumentalisation of Culture through the ‘creative industries’, ‘creative cities’ and ‘creative clusters’. Consequently, Culture was established as a central plank of wealth creation in the UK’s postindustrial economy (Flew and Cunningham 2010: 1) and an essential part of a forward-looking urban policy agenda. The Creative Industries Mapping Documents (Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport 1998) provides a valuable insight into New Labour’s policy plans concerning Culture. The focus of the mapping exercise was unambiguous: to systematically define and measure the creative industries on a national scale. The documents provided evidence of the economic significance of creative industries, suggesting the reports were also a way to market ‘new’ New Labour policies and make their support of Culture-led regeneration palatable: “A mapping project is first and foremost an exercise in getting the creative industries noticed and recognised… Mapping projects are rarely undertaken simply out of intellectual curiosity” (British Council 2010: 26-27). The systematic mapping of the creative industries had the effect of revealing Britain’s changing economic landscape, with Culture rapidly ascending in the urban policy

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agenda (Miles and Paddison 2005: 834). The centrality of ‘creativity’ as a pillar of urban regeneration was reinforced by New Labour appendages such as the think tank Comedia. Comedia presents itself as the first organisation to explore the role of Culture and creativity within the development of cities. Founder Charles Landry has devised tools such as the ‘creative city index’ and claims that “[c]ulture is a means of spreading the benefits of prosperity to all citizens” (Comedia 2003, quoted in Miles and Paddison 2005: xi). However, critics have questioned the role of cultural planning and creativity as a means to promote “social inclusion, diversity and development” (British Council 2010: 9). Scholars have argued that the creative industries are a Trojan Horse in shifting cultural and media policy towards a language of economics (Flew and Cunningham 2010: 4). New Labour’s cultural planning is specifically rooted in the idea that social inclusion is vital in attaining economic competitiveness (Imrie and Raco 2003), highlighting that economic determinism, rather than notions of social justice, prevail. Despite the left-wing GLA providing critical elements within their cultural industry policies, David Hesmondhalgh suggests that these tendencies were “steadily erased, in favour of a view much more compatible with contemporary British neoliberalism” (2008: 556). This indicates that while inserting Culture into urban regeneration is often seen as a civilising process, the effect is that Culture becomes narrowly defined and linked to a set of clearly defined political objectives (Stevenson 2004). Unraveling the policy discourse, it is clear that policymakers have developed support for the creative industries as a result of ‘market failures’ in other sectors. The fact that the UK’s creative industries are now almost on par with the financial services sector (House of Lords Library 2011: 9) undoubtedly plays a crucial role in the increased interest in Culture and consequent policy dedication. The term ‘creative economy’ (a deliberate move away from ‘creative industry’) was first adopted by the UK government in 2006 (British Council 2010: 18). This represents a change in the perception of ‘the arts’ from being economically marginal to being integrated within social and economic policy. Industries such as theatre, film and music, but also businesses such as advertising, were seen as an important source for jobs and therefore economic growth. The practical effect of ‘creative economy’ policies are stark. The BBC’s move away from their central London location at White City to MediaCity in Salford illustrates the way that ‘clustering’ industries is now firmly embedded within ideas about generating regional

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growth: in this case spurring growth in the north of England. Critics argue that policy makers and funders are primarily anxious about numbers and figures, constructing a “manufactured culture, drawn up by regeneration specialists and regional redevelopment advisers, at its most blatant” (Hunt 2004: 350). More recently, Culture and creativity are central components of the London Plan (Greater London Authority 2011a), a spatial strategy for London, initially adopted in 2004. The London Plan promotes the cultural and creative industries as “central to the city’s economic and social success” (Greater London Authority 2011a: 126). However, as the quotation highlights, the emphasis of the London Plan is primarily on developing the UK capital as an exemplary world city with strong economic growth, which means Culture is framed in terms of its economic potential rather than its ability to tackle social-inclusion on a local level. Culture has also been an important factor in improving Berlin’s image in the world and supporting economic growth. The term Kreativwirtschaft (creative economy) has been integrated into the regeneration narrative for the last decade (Kulturwirtschaftsinitiative 2004), demonstrating that Culture is conceptualised as creativity and transported into policy via the creative city paradigm. In the German national context there is a strong narrative of Berlin as a ‘state of exception’: lacking an industrial base but self-assured as ‘creative city’, with tourist visitor numbers that make it a “champion in Europe” and ranking “behind London and Paris and ahead of Rome” (Berlin Tourismus & Kongress GmbH 2018). Berlin was imagined as the city of Culture, particularly after reunification, when Culture was conceived as an important part in an economic development strategy. Berlin is presented as a city where cultures, lifestyles and traditions intersect, providing “a breeding ground for creative ideas” (UNESCO 2005). The image of Berlin as creative ‘breeding ground’ as defined by UNESCO is reinforced internationally, with a particularly interesting overlap between London and Berlin. In 2006, the London Development Agency published a report entitled Strategies for Creative Spaces: Berlin Case Study (Evans et al. 2006). The report presents Berlin as a best practice case, focusing on how these strategies can be transferred to nurture the creative economy and maximise regional economic development in the UK, particularly London. This indicates the dialogue and policy overlap between London and Berlin, but also highlights that the ‘creative economy’ is a common factor for boosting economic growth in both national contexts.

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Since the publication of Kulturwirtschaft in Berlin (Cultural Industries in Berlin) in 2005, the topic of creative industries has been firmly on the political agenda. Berlin Senators have been confident in asserting that Berlin leads the game in terms of the creative and cultural economy – particularly as a motor of urban development processes – both in comparison to other German cities, but also other European cities (Krautzberger 2009). In the Koalitionsverainbarung (Government’s coalition agreement) of 2011 the importance of creativity for the city’s image is stark: “Berlin is a global metropolis of culture, our cultural wealth is our capital… Art, culture and the creative community are among the main fundamental resources of the city” (SPD und CDU 2011: 91) The concept of Culture in Berlin’s urban policy largely centres on the city as an ‘upcoming Media City’ (Krätke 2004: 516) and prime location for the ‘creative class’, media and music industries. In spatial organisation this is reflected in the formation of local clusters, including the Mediaspree developments along the river and Adlershof in the south-east, in which the Humboldt-University forms an education-research anchor for other research and development facilities. In recent years there has been a proliferation of initiatives and discussion forums that centre on the ‘problem’ of cultural industries in Berlin and their place in future development plans for the city. One of the critical voices is the Koalition der Freien Szene (Coalition of the Independent Arts Scene), who have the tagline: “Spirit is even more fleeting than capital. Hold on to it!”. They call for an increase in funding for independent cultural projects, highlight that internationally acclaimed ‘creative Berlin’ is jeopardised if independent structures decrease, and critique a cultural policy that sees funding as merely ‘an investment’ (Koalition der freien Szene 2018). Academic voices have echoed this critique, suggesting that the political class has primarily been concerned with “financial self-service” and boosting the real-estate business (Krätke 2014a: 123). This has provided the platform for a particular direction for Culture within the politics of urban regeneration. However, some scholars suggest that while many city policies instrumentalise Culture, Berlin could be an exception: “[f]ew cities which pursue policies for culturally−led redevelopment provide facilities for artists (Berlin is an exception)” (Miles 2013: 8, emphasis added). Nevertheless, Janet Merkel argues that the governance arrangements concerning Culture in Berlin have become a ground for contentious politics rather than providing an ‘opportunity structure’.

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Merkel suggests the commitment from the city governments is “rather weak”, despite the public picture of Berlin as a ‘creative city’ that is disseminated in creative industry reports, resulting in the creative industries having to self-organise with private partners (2014: 86). Having discussed the way in which UK and German urban policy conceives of Culture, the next section describes how these policies are expressed in the specific context of London and Berlin.

H ow P l anners1 C onceive & M ake C ulture Culture played a central role within London 2012 planning. Most importantly, Culture is embedded within the staging of the Olympic Games as a cultural event itself. The Games must therefore be considered as part and parcel of London’s creative city strategy (Pratt 2010: 17). Indeed, the London Games were seen by officials as a way to remind the world that “London is the global cultural powerhouse” (Mayor of London 2014: 9). The Cultural Olympiad – a programme of cultural events throughout the UK over four years – was another important component within representing London as ‘cultural powerhouse’. Concretely, the Olympiad provided the London 2012 organisers with an instrument to translate more abstract cultural legacy goals to the local arena (Garcia 2008). In addition, the Mayor of London’s Cultural Strategy provides an insight into policy objectives and practical commitments at the intersection of Culture and London 2012, ranging from developing a new cultural tourism strategy to boosting employment. Specifically within the Olympic Legacy, it is evident that constructions of Culture are part of the state (as competitive agent), making strategic ‘moves’ within the game of urban regeneration. While this is not 1 | This section, and chapter as a whole, uses the category ‘planners’ with a critical understanding that this is a normative label that represents planning professionals at different levels with different agendas, shaped by their own habitus and capital. This tension between planners as ‘rational’ government bureaucrats on the one hand (constrained by their role as state representatives, as discussed in chapter three), and personal agency and individual rationales on the other, is important because it highlights that even the ‘top-down’ imperative of urban regeneration is a complex web of formal and informal practices. This tension is discussed more fully later in the chapter.

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necessarily surprising, the framing of Culture with this strategic intent does have implications on who benefits. Culture lies at the heart of the so-called Olympic Legacy. The Olympic Legacy is the idea that the London 2012 Games will have long-term beneficial impacts beyond summer 2012. These long-term benefits include economic, sporting, social and regeneration. Given its location on the Olympic Fringe, Hackney Wick Fish Island plays a central role in Olympic Legacy, specifically in projecting its cultural focus. Documents state that the Mayor of London and local boroughs should collaborate on shaping the neighbourhood as a “high quality media and creative industry cluster…for local and global businesses, underpinned by strong technological infrastructure” (Greater London Authority 2011a: 44). The emphasis is on supporting the existing structures on a local scale “without re-inventing the wheel” (Community and Engagement Policy 2012: 20). This suggests that London 2012 cultural policy is attuned to existing cultural structures and keen to support and integrate these within the frame of the Olympic-led regeneration. However, on closer inspection the priority in “securing [a cultural] legacy for east London” is on a larger scale and primarily concerned with new infrastructure and communities, rather than existing structures. This is indicated in statements such as “Foremost among these priorities is, of course, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park” (Mayor of London 2014: 31), indicating that existing neighbourhoods are not, in fact, the priority within the Olympic Legacy. The evaluation of the success of London’s cultural policy remains largely measured by visitor numbers and promoting London as a world-class city (tourism), commercial museums and galleries (high culture), and foreign investment (capital) (Mayor of London 2014: 11), rather than on the role of Culture as a tool for social integration or redistribution. Kultur (culture) is only referenced once within the thirty-six page document that marked the official beginning of the Mediaspree concept (SenStadt 2001). The lack of reference to the concept of Culture reflects the emphasis in Berlin in the early 2000s on the construction of offices and spaces for trade and industry. However, this lack of attention on Culture is compensated in the Mediaspree consortium’s marketing magazine, mediaspree: Ankerplatz Zukunft (mediaspree: Anchor for the Future), which signals the increasing belief in Berlin as a creative city in which Culture is paramount. The mediaspree magazine (published three times per year between 2006 and 2008) was used as a marketing tool for the area. In

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almost every issue, Culture is an important part of staging the area as an attractive location and, ultimately, selling plots to investors. The magazine celebrates the temporary uses and alternative cultures that settled around the Spree in the 1990s (Hofmann 2013), evident in the fact that ‘culture tips’ include Bar25 and the Wild West Market (Mediaspree Magazin 2006: 4). The inclusion and promotion of beach-bars, techno clubs, theatres and alternative housing projects as exciting and attractive place-markers now seems ironic because these are precisely the alternative cultures that the investor-led developments have been displacing along the Riverfront. Few of the alternative cultural locations still exist, despite the fact that many of these temporary cultural projects are included in the SenStadt publication Urban Pioneers: Temporary Use and Urban Development in Berlin (SenStadt 2007: 42). The paradox is best illuminated in a concrete example: the first issue of the mediaspree marketing magazine (2006) included a pull-out map that lists Bar25 as a “place to go on the Spree”, yet on its reverse side is another map where the Bar25 plot is listed as a potential development site, for sale. This strategy is not surprising however, since the primary task of Regionalmanagement Mediaspree e.V. was to advertise the Mediaspree area as real estate, with the specific task of finding investors and selling the development plots. The fact that Culture was essentialised down to its pure marketing value fits the logic of the state as agent within the game of urban regeneration. The next section provides a brief discussion of how sociology has defined and critiqued the concept ‘Culture’.

H ow Theory D efines C ulture Critical scholars agree that Culture is a social construct. This indicates that there has been radical rethinking in both theory and empirical studies, especially in anthropology since the 1960s, away from conceptualising Culture as a universal characteristic (i.e. Culture as a way of life), which is now deemed both politically naive and politically suspect (Aoki 1996: 404). With the insertion of power and history into the debate on Culture, along with an understanding that gender, class and ethnicity intersect with Culture, there has been a move towards its deconstruction. While sociology still commonly relates Culture or cultures to basic learned assumptions, values and orientations to life (Spencer-Oatey 2012: 3), there

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is a general belief that if we define Culture as something that is shared, we must also always ask: Culture for whom?, by whom? and ‘under what conditions?’ (Dirks et al. 1994: 3). These questions show an expansion of the concept of Culture as multiple discourses, at least within contemporary critical theory. Michel de Certeau highlights that defining cultures in the plural negates the tendency for Culture to act as “the battlefield of the new colonialism” (1997: 134). Deconstructing Culture in this way illustrates that cultures – understood as plural practices, rather than reified object – opens space for analysing the relations between (constructions of) Culture and power. Cultures are increasingly understood within the frame of a globalised economy and rapid communication of the ‘network society’ (Castells 2010), therefore connected with urban lifestyles of the symbolic economy (Zukin 1998). Consequently, cultures are often conceptualised in terms of their symbolic value within an economy of signs (Lash and Urry 1994/2002), often linked to consumption. This means cultural status and distinction, in addition to material culture, form the basis of contemporary Culture. The urban landscape reveals that Culture is produced and lived within commodified space: there is little Culture that cannot be commodified. In this sense the contemporary (cultural) city is a space where even street-life and contestation are displayed, branded, re-packaged and co-opted for their symbolic value. This is an important foundation for the empirical discussion later on, particularly to illustrate how the breadth of actors in the field of urban regeneration have a personal vision of Culture and use all available resources to elevate the symbolic value of their specific definition. Symbolic value can be created through the institutionalisation of a particular Culture within the context of a local museum, its representation within a publication, or its inclusion within urban (regeneration) policy. Consequently, rather than Culture (as a ‘thing’) providing a valuable lens for understanding behaviours, artefacts and institutions, the construction of Culture by different actors (across time and space) reveals something about the (power) dynamics of everyday life: spanning from identity and micro-local interactions to institutionally reinforced or public-politically negotiated processes. This core idea – that constructions of Culture tell us something about interaction, conflict, resistance and, ultimately, unequal distributions of power (within urban regeneration) – underscores the analysis in this chapter. Bourdieu’s triad of field, capital and habitus provides a frame to support this deconstruction of Culture.

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According to Bourdieu (1986), Culture is a currency that people use, a form of capital (cultural capital), rather than an intrinsic quality. Culture then, is not just the basis for human interaction (beliefs, values and language) – practical tools used for getting along in the social world – but also a source of domination. Important for the discussion in this chapter is Bourdieu’s notion that language is one such cultural practice that reproduces power relations. Therefore, language constructions of Culture within the game of urban regeneration must be considered a tool to enact symbolic violence and means to cement social hierarchies. In the empirical discussion below, this is evident: Culture provides agents with strategic tools in ‘getting ahead’ in the field. The relationship of Culture to power stands at the centre of Bourdieu’s intellectual project: Bourdieu sees Culture as helping to establish and maintain social hierarchies, embodying power relations (Schwartz 1997: 1) and therefore playing a crucial role in social reproduction. More concretely, Bourdieu’s theory of practice (and sociology of symbolic power) can be seen as connecting action to Culture, structure and power. Bourdieu makes the claim that “there is no way out of the game of culture” (Bourdieu 1984 as cited by Robbins 1999: xi, emphasis added). With this, he argues that Culture is enacted by everyone, that it is one of the defining characteristics of the human condition for people to be situated in Culture (Robbins 1999: xi). The definition of Culture as a ‘game’ in this quotation also underscores Bourdieu’s understanding of Culture as intrinsically connected with power relations, social hierarchies, winners and losers. This is a crucial frame for the analysis that follows. Bourdieu demonstrates the opposition between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture and corresponding practices, highlighting that Culture not only defines positions in abstract representations but also in the social space of everyday life (La Distinction 1984). Everything that we see as cultural symbols and practices – whether food, religion or the built environment – functions as a marker of distinction, and therefore reproduces social structures. This is a crucial point to bear in mind with regard to the empirical analysis that follows. Bourdieu’s frame helps to reveal that conceptualisations of Culture in contemporary society have an implicit evaluative register and are intrinsically value-laden. To get a fuller picture of the way that Culture is understood, produced, negotiated and politicised within the neighbourhood context, this chapter now turns to empirical data.

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H istory & C ulture : C ompe ting N arr atives History matters in social actors’ constructions of Culture within urban regeneration. Constructing the future (through urban regeneration) necessarily requires interpreting, imagining and defining the past. In the neighbourhoods of Hackney Wick Fish Island and Rudolfkiez there are many narratives of the past: ideas about which decade or particular era is the most important in shaping the respective area’s identity. Constructions and negotiations of historic Culture are crucial in understanding the politics of contemporary urban regeneration: unraveling the different narratives and analysing which become dominant and integrated within policy reveals the mechanisms behind who wins and who loses. Following Bourdieu’s refusal to “abstract the nostalgic accounts of his respondents from their physical location” (Savage 2011: 516), this section will let the accounts be told through the narratives of the interviewees, with extended sections of interview included. Bourdieu’s language of habitus, capital and field relations helps frame the empirical material, showing that which history matters (in the field of urban regeneration) is a struggle, structured internally in terms of power relationships. Due to the limitations of a study like this, the discussion here highlights only some of the readings of past cultures – in reality there are a multitude of accounts, constantly overlapping and changing.

Imagining the Past & Constructing the Future in Hackney Wick Fish Island The history and identity of Hackney Wick Fish Island has come under particular scrutiny since the publication of the Creative Potential report (muf architecture/art 2009). The Creative Potential report re-defined the area as a “cultural hub”, imagining the neighbourhood as a place where production was not only being displaced and dying, but also flourishing. The most recent design and planning guidance document for Hackney Wick Fish Island develops this idea, focusing specifically on industry in the past as a basis for regeneration in the future: “The vision for Hackney Wick and Fish Island is of a creative quarter to live, work and visit that innovates while building on its unique industrial history and authentic sense of place” (London Legacy Development Corporation 2014: 3). In this sense, the (cultural) history of the neighbourhood provides a tangible ‘value’ that

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can be regenerated, a solution for post-industrial decline. However, the analysis in this section indicates that some of the (historic) narratives of neighbourhood Culture, which might provide a foundation for London 2012 promises of sustaining existing structures on the Olympic Fringe, lose in the game of regeneration. This section focuses on two specific narratives of Hackney Wick Fish Island: one that focuses on the industrial heritage of the area, the other that sees the neighbourhood as a historically residential enclave2 . These two narratives of the area are not mutually exclusive, and in fact largely overlap, particularly in their attention to the neighbourhood as a site of production. Nevertheless, the two narratives have been chosen and discussed as two distinct stories of heritage, highlighting the way that social dispositions are framed in relation to other positions. In social space the players position their narrative of Culture as differentiated from others as a way to enter the game. Consequently, the narrative of Hackney Wick Fish Island as an industrial island has its basis in entrepreneurship and business (reading Culture as economic vitality), whereas the narrative of the area as a residential enclave illuminates a personal history (reading Culture as social vitality). With this in mind, the discussion shows that the player who knows that the rules of the game follow a neoliberal logic has the advantage and dominates the field. Freddy Lawson3, fourth generation director of a salmon smoking business, champions the narrative of Hackney Wick Fish Island’s identity as being rooted in its industrial past. His success in defining his business within this account of the neighbourhood as an industrial island – and thereafter aligning this to contemporary regeneration policy – means his company H. Forman & Son has won a place in the regenerated future of the neighbourhood. Freddy Lawson uses his understanding and definition of Hackney Wick Fish Island’s Culture being connected with skills and craft as a means to justify his business’s role in its future. Culture and history are frames that allow Lawson to cement this belonging. This process will now be described in detail. 2 | The term ‘enclave’ is used here to denote the physical infrastructural boundaries that separate the neighbourhood from other surrounding neighbourhoods rather than a normative understanding of enclave in a social sense, alluding to HWFI as a ‘ghetto’. 3 | All participant names have been replaced by pseudonyms.

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H. Forman & Son is a family business that has been located in, or near, Hackney Wick Fish Island since its founding in 1905. The business cures wild salmon from Scotland, selling the fish to upmarket restaurants, hotels and retailers in the UK and internationally. H. Forman & Son is a typical case of private capital within the game of urban regeneration, working with the logic of maximum capital profit. Over the last ten years the business has expanded and now includes Forman’s Fish Island, an on-site restaurant, art gallery space and corporate events venue. The reason why H. Forman & Son is an interesting and important part of Hackney Wick Fish Island’s urban regeneration is precisely because of the company’s long-standing presence in the neighbourhood and their more recent success in light of Olympic-led changes. Freddy Lawson can be seen as a winner if one takes into account that his constructions of the neighbourhood Culture (and which neighbourhood history matters to him), have to a large extent been accepted and integrated into the formal regeneration agenda. In the case of H. Forman & Son, the construction of Culture is ultimately linked with belonging within the neighbourhood. This is best illustrated in the ownership Lawson has taken over the name of the area: It always was ‘Fish Island’ but no one knew it as Fish Island…We were probably the first people to actively call it Fish Island because we thought it was a great name and worked well with our business. And since we started using it, everyone has started using it. And it conjures quite an attractive image I think (Freddy Lawson, interview 10.08.2011).

The company website confirms the idea that H. Forman & Son is not only historically rooted in the area but also tells the story (through images and text) that this ‘belonging’ relates not just to the past of the neighbourhood, but also to its future, as shaped by London 2012. In the story Lawson tells about the Olympics coming to East London, he presents himself and his company as embodying the idea of ‘active citizenship’ and even ‘resilience’: This thing [London 2012] arrived in our space. And there we were, busily smoking fish, and whoosh, suddenly one day the Olympics has landed on top of us, and there it was stomping around threatening us. It was more like a bull in a china shop, of course, but there it was threatening to destroy us. We have tamed the elephant, but it is still in the room. We can’t get rid of it, it is very much still there.

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So now we’ve tamed it, we’re trying to get it to do the hard work for us…I think a lot of businesses haven’t turned their eye to the opportunity the Olympics can provide (Freddy Lawson, interview 10.08.2011).

Building an account of belonging to the neighbourhood’s cultural heritage (related to both food and industrial heritage) can therefore be seen as a survival strategy and defence mechanism against Olympic-led displacement. H. Forman & Son provides an example of the way that planning policy for Hackney Wick Fish Island shifted towards preserving local production and acknowledging the industrial tradition of the area. The conscious (and successful) image-making is one of the most obvious indications that Freddy Lawson is a skilled game player. He knows how to negotiate and make the best out of the resources available to him: constructing a winning narrative for his company that fits into the formal, state-led regeneration scheme. A LTGDC development manager highlights his success in relocating the factory, stating, “I think they got a very good deal, from where they were before and where they are now! [laughing]” (Claire Lloyd, interview 14.09.2011). Indeed, on the H. Forman & Son website, the location of the new factory, “the closest venue to London 2012 stadium”, is a well-marketed attribute, showing that Lawson anticipates the (economic) benefits of aligning his business with the Olympic project. Freddy Lawson’s advantage as a trained and skilled political agent is crucial in explaining the success of the company in the face of Olympic-led developments in the neighbourhood. His game playing skill is most obvious in the confidence he displayed when challenging the entire Olympic project in court, and the political manoeuvring that followed: The case that we put forward was actually, it wasn’t about our business or personal situation, it was about the whole regeneration of the Games, and we were saying it wasn’t about regeneration and the whole purpose of the Compulsory Purchase was wrong. But they had to put forward their rationale for acquiring the land as regeneration, because they didn’t have powers to acquire the land for a sporting event. So they had to claim this was all about regeneration. But all the evidence pointed to the contrary. The public enquiry cross-examined Sebastian Coe and they must have been fearful, because I got a phone call the next day, saying that if I withdraw they would do a deal. Settle out of court. And then I penned my famous note to Seb Coe: ‘You can run, but you can’t hide.’ I mean it was a shame, because I knew Seb. I knew him, because before I came to the business I was involved

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as a political advisor. He was a young MP and I was doing briefing notes for the minister. I’d met him a number of times (Freddy Lawson, interview 10.08.2011, emphasis added).

Lawson’s self-presentation as a winner within the London 2012 story (after a long battle), mixing with the political elite and out-smarting even the upper-echelons of the London 2012 political elite, fits very well with the idea that this may have been a long and hard battle, but confirms the tendency for the ‘winners to keep winning and the losers to keep losing’. In the field of urban regeneration, the success of Forman’s Fish Island is a powerful example of Bourdieu’s analysis of how capital can be transformed: Freddy Lawson’s social capital bolstered his financial buoyancy in a time when many businesses were displaced. What makes the H. Forman & Son story an even more interesting part of Hackney Wick Fish Island’s development is that he was not always a winner. The H. Forman & Son factory was forced to relocate twice, once due to fire damage in 1998, and once when their land was compulsory purchased by the London Development Agency (LDA) for the London 2012 Olympics. Freddy Lawson describes the unstable relationship with the LDA, illustrating how the agency was itself making strategic moves: The relationship with the London Development Agency started off very well because they gave us a bunch of funding. And they were, you know, very pleased to be associating themselves with our business. And indeed, back in 2003, I’ve kept this calendar because it’s quite amusing, we actually featured on the LDA’s calendar that they sent out to thousands of people. October 2003, it says here ‘regional promotion investment in infrastructure…the key aim of the LDA is attracting investment from other private sector sources for London’s economic development. H. Forman and Son is one example of a business that has benefitted. This small family firm was established 90 years ago by the current owner’s great grandfather, a Russian-Jewish émigré who brought with him the traditional techniques of salmon smoking. Following the disastrous flood at its previous premises, our regional assistance grant, which we administer on behalf of the DDR, was provided to help the business relocate to a new site in order to expand production and improve productivity’. That was October 2003. November 2003 we read that we’d have to move [because of London 2012]. So that was part of the madness with the relationship with the LDA (Freddy Lawson, interview 10.08.2011).

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This demonstrates that H. Forman & Son was actively used to showcase the state’s investment in London’s economic development in 2003, specifically in local employment, with a particular historical narrative (“established 90 years ago”). In this sense, the culture (and ‘heritage’) of Lawson’s company, referenced in the quotation above, in such phrases as “traditional techniques” and “Russian-Jewish émigré” provide the validation for the LDA in supporting this authentic business rather than others. This shows Freddy Lawson’s success in delivering and marketing the story of the business, which the state responded to. The value of Freddy Lawson within Hackney Wick Fish Island’s narrative of urban change is based on the idea of local craft, skill and production: We’re a skills business. If you look into our facility, you’ll see state–of-the-art facilities, but all of our skills are the same as they’ve been for 100 years. We still fillet everything by hand, we still slice everything by hand. We haven’t changed any of those techniques…it’s a real artisan operation…we’re part of the food heritage of East London (Freddy Lawson, interview 10.08.2011).

Lawson considers food heritage an important part of the neighbourhood, and his own company’s contribution to the employment culture of the area is crucial. Lawson argues that employment culture, which is not glamorous, is a necessary cog of East End culture as a whole, but often ignored by those who lead regeneration policy: A lot of people, particularly the political classes, don’t really understand business… Things don’t have to look beautiful to be successful… The businesses that were in that area, many of them had been there for a long time. You know, it wasn’t pretty, it was dirty, but it was industrial, it doesn’t have to be gleaming skyscrapers and glass-fronted buildings. It was an industrial area, it worked, it was low-cost, and that’s very important when you’re running a business, especially when we’re in recession and everyone is trying to cut costs. This was a lean and mean area. There were a lot of demolition companies, a lot of waste treatment companies, a lot of printers, a real interesting mix… This was a service centre for London. And now it’s dispersed, who knows? (Freddy Lawson, interview 10.08.2011).

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However, Culture for Lawson is not just connected to employment culture. He also equates Culture with artistic creation. Artistic culture is an important means of distinction for Hackney Wick Fish Island: It’s very much our view that as part of the regeneration we should ensure that there’s a place for them [artists] because they make the place interesting. There’s a really interesting cultural mix here… This area needs to differentiate itself longer-term from the other side of the park with the Westfield shopping centre, you know there’s no point in going down that road. We need to maintain some of the heritage and culture of this area so that it can regenerate and maintain some of its left-bank nature (Freddy Lawson, interview 10.08.2011).

This shows that Culture is envisaged by Freddy Lawson as a key element within the future of the neighbourhood. However, business, Community, art and Culture blend in his idea to create an area “like the meat packing district in New York”. While Lawson’s construction and presentation of Culture as (a part of) business have been largely successful in economic terms, and the story of his business is part of the narrative of the area, his vision of how to use and mobilise Culture within regeneration is contested by various other agents in the neighbourhood. Forman’s was the location for a Coca Cola advert in 2011 and the so-called Forman’s Fish Island Riviera was a corporate venue during London 2012, with locals and visitors paying over £15 entry to sit on a palm-tree decked faux beach (see figure 4.1). The commercial intent and profit orientation of these activities resulted in many residents and business people in the area complaining about Lawson’s crass branding agenda and lack of commitment to grassroots arts culture, especially culture with political or critical intent (noted in informal discussions, especially during July 2012). Lawson’s strong business-orientation, despite his self-presentation as cultural ambassador of Hackney Wick Fish Island, has resulted in his integrity and position in the field suffering. As one LLDC employee stated, “I’m sure [Freddy] has given you his version of the world, it doesn’t really correspond with anyone else’s!” (Frances Emerson, interview 30.09.2011). This is a particularly interesting observation in light of Freddy Lawson’s power in achieving his demands of the LLDC, despite employees being cynical of his views, methods and intentions (increasingly revealed in on-going informal conversations with architects working on a neighbourhood master plan).

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Figure 4.1 Forman’s Fish Island Riviera with Olympic stadium in the background

Having successfully re-located to a prime Hackney Wick Fish Island site directly opposite the Olympic stadium, Lawson is seen by some as selling-out and benefitting from the Olympic-led developments at the expense of others. Despite being in fierce legal battles with the LDA over many years, fighting to have the factory relocated in addition to adequate compensation, Lawson now proudly wears the Olympic rings as a badge on his blazer. The badge can be analysed as a symbol that private capital and the state are once again allies in the game. Despite, or precisely because of Freddy Lawson’s struggles with, and resistance to, the state’s initial urban regeneration policy, he was able to resist the logic that saw the displacement of many other businesses in the neighbourhood. As one resident stated: “Lawson is the odd one out, he got loads of money out of moving. But for every Forman’s there are 15 guys who got moved from the Olympic site who are still pissed about the whole thing, and screwed over for money” (Leon Kennedy, interview 03.09.2013). Indeed, other businesses on the former Olympic site, where skilled employees have been manufacturing for decades, did not receive the benefits that Lawson has negotiated (see Raco and Tunney 2010 for a detailed discussion on the 200 small businesses that existed on the Olympic Village site before they were evicted in 2007), arguably because their recourse to a rhetoric of Culture did not fit with the creative city paradigm, the dominant logic of the field.

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Lawson’s cultural capital, specifically his knowledge that media lawyers (rather than property lawyers) would coerce the state into paying adequate reparations for the CPO, resulted in his improved position in the game. This cooperation between Olympic agencies and private business signals, for some, the cynical politics of allegiance that come with winning the game. Many see Freddy Lawson as an over-zealous entrepreneur of the area, specifically artists who are critical of his attempt to install art and Culture (via a gallery and regular exhibitions) within his factory premises, suggesting his ‘philanthropy’ is merely a gloss for self-marketing. The director of a digital marketing company whose office is located along the canal in Hackney Wick Fish Island reflects a common critique about the disconnect between business and community interests: I think [H. Forman & Son] are incredibly greedy. They cut down a load of trees, they wanted to make a load of space for events, try to rake in a lot of cash, rent out the space, which is great for them. But they haven’t necessarily fed back anything into the community. Not everyone likes that approach, of just being in it for the money (mini-interview 22.08.2012).

As the analysis demonstrates, Culture plays an ambiguous role within the story of Olympic-led developments and their impact on one factory, H. Forman & Son in Hackney Wick Fish Island. A clever discursive construction of Culture was the means for the factory to remain a part of the neighbourhood narrative. However, this construction of Culture arguably played into the top-down projection of a successful Olympic Legacy. Therefore, through a Bourdieusian lens: Freddy Lawson made strategic ‘moves’ that aligned with the logic of neoliberal urbanism, but the instrumentalisation of Culture to suit his business model has resulted in his own ambiguous role within the neighbourhood. The H. Forman & Son story, one small case study within the larger field of urban regeneration in Hackney Wick Fish Island, highlights the changing power dynamics within the game, but also, crucially, shows that constructions of Culture (as anchor of the creative city discourse) can become the defining factor, sometimes even the pawn, within neighbourhood regeneration. A competing narrative that does not draw on the creative city discourse is discussed next. Local amateur historian Frederick Harris provides an insight into a second narrative of the neighbourhood that emphasises the residential culture as defining the neighbourhood’s history. This account focuses on

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an economic context of poverty and social context of close-knit ties and mutual support. Harris is particularly vocal in arguing that particularly this cultural history should be the foundation on which Olympic-led regeneration is framed. While Freddy Lawson is able to draw on his various forms of capital to construct a Culture narrative of the past that links to a current regeneration paradigm (the creative city), Harris’ capital results in a more awkward alignment with the rules of the game. His narrative of Culture is bound up in family history, which emphasises the social vitality of the neighbourhood in the past, in contrast with Lawson’s focus on economic vitality and entrepreneurship. Frederick Harris’ narrative of Hackney Wick Fish Island as a residential enclave in the past can be linked to a contemporary residential culture being lived by Trowbridge Estate residents. By highlighting the link between constructions of past Culture and everyday lives in the present, we learn something about field dynamics and power within urban regeneration. Frederick Harris frames the ‘residential culture’ of Hackney Wick Fish Island through the lens of the Eton Manor Boys’ Club, an after-school club and social institution most active between 1913 and 1967. What makes the club interesting is that Eton Manor began what some might call the early ‘regeneration’ of the area, by buying and developing land and investing in infrastructure and education. Initially a Christian mission (Eton Mission) in the 1880s, the project was expanded by four philanthropists, formerly students at Eton College school4, who came to Hackney Wick in 1909 with the aim of ‘relieving poverty in the area’. Four men founded the Eton Manor Boys’ Club, but one in particular, Arthur Villiers, is seen as the guiding force, living on the Eton Manor grounds until his death in 1969 (Johansen 2013: 7). The Club enabled boys aged between 13 and 16 to play sports after school, but also aimed to teach the boys discipline, confidence, self-respect and self-help through their experience of the Club’s structured membership system. It was hoped that this informal education would catalyse social mobility and therefore affect the neighbourhood as a whole. By the 1960s the Eton Manor Boys Club had constructed a clubhouse and extensive sporting facilities, including nine football pitches, six 4 | Eton College is an independent boarding school located in Berkshire. The school is famous for having educated Prime Minister David Cameron as well as London Mayor Boris Johnson. Within this discussion it is important to note that Eton is commonly associated with wealth, privilege and upper-class values.

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tennis courts, two rugby pitches and a running track (Bedell 2007). The club had produced an Olympic gold-medallist (boxer Harry Mallin, in the 1920 Games) and was a successful sporting club in London. The Club’s good reputation, especially in the post-war years, is confirmed by the 1948 London Olympics athletics track being transferred to the playing fields of the Eton Manor Boys Club for its members to use. Frederick Harris, aged 68 and retired, is engaged in archival research, collating documents that concern the history and Culture of Hackney Wick Fish Island as a residential enclave shaped by the Club. The link between the Eton Manor Boys Club, sporting legacy of 1948, and the current Olympics provides him with the rationale to push this narrative into formal discourse, communicating with the LLDC and various museums to realise this aim. Frederick Harris is a former member of the Eton Mission Club, his father serving as its manager throughout Harris’ childhood and adolescence. Despite Harris’ reference to Hackney Wick being a “difficult place”, his anecdotes indicate that he imagines the identity-making period of Hackney Wick Fish Island as the time when the residential culture constituted a tightly knit community, supported by the charitable Eton Mission. He explains that, “people helped each other [then], otherwise you didn’t survive”. In his self-appointed role as local historian, Harris champions the story of the neighbourhood past: “some people say, ‘let’s have the new Hackney Wick’. But ‘dear Old Hackney Wick, the place of our abode, it is the best place in the world, it beats the Mile End Road’ [song lyrics] is my bag [my kind of thing]. I’ve got nothing but affection for it” (interview 30.06.2011). Harris talks about his grandmother working as a sweet wrapper in Clarnico’s confectionary factory, his mother working in the Lord Napier pub as a cook, and his own office on the industrial estate that is now the Olympic site. The fact that Harris can trace four generations of his family having lived in the neighbourhood is the foundation on which Harris not only bases his belonging but also his authority to speak about the area’s social history. Harris presents Hackney Wick Fish Island as intrinsically connected to Eton Manor, as if the neighbourhood wouldn’t exist without its intervention: “the Eton Manor name, it represents the years they were able to keep this society on the ‘straight and narrow’ [on the right path]. And you know about Charles Booth [the East End poverty map], and you know about the circumstances [the poverty]” (interview 30.06.2011).

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Harris links the social and economic history of the neighbourhood to a particular view on the area’s development. The implication in Harris’ narrative is that urban regeneration must not ignore the residential cultures that shaped the neighbourhood at the beginning of the 20th century: these everyday cultures must be acknowledged in the construction of the ‘new’ Hackney Wick, catalysed by Olympic-led regeneration. While this perspective could logically lead to a critique of current development plans for their exclusions of the current residents of Hackney Wick Fish Island from development, Harris instead uses the residential narrative of Hackney Wick’s past to justify his support for Olympic-led development: The whole ethos of what’s going to happen [with the Olympics] falls into the spirit of Villiers and all those that came before [the Eton Mission]. There are sets of values: comradeship, team excellence, these sorts of things that will be part of the ethos of the Olympic movement. You know, you’ll have athletes coming that go around the world, and they’ll all be linked in arms at the beginning. And I think Arthur Villiers and those founding fathers would have been delighted at this piece of East End London…and you hope its utilised and used again in a proper way that reflects the benefits for everybody, that’s the local community, the media, the world stage. So everyone is linked in (interview 30.06.2011, emphasis added).

The quotation suggests that Harris’ Eton Mission narrative provides wholesale support for Olympic-led development. This is also expressed in the statement “The whole area up here is changing for the better. These are professional people now. This is what amazes me” (interview 30.06.2011). However, throughout the interview there are indications that Harris does in fact problematise the relationship between past, present and future: he acknowledges that the importance he attributes to the Eton Mission in shaping the area will not be reflected formally by the Olympic agencies. Harris explains that the story of Eton Manor “is probably going to end up with only half a page in the Park Interpretation Plan [LLDC publication] where it will probably just say, ‘on this site was a Boys Club called Eton Manor’. And that to me is the journey not told. It doesn’t reflect the importance [Eton Manor] created. And that saddens me” (interview 30.06.2011). In Harris’ understanding of Culture, the Olympics themselves (and Olympic-led developments) should be presented as a natural progression, or legacy, of the Eton Mission era.

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A Bourdieusian reading of Harris’ conceptualisations within the broader field dynamics of neighbourhood regeneration reveals a power struggle. Harris’ perspective is that Etonians were transferring their cultural and social capital (most likely learnt at home, and developed at their prestigious school Eton) to the impoverished boys of Hackney Wick. Indeed, the stories he narrates of the Mission’s role in the neighbourhood reflects the Eton men’s desire to instil values and skills (rather than merely provide economic capital), in order to improve the lot of the ‘local boys’. However, this (cultural) history of Hackney Wick Fish Island told through the Club tells a gendered story of the area, specific to a small group of boys, in a narrative that idealises upper-class paternalism and self-help. This is a crucial point because these ‘problematic’ aspects of the narrative are downplayed by Harris, who, unsurprisingly, seems to champion the story without critical reflection on what the class relations could have meant at the time. As shown in the section above, private capital (in the form of Freddy Lawson) played the ‘game’ of urban regeneration smoothly, by knowing and anticipating the (neoliberal) logic of urban policy, and therefore providing a narrative of the neighbourhood that locked onto this logic. In contrast, by championing a narrative of the neighbourhood based in ‘heritage’ that largely translates as family history and (power-ridden) class relations, with little relevance to entrepreneurship, economics or development in terms of a growth narrative, Frederick Harris’ story remains quasi-historical ‘fact’, without tangible relevance for LLDC planners beyond symbolic memorialisation. Frederick Harris’ habitus and capital do, however, play a significant role in the Eton Mission story being represented materially, on a local scale. Not only does the Bishopsgate Institute hold an extensive Eton Mission archive in their library, but the Hackney Museum also displayed the story in connection with London 2012, linked to a series of events in 2012, at which Frederick Harris was invited to talk. In this sense, Harris can be seen as gaining a high position within the field: his narrative is re-told within institutionalised settings of the East End. Furthermore, in the Olympic Park itself there are both symbolic and material representations that memorialise Eton Manor history. The first example is the naming of an Olympic venue ‘Eton Manor’ with corresponding Eton Manor colours (dark blue and light blue) used as a colour reference for the wheelchair tennis court. The second example is a piece of commissioned artwork in the Olympic Park: a wall on which poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy’s poem about Eton Manor is inscribed in brass lettering (see

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figure 4.2). The work was commissioned as part of the ODA’s ‘winning words’ programme, which “commemorates the history of the Eton Manor site in the north of the park” (Olympic Delivery Authority 2012: no page number). While the Eton Mission narrative, as represented in the Bishopsgate Institute, Hackney Museum and within the Olympic Park, is re-told and institutionalised, it is simultaneously memorialised and locked into a story about Culture in the past. It therefore becomes irrelevant when considering Culture for current or future regeneration policy. However, one could argue that this acknowledgement of the Mission’s role in the neighbourhood was Frederick Harris’ aim: his narrative is not intended to make a point in terms of policy, which means he can be considered a ‘winner’ on his own terms. Figure 4.2 Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy’s Eton Manor poem in the Olympic site

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Harris’ construction of Hackney Wick Fish Island culture overlaps with Dick Hobbs’ descriptions of ‘working-class’ culture in the East End of London (1988). Crucially, Hobbs challenges traditional notions of working-class culture (such as those proposed by Harris) by emphasising strategies of entrepreneurship, negotiation and trading, which he suggests have developed through a specific East End context of informal, seasonal labour. Harris does not explicitly describe the neighbourhood culture as ‘working-class’, although his descriptions such as “you just got on with it, however desperate, it was your life” align with what other authors (such as Hobbs) have explicitly described along class lines. The point here is not to unravel the complexity of ‘class’ constructions within urban regeneration, since other authors have already provided comprehensive analysis (Lees 2008; Watt 2008). In this chapter the point is to explore the way that culture is constructed by some actors, as a way of fighting for their particular vision of urban regeneration. This kind of analysis makes Harris’ choice not to frame culture in class terms particularly interesting. In Harris’ narrative, the context of poverty and deprivation are markers to distinguish his narrative from others, and omitting the label ‘working-class’ is a definitive part of his game playing. When Harris was asked if there was any kind of class conflict between the Etonians and the locals, he replied: “There must have been” and quickly changed the subject. This suggests that Harris realises that inserting ‘class’ into his narrative could negatively impact on the ‘success’ of his narrative as a whole, by opening up questions of class conflict between the Eton Manor men and local boys. This also provides a possible reason for Harris not to make the link between his historical narrative of Culture and the Culture of the current residents living on the Trowbridge Estate. In socio-economic terms, the Trowbridge Estate residents, living in the northern part of the neighbourhood, are the inheritors of Harris’ narrative. Although the residents who were interviewed do not frame their everyday lives explicitly as a culture, they provide the link between Frederick Harris’ conceptualisation of historic residential culture in the neighbourhood and the contemporary context. Some of the older residents have lived in the neighbourhood since the 1930s, remember the terraced housing, war damage, and the factories Frederick Harris talks about. Some of these residents formed the Trowbridge Senior Citizens Club (active since the 1990s), with its own purpose-built clubhouse. Some of its members meet more than three times per week for various activities

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including day-trips, tea-meetings and bingo (see figure 4.3). Considering the aims of London 2012 to regenerate the East End and provide its existing residents with benefits from Olympic investment it is precisely this group of Trowbridge Estate residents that make Harris’ narrative relevant to contemporary regeneration discourse. However, without instrumentalising Culture, moulding it along the neoliberal logic of contemporary regeneration, this experience of Culture remains practiced rather than valued in policy. Figure 4.3 Trowbridge Estate Senior Citizens members, during a workshop organised by the author, May 2013

(P hotograph: C hris D orley -B rown)

Isabelle ‘Izzy’ Babson is a resident of the Trowbridge Estate and an active member of the Senior Citizens Club. While she does not explicitly mention Culture, she talks about her everyday life on the Estate, and particularly memorable events, which are relevant when considering the development of the neighbourhood from a historic perspective. Izzy Babson has

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lived on the Trowbridge Estate since 1973 and explains how she and other bungalow residents prevented the demolition of their homes in the 1990s, when Hackney Borough Council planned to demolish the bungalows, together with the seven tower blocks. After protesting against their demolition at Hackney Town Hall, the residents won the right to remain: They [the local council] wanted take the lot down [demolish the estate]. So we fought to have the bungalows saved and just pull the tower blocks down. We used to march. Up to the town hall, stop meetings at the town hall, where they had the council meetings. All the balcony was packed with us, there was a few of us that all went…they tried to come down and tell you what to do, and what not to do, but I mean where is their common sense to pull down proper houses like this? (Izzy Babson, interview 08.08.2012)

Babson’s description does not frame the residents’ actions as against the ‘regeneration’ of the estate. However, the story evidently describes political intent and anger at potential displacement. It is, essentially, a story of triumph, in which the implied culture is rooted in close-knit community relations and ‘self-help’. While media discourse and policy suggest otherwise, Babson states, “it is the best estate in Hackney, you get no trouble… [E]verybody used to know everybody. It was proper community down here, it was” (interview 08.09.2012). The ultimate success of the actions against the redevelopment of the estate is relevant to the social history of the neighbourhood and constructions of its culture. While it seems that Izzy Babson’s narrative is part of a personal anecdote rather than tied to public discourse about class relations, Izzy Babson’s late husband was actively involved in taking his experiences of East End life into a discursive arena in order to make political claims. Not only can he be described as conducting ethnographic mapping of his neighbourhood (see figure 4.4), but he also published an autobiography in 1976 (see figure 4.5) reflecting on the meaning of ‘working lives’ in post-war Hackney. Through a Bourdieusian lens a picture emerges that is highly relevant when considering the constructions of Culture within the dynamics of the field – and subsequently the role of habitus and capital within it. While the residential enclave as seen through the lens of the Trowbridge Estate is a valuable part of understanding the historical development of the neighbourhood, and could provide a foundation for imagining its future, this particular culture

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does not align with current urban development paradigms, and its social history does not fit with the logic of the field. Figure 4.4 Photograph of the Trowbridge Estate Towers (undated), Izzy Babsons’ private photograph collection

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Figure 4.5 Ron Barnes (1974) A Licence to Live: Scenes from a post-war working life in Hackney

The social history of the Trowbridge Estate and its relevance to urban development of the neighbourhood today are entirely hidden in current regeneration debates, which focus on the industrial ‘heritage’ of the neighbourhood in terms of the fragile ecology of artists’ studios in the southern part of the neighbourhood (Fish Island). One could argue that this particular policy focus reflects the age of the residents, with the Senior Citizens themselves reflecting that they ‘won’t be living in the neighbourhood that much longer’. In addition, the Trowbridge Estate residents are relatively secure in their housing, without immediate threat of eviction or demolition for redevelopment. Policy is therefore focused on those who might start families in the area, who are able to contribute to ideas for the longterm future of the neighbourhood: at the moment, the most obvious group are the ‘creatives’ in Hackney Wick Fish Island. However, the discourse of the Olympic authorities themselves speaks against this, since senior Olympic planners and politicians ultimately justified the London 2012 project in terms of ‘regenerating’ socio-economically marginalised areas in East London. The idea of the ‘Regeneration Games’ was couched on

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these terms: poor East Londoners – especially those living on the Olympic Fringe – needed the investment in their neighbourhoods as a way to pull them out of poverty and deprivation. This section shows that there is a mismatch between official Olympic discourse and the constructions of Culture that in reality win the game, namely those that dock into existing development paradigms (such as the creative city) that follow a neoliberal logic. The habitus and capital of Harris, who champions the residential cultural narrative, does translate into moments of skilled moves with local success. However, his narrative is largely overshadowed by and subordinate to that of Freddy Lawson, who understands that Culture within the game of urban regeneration must be couched in a specific language and on instrumental, economic terms. Lawson is a success story in the urban regeneration of Hackney Wick Fish Island, and in Bourdieu’s language Lawson’s practices represent symbolic domination. It becomes clear that Lawson’s understanding of Culture is adopted and integrated into planners’ vision for the future of the neighbourhood. Izzy Babson’s narrative of everyday life remains a social history, without being translated into or integrated within policy. Lawson’s definition of Culture represents skilled move-making because he knows the rules of the game and has adapted his vision of Culture strategically in a language that not only accommodates but indulges in a neoliberal logic. The next section will discuss visions, uses and consequences of Culture in the Berlin case study, demonstrating parallels in the way that narratives of the past play a role in the dynamics of current regeneration.

Quartier or Kiez: Memor y & Politics in Rudolfkiez Different conceptualisations of Kultur in Rudolfkiez are still – 25 years after the fall of the Wall – embedded in east-west tensions. The most obvious expression of this tension is that there are at least two names for the neighbourhood: Quartier Rudolfplatz and Rudolf kiez5. While the difference between the two might seem merely a matter of semantics, these names symbolise two different readings of the area’s identity. ‘Rudolfkiez’ alludes to an inner-city worker neighbourhood, and therefore draws ref5 | My adoption of the name ‘Rudolfkiez’ rather than ‘Quartier Rudolfplatz’ reflects the official definition of the neighbourhood rather than an alignment with either of the narratives discussed in this section.

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erence to the period spanning 1919-1993 when the area functioned as an industrial employment enclave for light bulb production. Implicitly, the idea of the neighbourhood as a Kiez suggests sympathy with the GDR philosophy of creating a Worker’s State/Society (Arbeiterstaat). In contrast, the term ‘Quartier’ references the ‘founding period’ of the neighbourhood around 1900, when bourgeois tenement structures were built and the area was a lively residential suburb. These two different names for the neighbourhood represent divergent ideas as to which historic culture was most significant in defining the neighbourhood, and therefore which culture should be the basis of current and future urban development. As one interviewee stated, “The name, Rudolfkiez or Rudolfplatz, the story of the quartier and the Kiez is already the dividing line” (Wolfgang Berg, interview 01.12.2012). Similar to the London case, this ‘dividing line’ or fight between narratives of the past is dominated by older, mainly retired neighbourhood residents. Crucially, these narratives of culture in the past have a direct impact on how contemporary urban regeneration is framed and justified. Most importantly, the narratives seem to determine whether new developments and new residents to the neighbourhood are deemed positive (as a force catalysing investment and improvement), or negative (as a gentrifying force that is displacing existing residents). While this stark polarisation exaggerates the positions in the field, it provides a useful marker for gauging the power dynamics of regeneration in the neighbourhood and the foundation on which to analyse why some narratives win and others lose. What marks the ‘game’ of urban regeneration in Berlin as distinct from London is political history. As indicated, the ‘game’ is shaped by eastwest tensions, which highlights that this particular ‘game’ of regeneration includes an east versus west dynamic. Bourdieu’s analysis of Algeria’s colonisation by France is relevant here, because it highlights that social and economic transformation (in Bourdieu’s case Algeria’s incorporation into France’s capitalist economic relations) can be theorised as symbolic dominance. The hasty dismantling of East German industry after reunification (discussed in chapter two) represented disempowerment, and through a Bourdieusian lens, the closure of economically and socially valuable institutions can be considered to be exercises of symbolic violence. This frame is useful for analysing what happened to GDR culture after reunification (see Cooke 2005 for a detailed discussion of how the GDR has been represented since reunification), but, more important to this discussion, it is

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also useful for analysing whether (and how) GDR history is considered in the regeneration of space in the contemporary context. While this kind of analysis is not the focus of the discussion that follows, east-west hierarchies should be considered as the foundation on which players mark their positions within the ‘game’ of regeneration in Rudolfkiez. Rudolfplatz is a public square that lies geographically in the centre of the case study neighbourhood. It is used as a park and is surrounded by residential housing blocks. Both the square and the housing blocks were constructed in the 1890s by businessman Maximilian Koch and his architect brother Sigismund Koch. Having survived WWII bombing, the GDR government took the housing blocks surrounding the square into state control (all private property was taken into government ownership). As was the case with many families in the post-war period, the owners left their property and fled East Germany. Wolfgang Berg (born 1943) is the great-grandson of Maximilian Koch. When the process of restitution began, his mother who had inherited a sixth of the housing block, asked him to take on the case, feeling that she was too old to deal with the paperwork: [She said] You do it please. I’m too old now, do it for me. She was very sentimental as the family had been misappropriated… For her, the dispossession and fleeing Berlin was a big injustice… I said to her ‘I am politically completely against the solution of restitution to former owners, it can be stressful and longwinded’. I realised that it would become an expensive project, that the investment needed was too high. Financially it’s a mistake. But then I became sentimental (Wolfgang Berg, interview 12.01.2012).

In 1998, after a successful restitution process, Berg returned to the neighbourhood to live in one of the housing blocks that his great-grandfather had built, the same flat he was born in and lived in as a child. Berg considers his grandfather the ‘founding father’ of the neighbourhood and since his return to the area has been active in promoting the idea of the neighbourhood as Quartier Rudolfplatz, placing importance on the square as being the identity-shaping symbolic heart of the area. Much like Freddy Lawson in Hackney Wick Fish Island, Wolfgang Berg is a game player who understands the logic of the game, with the skill to use his habitus and capital for his benefit. Since his return to the neighbourhood, Berg has used his cultural capital to promote his particular reading of the neigh-

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bourhood’s past and further his ideal for the neighbourhood’s future. In his view the identity and culture of the neighbourhood is rooted in its founding era, when his great grandfather built a bourgeois, middle-class residential quarter (Quartier). Since 1998 he has been active in renovating the housing block he inherited, setting up a citizen initiative to renovate the neglected neighbourhood church and organising its cultural programme. Berg’s vision is to reconstruct the dynamic residential heyday of the neighbourhood, as it was in the past: I would like to contribute to the identity-creation of the neighbourhood. And I don’t mind the accusation that it is the reconstruction of an identity that was lost… Now the chance is there for the neighbourhood to modernise itself. I think of it as the old wrinkly skin being peeled off. Underneath we can see that this was actually a nice neighbourhood (Wolfgang Berg, interview 12.01.2012).

However, as Berg himself acknowledges, [t]he problem was that there was always the suspicion that I had terrible and completely different conceptions of the history of the neighbourhood. The former manager of the Community Centre and I both had a strong interest in history. And we realised we would always rub against each other. And so we realised, I do this, you do that, and we won’t bite each other (interview 01.12.2012).

As the quotation indicates, Wolfgang Berg’s critics (including the community centre manager referenced in the quotation) frame him as a West German wanting to ‘sanitise’ the Kiez. Berg’s self-appointed leadership role and personal interest in professionalising the neighbourhood’s history, identity and culture has an implicit political stance, reflected in his statement that “I always specifically say ‘Quartier Rudolfplatz’ and never Kiez” (interview 12.07.2012). This highlights the fact that the name Quartier Rudolfplatz is a strategic ‘move’ made as a symbolic counter against other neighbourhood narratives. By referring to the neighbourhood as Quartier, Berg reinforces the idea that the most authentic, identity-shaping period for the area was when his forefathers constructed the tenements. Wolfgang Berg’s reading of the neighbourhood is not only based on his great-grandfather’s relationship to the neighbourhood, however, but also his own personal biography, specifically his return to his long-lost ‘homeland’, East Berlin, in 1998. Berg explains his increasing identifi-

4 ‘Culture’ in Urban Regeneration

cation with the area through his research: “The more I researched, the more I realised, that’s my home [meine Heimat]. Those are my roots… I became sentimental. I went to the city archives. I spoke to many people who lived here” (interview 12.01.2012). Berg’s framing of space, place and urban change is one in which he himself is an active agent of regeneration, saving the heritage of the neighbourhood (physical and social) from decay. His active role is reinstating the pride and identity in the community that existed in the pre-war era. Wolfgang Berg’s reference to meine Heimat (best translated as ‘my home’) is especially evocative here and symbolises the relationship between family history and place. Heimat is a useful tool to unravel his construction of Culture in the area, and analyse whom Berg considers the urban change is for. Heimat is a specifically German concept that ties together notions of Community, descendance, place, nature, tradition, belonging and identity. The reason why this is particularly relevant in this discussion on regeneration is because of its territorial claims. Berg’s description of his great-grandfather as ‘neighbourhood founder’ is central to the claims of Heimat and a feeling of authority and responsibility to once again create a dynamic community around the Rudolfplatz. Despite Berg’s reflective and reflexive stance, and openness regarding others’ perception of his ‘return’ to East Berlin, the narrative he constructs of the neighbourhood and his role in saving it from neglect and poverty nevertheless represents a certain middle-class paternalism that has been connected with West German colonialisation. As Berg states, “Now it [the neighbourhood] is again attracting a middle-class, academic population. There are no gentrification tendencies in this neighbourhood, because there really aren’t many old inhabitants here” (interview 01.12.2012). His narrative has symbolic relevance. The implication is that a middle-class population will not only return the neighbourhood to its ‘authentic’ state, but also that this demographic shift will remedy the remnants of GDR culture. The restoration of the neighbourhood church as a cultural centre is one of the projects at the heart of this vision. The events programme organised by Berg aims not only for new cultures to flourish in the neighbourhood, but also for old and new cultures to grow together, he explains: There is a lack of knowledge between the two. The cultural function of the cultural centre is to allow for dialogue. The best example is that for four years now I’ve been showing old DEFA [East German Film Studio] films, with the intention – which

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works – that the old people come and see films about their history, but new people like you also come. And now dialogue is happening between old and new residents (Wolfgang Berg, interview 12.01.2012).

This not only indicates Berg’s skill at formulating ideas in a convincing language but also his ability to link his personal and professional background as film and television producer to his vision for (cultural) vitality in the neighbourhood. However, the most obvious instance of Wolfgang Berg using his cultural capital to promote his conception of ‘neighbourhood culture’ is the publication of the areas’ social history in a book on the area. The book tells the ‘biography’ of the neighbourhood through the narrative of Berg’s family history, archival research, and via the oral histories of elderly residents. These representations and narratives are presented as a history ‘from below’: an authentic historical account of everyday life in the neighbourhood. The publication can be seen as a symbol of Berg’s high position in the field of urban regeneration because the narrative is used to justify a particular vision for the neighbourhood’s future development. However, there are limits to Berg’s position: his narrative is not included within the development of Oberbaum City, nor in the conceptualisation of the Lautizia development. This distinguishes Berg from Freddy Lawson in Hackney Wick Fish Island who was able to insert his vision of the neighbourhood, and particularly his business, into regeneration plans. Nevertheless, through his various initiatives – book publication, restoration and cultural programming of the church – Berg embodies what the state calls ‘active citizenship’. By successfully marketing his vision of the culture and history of the neighbourhood to a wider audience, his strategic ‘moves’ win him a relatively strong position in the discursive landscape of urban development discourse in the neighbourhood. For Berg, the intersection of neighbourhood culture and history with urban regeneration is self-evident: the social history he promotes is authentic and should be the foundation on which the future of the neighbourhood is imagined and planned. Berg explains: “Through the renovation work the quarter is moving back to its original pre-war identity… My vision is that if industrial use is finished, then let’s make this the Upper East Side of Berlin” (interview 12.01.2012). His reference to Upper East Side, an area of Manhattan in New York City, is telling. The area was once an industrial quarter (a silk stocking district), but is now one of the most affluent neighbourhoods in the city, highlighting Berg’s desire that

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Quartier Rudolfplatz may experience urban regeneration in the same way. Illustrating his skill at ‘game playing’, Berg has made sure that this vision of the neighbourhood as Upper East Side of Berlin is shared with other residents in the area: Berg organised the distribution of his book, which details the social history of the neighbourhood, to every home-owner in the new private residential development Lautizia. There is a strong counter-narrative to Berg’s account, however, connected to what Berg describes as people “whinging about the loss [of the GDR], and the amazing light bulb factory, and the terrible capitalism”. This counter-narrative is important because rather than legitimising new developments and new residents as Berg’s narrative does it focuses on the neighbourhood’s GDR culture and implies that contemporary regeneration is a colonisation of space by capitalist West German profiteers. This narrative of Rudolfkiez as an East Berlin Kiez will now be discussed. An alternative narrative frames the neighbourhood identity as shaped by the Glühlampenwerk (light bulb factory), active between 1919 and 1993. The factory, located at the edge of the neighbourhood, comprised five large industrial structures and employed over 5,000 people in its heyday (over 6,000 people when including its educational facility). When the factory first opened, it had the name OSRAM, but when it was nationalised after WWII it became NARVA-Berliner Glühlampenwerk. After the fall of the Wall it once again became OSRAM, before closing in 1993. There was a close relationship between the people employed by the factory and those who lived in the neighbourhood. The factory not only provided social activities such as a dance club, but also organised holiday facilities for employees. Perhaps the most significant element was the factory’s cooperative housing programme in the post-war years (Arbeitswohnungsbaugenossenschaften). The company paid workers a subvention towards building their own flats in the space left by bomb damage in the neighbourhood. As Ludgar König, a former employee of OSRAM/NARVA explained, this meant employees paid 100 marks into a pot each month until they had accumulated 3,000 marks. This money, in addition to helping with construction, was how employees earned their homes (interview 04.07.2012). This social history of the neighbourhood – rooted in GDR history and linked to the idea of the area as an East Berlin Kiez – largely challenges the idea of Culture as represented by the Quartier Rudolfplatz narrative. The idea of Rudolfkiez as a typical East Berlin working Kiez has a strong political resonance. Taken to its extreme, the Kiez narrative suggests that

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contemporary regeneration is the symbolic domination of GDR history and culture, which has been marginalised in pursuit of profit. Martin Haase is the director of the neighbourhood Community Centre, which initially opened to help the former NARVA employees when the factory closed in 1993. He presents the GDR culture as identity-shaping for the neighbourhood. He suggests, however, that social history is marginalised in conceptions of the neighbourhood’s future. He argues that the neighbourhood development over the years has been a highly political process in which this East Berlin Kiez is now dominated by a western model of capitalist development: This is not just about the change of industrial use. There’s another change, relating to the fall of the Wall, 22 years ago. It was East Germany here, East Berlin. Since reunification the investors did things here, it was occupied. The change was not just an ‘evolution’ but came with the change of the political system, from one day to the next. That was an invasion, an occupation. It was war, it really was (Martin Haase, interview 12.06.2012).

Haase suggests that the culture of the neighbourhood was shaped by the everyday lives of the workers, which in turn were shaped by the light bulb factory and a specifically GDR experience. While Haase is frank about the problems that existed in the neighbourhood in the early 1990s, such as a neo-Nazi presence, his stance seems to be that one culture is displacing another. Given Haase’s position, the struggles over which definitions of Culture are most authentic to the neighbourhood seem to be dictated by political ideology and a sense of injustice with the process of reunification. Seen through a Bourdieusian lens, Haase is suggesting that urban developments post-reunification constitute symbolic violence of West German ideology against this formerly East Berlin neighbourhood. The notion that Prussian history denies the GDR voice has been the controversy surrounding the rebuilding of Berlin’s Stadtschloss (as discussed in chapter two), suggesting that the specific dynamics of Rudolfkiez have citywide (and even nationwide) resonance. Wolfgang Berg is vocal in his critique of what he sees as the party-political roots of the Community Centre and their idealisation of the GDR era. He is unsympathetic towards the construction of neighbourhood culture as told through the OSRAM-NARVA factory because he believes it centres on a narrative of loss rather than pride in the neighbourhood. By framing the Community Centre manage-

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ment as being concerned primarily with old people he implies that their narrative of Culture is reactionary and without a future: The important thing for [the management] was the conservation of the socialist post-war identity of the quartier. The clientele at the centre is largely old people. That’s why they probably won’t have a long-term future. It has a very strong political connection with the former SED, and was basically an engagement programme for the former political-party-people (Wolfgang Berg, interview 12.01.2012).

Inherent in this struggle to define Culture is class, an aspect other interviewees implicitly mentioned when describing the neighbourhood. A development professional in charge of selling the remaining East Dock plots talked of the neighbourhood having a ‘simple [social] structure’ (Robert Michels, interview 27.06.2012) and this was mirrored by a youth club manager in the neighbourhood who spoke of the ‘proletariat’ in the Kiez (Bernd Neumann, interview 04.07.2012). The fear that the disparity between older (socio-economically disadvantaged) residents and newer (gentrifying) residents was implied by Martin Haase when he stated “[a] nd there was a Bugatti parked here, a 50,000-euro thing. It was a huge scandal here. How can someone with a Bugatti park HERE, in this community?” (interview 12.06.2012). This again reflects Haase’s notion that the Kiez is not only being dominated by capitalist ideals in a symbolic way but that this is engendering symbolic violence against the lives of ‘ordinary’ residents, the members of the Community Centre. The divergent constructions of Culture have thus far been presented as mutually exclusive. However, the reality of the field is more complex. Ludgar König is a regular user of the Community Centre, having worked at the NARVA factory between 1956 and 1992. He explains that he quickly moved up the career ladder and ended up as general director – “today you would say top manager!” (interview 04.07.2012). König refers to his positive experience of the factory: “My working life was very pleasant… I loved that company”. König and his wife made use of the company’s cooperative housing policy and still live in the flat they helped to build in the 1950s, with 25 other employees. The extent to which Ludgar König believes in the NARVA factory’s value for the neighbourhood is evident in his meticulous research: collating and publishing the story formally (2004) and later in an ‘Afterthought’ (2011), which is the extended version of the book made up of over three hundred photocopied pages. In this

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sense König corroborates Martin Haase’s view that the NARVA factory made Culture in the neighbourhood. For König, however, valuing the employment history of the light bulb factory does not equate to a critical stance towards contemporary urban development, nor the notion that new residents are displacing the existing population. In addition, his stance towards Wolfgang Berg’s ideas for the neighbourhood is positive: He was engaged, and whipped the church into shape. I knew the Church seven or eight years ago when it was a disorganised junk room, it was totally neglected. And [Berg] made a jewel out of it, as a culture room. In that sense Wolfgang Berg is a real bonus for this neighbourhood. I have cooperated a lot with him (Ludgar König, interview 04.07.2012).

König’s perspective is, perhaps, not surprising when analysed within a Bourdieusian frame. Unlike other NARVA employees, König was a manager within the company, and given his high level of education (he completed his PhD while working), he was able to find employment post1989. He became a winner after re-unification. König was able to employ his cultural capital and academic habitus and integrate himself into Berlin’s technical museum, giving lectures and continuing research. As the high demands on the Community Centre in the 1990s highlights, this success story was not the experience of the majority of other employees. Ludgar König was not faced with long-term unemployment like many of the other employees, who sought the services of the Community Centre, and who might therefore see the light bulb factory as the identity-shaping institution. The conflicting and at times overlapping narratives about which culture and which era has most prominently shaped the neighbourhood highlights that constructions of Culture are largely dependant on habitus and capital, a combination of personal histories and political ideals. Those actors with suitable social capital are able to project their vision of Culture effectively and present convincing arguments as to why their vision is authentic. The discussion here is an important foundation for understanding and analysing the dynamics of contemporary neighbourhood regeneration, specifically the perceptions of the Oberbaum City development, which is the ‘second life’ of the OSRAM/NARVA light bulb factory. These will be discussed later in the chapter. This section shows that ‘history matters’ in constructing Culture within urban regeneration. Furthermore, constructions of Culture must

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be considered as intersecting with politics and identity. There are significant parallels between the London and Berlin case studies: narratives of everyday lives compete with other narratives that are more easily instrumentalised within the logic of the regeneration field. As the discussion shows, the narratives that win in the game of urban regeneration are those that link to a vision of Culture that can easily translate to regeneration policy in the neighbourhood, specifically one that promotes dynamism and a reading of Culture as creativity. The physical structures that express a particular reading of Culture will be the focus of the next section.

M aterialising C ulture This section discusses the material outcomes of the discursive constructions of Culture described above. This is done through the lens of two regeneration projects: the White Building in London and Oberbaum City in Berlin. The projects are the physical manifestations of London 2012 and Mediaspree’s material intervention within the local neighbourhood arena. Oberbaum City is a privately funded office development and the White Building is a café and gallery space commissioned by the LLDC. While the function, scale and financing of the two projects are different, they converge around key themes. Both regeneration projects are represented as spearheading change within their respective neighbourhoods. Through the re-functioning of former industrial buildings, both the White Building and Oberbaum City aim to make space for the workers or consumers of the ‘creative’ economy and in doing so present a narrow way of materialising Culture. The regeneration projects discussed in this section show how it is that the winning discursive constructions of Culture are translated into material form.

The White Building, London The White Building in Hackney Wick Fish Island was the first significant state agency ‘regeneration’ in the neighbourhood (see figure 4.6). It is a new cultural venue, pizzeria and microbrewery, conceived and funded by the LLDC and opened in 2012 to coincide with the Olympic games directly across the canal. The building was originally constructed in 1890 as part of Clarnico’s confectionary factory but following the factory’s relocation

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the building was used as a print works in the 1990s, then left unoccupied and squatted. The building was renovated and re-born as the White Building in July 2012. It is considered a model regeneration project for the LLDC, investing in and celebrating local artistic cultures and aiming to make these visible to a wider public. ‘Creative culture’ is therefore the foundation of the White Building’s conception. The LLDC states that a primary aim is to provide “the artistic community [with] a public face and provide a place where local residents, artists and visitors can connect” (Design for London & London Legacy Development Corporation 2013: 66). Crucially, the building is testament to a U-turn in London 2012 planning policy for the neighbourhood. It represents a change from perceiving Hackney Wick Fish Island as an appendage of the Olympic site (to be regenerated through classic development of high-end residential highrises), to valuing the importance of existing local cultures and communities in Hackney Wick Fish Island and wanting to preserve its idiosyncratic social and architectural forms. The White Building symbolises a change to Culture-led regeneration. Figure 4.6 The White Building, May 2018

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The White Building can be understood as the product of certain planners within the LLDC team having the cultural capital to consider the (largely hidden) vernacular cultures in the area as a potential foundation for regeneration. A central figure in this broader strategy change is Frances Emerson, Head of Design within the LLDC. As a trained architect and having worked on strategies for the Lea Valley area and Olympic Fringe ‘legacy master plans’ for almost a decade, Emerson explains “I was also involved in what was going on, on the ground” (interview 30.09.2011, emphasis added). This is testament to the fact that when the White Building was conceived in 2009/10, the art scene in Hackney Wick was barely visible. “So there was really nothing… It was just like walking around an industrial estate. And unless you knew somebody, you had no idea [about the artists in the area]” (Frances Emerson, interview 22.11.2013). Emerson consequently presents the White Building as her initiation, a project that is both distinct from the London 2012 site and based on extensive research and mapping of the area. Emerson describes her strategy as making the existing businesses and galleries transparent and therefore proving to those in charge of budget allocation and broader London 2012 strategy that Hackney Wick Fish Island was a worthwhile investment, and that the value in the neighbourhood was precisely its vernacular artistic cultures. The White Building therefore represents both a new policy focus on local grass-roots culture and highlights the need to understand ‘planners’ or more specifically ‘London 2012 planning professionals’ as a diverse category – some with the suitable habitus and capital to push through plans that deviate from the rigid logic of the game. The official purpose of the building for communities in the area, its relatively low construction cost of £550,000, and day-to-day running by local studio managers SPACE, are key aspects of delivering this new, Culture-led vision of regeneration. While Bloomberg is the commercial sponsor of the arts programming and studio residencies, SPACE – a charity and studio manager working locally since 1968 – have a lease on the venue for ten years, leasing out affordable spaces to artists. Emerson explains the change in policy and the gradual acceptance of the Culture narrative for regeneration: I think there’s a real understanding that it’s a really special, unique place, and a really different kind of approach is needed – which wasn’t really there a few years ago. I think a few years ago people just saw the whole thing [the neighbourhood] as wipe it all away and start again. So I think it’s quite good the way it’s worked

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out, that we’ve done enough work quietly, in the background, I guess 2008/9, that I started to map all the studios and stuff like that (Frances Emerson, interview 22.11.2013).

Emerson’s role within Hackney Wick Fish Island’s regeneration is particularly interesting because her habitus and capital allow her to bridge the gap between the professional cultures of London 2012 planning strategists and cultural producers living and working in the neighbourhood. This results in her position in the field being akin to a covert mediator between the higher echelons of the LLDC (who speak the language of traditional planning) and the cultural producers in the area, many of whom are critical of the impact of Olympic-led developments in the neighbourhood. Emerson’s job, as she describes it, was convincing those with economic capital that cultural production is a valuable element within neighbourhood regeneration: Internally, within LLDC…our chief exec and senior people have gone from ‘oh what’s all that stuff outside the Olympic Park, we’re not interested in it’ to ‘Hackney Wick is the most important thing that we can do. We really need to do a really good job of it. This is a really special place, we can’t screw it up.’ So it’s like, oh wow, where did that come from? (Frances Emerson, interview 22.11.2013).

Indeed, this is an important question: where did that change in perspective come from? Why did public Olympic funding (state investment), which had previous focused heavily on investments that would create maximum returns and catalyse private investment suddenly change track? While the White Building regeneration project suggests that urban regeneration catalysed by London 2012 has changed the logic of the game towards the integration of alternative ‘cultures’, arguably, it is only the framing that has changed. Senior and chief executives in the LLDC initially limited their planning strategy to inside the Olympic Park, but as soon as the Creative Potential report was published in 2008 the marketable value in the area was highlighted. This highlights one important aspect of the White Building, namely its role in selling Hackney Wick Fish Island as a ‘cultural hub’ and furthering private investment in the area. In this sense, artistic culture provided a ready-made marketing strategy and marker of distinction for the neighbourhood that would eventually pay its dividends: a better long-term strategy for investment, or providing a base for high-

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er-retail values. This is not to say that all planners see Culture in terms of its value as an economic asset but rather that the decision-makers in the upper echelons of urban regeneration schemes, working with the logic of urban regeneration as the driver of growth, deem Culture a means to an end. Within the field of urban regeneration, individual employees may indeed be concerned about social inclusion and well-intentioned in their policies and funding choices, but ultimately the outcomes are dictated by the wider logic of the economic field. The White Building could be seen as instrumentalising existing artists and labelling these as Culture in order to create a Unique Selling Point of ‘authenticity’ for the area and pro- mote the neighbourhood’s development potential. The regeneration of the White Building can therefore be seen as a strategic ‘move’ made by the LLDC to align with a tried-andtested development paradigm (the creative city) to gain a better position in the field of urban regeneration. This was primarily achieved by distinguishing the ‘culture-sensitive’ regeneration in Hackney Wick Fish Island from the wholesale remediation and redevelopment of the Olympic site, for which various groups were displaced. The White Building, represented as a beacon for creativity and dynamism, provides an antidote to the explicit commercial agenda of the Olympic mega-development, providing Olympic planners with a credible project that illustrates their competence in supporting existing communities, social structures and ‘cultures’. As Frances Emerson explains: The reason for the project was [to ask ourselves]: what can the public sector do to support this process of change? We didn’t want to go in there with our big boots and kind of start trying to do things that would make things worse, or drive the values [of housing] up. So we identified this project with the artists, and they wanted it, so we did it. So it’s good (Frances Emerson, interview 30.09.2011, emphasis added).

This perspective indicates that the White Building regeneration project is legitimated, justified and framed through its connection with ‘the artists’, with an equation that artists’s approval equates to ‘good’ development. As various residents and artists indicated, the White Building does provide a beacon for the area, with local involvement in the management of studios and the café. However, a recurring theme in interviews was that this

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‘local’ involvement is a thin veneer for a LLDC corporate ‘ego’ project. Leon Kennedy, a resident in the area states: I totally see why they did it, for pragmatism they needed to do their own building, because it is their own identity… The White Building is like [the LLDC saying] ‘okay we’re going to commission a project in Hackney Wick, we’re going to have a restaurant or bar space. We’re going to have a local person to rent that out. Then have studio space.’ It ticks all the boxes, but it cost a lot of money to do… There’s something odd about it. It’s trying to mimic the character of the thing that it is. Like, ooh it’s an industrial shed, but check out the nice red netting with the lambs-wool insulation that fireproofs the asbestos, or whatever (interview 03.09.2013).

The notion that the White Building is a LLDC vanity project is reflected by Jessica Davies, an artist who organises the annual open-gallery festival Hackney WickED: Nice building and nice programme, [but] that’s because it’s being run by SPACE, and I like SPACE, they’re good… They [LLDC] never funded anything for Hackney WickED and they didn’t even come to our exhibition, which we’ve got on at the moment at the Elevator Gallery. And they all received an invite, but nobody came (Jessica Davies, interview 17.07.2012).

These perspectives suggest that it is neither the activities nor the management or programming that is problematic, rather the fact that the White Building represents state intervention in an area where similar projects instigated by grassroots organisations are not receiving attention or financial support. It must be noted that Leon Kennedy’s perspective is grounded in his involvement with Stour Space (discussed in detail in the next chapter), only a few metres along the canal from the White Building, which explains his critique of the financial aspects, which Stour Space could have benefitted from. Jessica Davies’ critique is grounded in her experiences as a festival organiser, and her difficulties in organising the Hackney WickED in 2012 because of Olympic security restrictions. Despite the interviewees’ very specific and personal accounts of the White Building, they show that while state agency intervention in the Hackney Wick Fish Island neighbourhood seems to show a leap of imagination for Olympic planners, the construction and recognition of ‘vernacular cultures’ should be seen as part of a wider strategic ‘move’ within the

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game. These strategies are well within the neoliberal logic, working with rather than against the grain of neoliberal development agendas, framed around interurban competition, gentrification, middle-class consumption and place-marketing (Peck 2005: 741). It could therefore be argued that the White Building is an attempt to ‘de-risk’ the neighbourhood, making it legible and aesthetically palatable for middle-class consumption. While the White Building is framed as local regeneration that is committed to ‘the artists’ or so-called ‘creatives’, this ignores the fact that other actors in the neighbourhood experience Culture as a wider concept. As highlighted above, the northern half of the neighbourhood houses the Trowbridge Estate, whose residents do not appear to be included in the White Building’s conceptualisation of ‘local culture’. The fact that a church minister working in the northern half of Hackney Wick Fish Island described the White Building being “ever so cool and trendy” (Julie Hammond interview 23.08.2012) shows how cultural signs can play a key role in intimidating and excluding certain residents from material spaces. In other words, the White Building is a sign as to which cultures, and whose social worlds are defined as desirable for public (specifically international) consumption, and which are deemed expendable. The White Building then is about managing creative cultures and using cultural production as a sign of vibrant neighbourhood culture to attract new consumers, specifically cultural entrepreneurs. This is a theme the next section develops in the Berlin case study.

Oberbaum City, Berlin Oberbaum City – the redeveloped former light bulb factory – was one of the first major development sites under the Mediaspree label and occupies a significant part of Rudolfkiez (see figure 4.7). In the mid-1990s the vast factory structures were remediated and developed into an office complex. The buildings’ heritage-protected facades were preserved while the interiors were gutted to create high-spec spaces. After almost a decade of restoration work, the first tenants moved into their offices in 1998/1999. Oberbaum City is now an employment hub for the service sector, housing a range of companies from large international firms such as BASF (the largest tenant) to smaller firms such as film production companies and start-ups. In contrast to the White Building, Oberbaum City is a private investment project, financed jointly by Hypo Vereins Bank Immobilien

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(HVB real estate, now part of UniCredit Group) and the building contractor Roland Ernst. Between 1993 and 2000 HVB invested over 1 billion marks (in today’s terms, approximately 350,000,000€) in the restoration of the five industrial houses that make up the complex. The name Oberbaum City references the history of the area: in the eighteenth century a nearby bridge, Oberbaumbrücke (literally translated: upstream tree bridge) was built to prevent smuggling. The twinning of this historic reference with the internationally understood concept City indicates the intention to situate the regeneration project in terms of its relationship to the past and future. The official aim of the project is to combine the “Age of Industry with the Age of Information” (HVB Immobilien 2015), demonstrating that industrial history is an important part of constructing a new (employment) culture. This section discusses how the Oberbaum City development constructs Culture in its material form. Figure 4.7 Oberbaum City with BASF tower in the background, June 2018

Luise Müller, marketing director of Oberbaum City, describes her first impressions of the Rudolfkiez neighbourhood when she first arrived in 1998. The factory site, she explains, looked like a WWII landscape: one building was a ruin, another just a facade, and the rest was a building

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site. HVB investment in the site catalysed change not just on the former factory site but also in the surrounding Rudolfkiez neighbourhood. As she puts it: [Oberbaum City] came here and brought change. The changes also rubbed off on the neighbourhood, which initially looked awful. Everything smelt musty and stuffy. You couldn’t touch the door handles to the houses, because they were so sticky. That has all changed a lot, in part because of the development of this site (Luise Müller, interview 11.07.2012).

In this narrative, the Kiez is undeveloped and requires intervention. The language used presents a picture of a neglected space, with references to “sticky door handles” and “musty smell” suggesting that Oberbaum City brought about a new Culture that sanitised and de-risked the Kiez. The understanding of capital investment and new employment culture as a tool in regenerating the neighbourhood is reinforced by Müller’s description of the development as a ‘pioneering’ change: “we needed a good ten years to become established in this location, to position it. One has to imagine, we were the pioneers of Mediaspree, we were the first largescale regeneration project in this area” (interview 11.07.2012). Her use of language is interesting here. While Müller describes Oberbaum City as a ‘pioneer’ of the Mediaspree project (rather than as a ‘pioneer’ within the neighbourhood), her overall framing suggests that Oberbaum City was instigating necessary ‘progress’ of the neighbourhood. This kind of narrative is cemented within Oberbaum CityLights, the biannual magazine published by UniCredit Global Business Services. The magazine has been marketing the Oberbaum City development since 2005 and includes a growing list of all the tenants in every issue. In an editorial for the magazine Müller states: “I first visited the site in 1998… Since then fortunately a lot has changed” (Oberbaum CityLights, winter 2013/14: 5). While the extended passage in the magazine makes it clear that she is primarily describing the (material) state of the neglected factory, she also states that in the late 1990s the Osthafen was “the only place where there was hustle and bustle” in the area (ibid.), which seems to entirely overlook the (social) life of the neighbourhood context. Some residents in the neighbourhood agree with Müller’s analysis, celebrating the redevelopment and its effect on its surroundings. Ludgar König describes the social and economic problems of the neighbourhood,

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suggesting that the huge HVB investment changed people’s perception of the neighbourhood as a ‘problem’ area: This neighbourhood had the potential to crash after reunification. The industry fell apart. Many of those who lived here had no more work, many of the flats were in bad shape because of the lack of investment… They [HVB] invested one billion Deutschmark, ripped out all the interiors, kept the facades. And it was restored beautifully (interview 04.07.2012).

The problems after German reunification (discussed in chapter two) and lack of government investment in old building stock during the Communist era have been well-documented (see for example, Levine 2004: 92). In this context, König’s description reflects the optimism felt at re-investment in valued ‘heritage’ buildings. Nevertheless, the implication that private capital de-risked the area and solved the social and economic problems – implicit in the discourse presented by Luise Müller – is not only oversimplified but also laden with symbolic meaning. By presenting the neighbourhood as a backdrop for the regeneration project, a context or setting rather than an area with existing cultures and agency, the symbolic value of the Mediaspree intervention is necessarily elevated. In the Oberbaum CityLights magazine, the existing factory structures are presented as historical monuments, implying that Culture did not exist in the Kiez until investment – the transfer of financial capital – in the neighbourhood was underway. The relationship between Oberbaum City and Rudolfkiez can be described as a tale of two cultures. Oberbaum City was conceived as an employment hub for the service sector, a social and economic context that does not resonate with many of the residents. This provides an interesting contrast to the White Building, which was conceived by LLDC planners as a homage to the neighbourhood’s ‘artistic culture’ and a place where the connections between existing cultures and new residents could be forged. The idea that the Oberbaum City development has fostered two distinct cultures is substantiated by Lenny, a graphic designer from Japan who moved to the neighbourhood in 2011 because she found an affordable studio space where she could also live. She explains: Before I moved here, I thought, ‘Mediaspree’, now that sounds good, maybe I can get a job there. But the reality is quite different. This is a residential area and the

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business people don’t come over here. It’s not mixed. [The Mediaspree developments] are only 200 metres away, here and there are very different. Only neighbourhood residents walk along this street (Lenny, interview 19.06.2012).

A research project on Rudolfkiez conducted by students at the Urban Research and Design Laboratory of the Technical University Berlin between 2001 and 2002 suggests this view is not isolated. The report states that residents desired a better connection between the Kiez and Oberbaum City, which some residents still perceive as “a foreign body within the neighbourhood” (Jeutner et al. 2011: 5). The mini-interviews I conducted in Rudolfkiez presented a similar picture: many interviewees felt that Oberbaum City was a “different world” from the neighbourhood. One woman working in a flower shop in Oberbaum City explained: “for me this isn’t a Kiez here, this is only a business-trade area” – despite the fact that her flower shop, where we were speaking, is less than one hundred metres from the Rudolfplatz. Despite this common perception of a divide, others see the Oberbaum City development as forging a new link. For example, Milan Richter, a freelance media designer who moved to the area in 2001, explains that the Oberbaum City development “opened up the building as a real architectural treat” (interview 18.06.2012, see figure 4.8). This is noteworthy because of Richter’s otherwise critical perspective of post-1989 developments, specifically his notion that alternative cultures were blooming in Berlin in the 1990s while “the important business-men were signing contracts behind closed doors”. Richter’s analysis of Oberbaum City “opening up” space suggests that the investment in the former factory buildings has also led to a more inclusive spatial dynamic.

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Figure 4.8 One of the heritage-listed facades of Oberbaum City, June 2018

Another interviewee also focused on her productive relationship with Oberbaum City. Waltraud Grimm, who runs the Intershop 2000 – a citizen initiative and shop in the neighbourhood for the documentation of Everyday GDR culture – described a “friendly coexistence” between the regeneration project and the neighbourhood. While the shop is now located near Rudolfplatz, it stood on undeveloped land owned by HVB between 1998 and 2012, prior to the development of new housing on the site. Grimm explains that this arrangement was ideal from her perspective: “Oberbaum City was really great [to us]. They had us there for 12 years, free of charge as temporary users. We had to pay electricity. It was super fair. We had a very friendly relationship with our contact partner Mr. Glocker” (interview 08.07.2012). This suggests that while the relationship may be characterised by “two separate worlds”, these were not always hermetically sealed, with interaction and cooperation in specific instances. However, marketing manager Luise Müller indicates that this relationship was merely pragmatic, or even accidental. She openly states that the intention was never to create close ties between residents and the regeneration project: “It is not possible for a natural relationship to develop locally between the developer, the tenants, users and the commu-

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nity’s residents. Those two worlds exist in parallel” (interview 11.07.2012). While Müller does not explain what she means by a “natural relationship” or whether this is desirable, her suggestion that there are “two worlds” seems a stark revelation, especially in contrast with planners’ framing of the White Building in Hackney Wick as a “social glue” for neighbourhood interactions. Müller’s somewhat brash language, which describes Oberbaum City as a ‘pioneering’ development that has fostered new employment culture, productivity and “two worlds” after years of decline is a narrative of ‘progress’ that Müller can afford to use: the game of urban regeneration in Berlin had unstable parameters in the post-Wall years, with a logic fixed on attracting maximum investment. Her language chimes with a neoliberal free-market agenda of growth, but given the context, this is not surprising. Müller’s descriptions of the neglected old factory buildings in the late 1990s can be analysed as symbolic of the fragility of the political and economic context in Berlin. Her use of language indicates that financial capital had free rein. Attracting tenants (and catalysing economic activity) was the primary logic of the game of urban development, especially in East Berlin. In this climate, there was no need to legitimate the development with linguistic sensitivity towards existing cultures and by forging links with residents. What is perhaps surprising is that this kind of narrative is used overtly over twenty-five years after re-unification while in the London context such language would now appear politically incorrect and unsympathetic towards current planning paradigms around citizen inclusion and participation. This indicates that Oberbaum City, as a privately funded development, does not have to justify the regeneration in terms of its redistributive effects for the existing residents in the way LLDC planners had to frame the White Building as an inclusive cultural space. The fact that Müller does not attempt to mask the overt neoliberal agenda of the project through a more careful use of language suggests that the parameters of the game have not vastly changed since the early days of the Mediaspree scheme. In summary, this chapter demonstrates that definitions of Culture are both wielded in a battle of words and materialised. Culture is constructed through difference: players distinguish their narratives according to their comparative position to others. As such, winning and losing the game is complicated because while some residents create narratives of Culture that are widely accepted (for example in a local museum, in a LLDC plaque or

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via cultural programming), this does not necessarily equate to inclusion in policy discourse, and in most cases it does not. While Frederick Harris and Wolfgang Berg both produce narratives of Culture that make a claim to space and a sense of belonging (in this sense they are winners), they are dominated by neo-liberal terms (losers because they are not included in official regeneration). The only player described in this chapter who can be described as an obvious winner is Freddy Lawson. His narrative of Culture is so dominant that his vision of urbanism is produced, in terms of affecting policy. Lawson is not merely following the rules of the game but has taken advantage of his opportunity to shape them. Given Lawson’s ample forms of capital, which align perfectly with the language of entrepreneurship, self-help and active citizenship as championed by neoliberal economics, this finding is not surprising. But, as his story makes clear, the logic of the game can change, and Lawson’s winning position is always relative. This demonstrates that winning and losing are normative descriptors that help to map hierarchy rather than denote an endgame. In Berlin, none of the players’ narratives of neighbourhood culture have been integrated within the regeneration scheme Mediaspree (via Oberbaum City) – only the commercialised story of ‘employment culture’ via the light bulb factory is materialised. This missing link between neighbourhood culture and regeneration scheme – demonstrates that the game of urban regeneration in Berlin is highly neoliberal, because attracting private capital is the ultimate logic within the game. In London, the White Building shows Olympic planners integrating one neighbourhood narrative of Culture (‘the artists’), even if this plays directly to the agenda of growth via ‘creativity’. The chapter therefore illuminates the ‘dark side’ of Culture within regeneration and demonstrates that constructions of Culture can often be used as a tool to strengthen rather than subvert the neoliberal logic of urban regeneration processes. The next chapter catalogues actors’ understandings, definitions and uses of Community.

5 ‘Community’ in Urban Regeneration

This chapter functions in parallel to the previous one, documenting how Community as a concept appears within urban regeneration (in policy, theory and within the neighbourhood context) and what it means for different social agents. Similarly it details how, through a Bourdieusian lens, this produces contexts of power and symbolic violence. This chapter focuses mainly on two groups practicing so-called ‘DIY urbanism’ – Stour Space in London and Holzmarkt e.V. in Berlin – which use the language of Community skilfully. As such the chapter shows how the concept of Community is instrumentalised by all actors; not only understood and defined in policy, but also constructed in and during practices of planning, and produced through everyday practice. In this sense, Community can be imagined and created bottom-up as a strategic act of self-defence. However, the insertion of Community (rhetoric) within the game of urban regeneration has not necessarily resulted in the democratisation of the field. Agents and institutions with cultural and social capital and the ‘right’ habitus have the resources to play the game skilfully – using the language of Community to their advantage – while others are left behind. Understanding that Community is constructed on ideological grounds (Urry 2000) provides a valuable basis for insights into how different actors see the future of their neighbourhood, and crucially, who fits within this picture.

C ommunit y in P olitics & Theory The language of Community has common appeal for policy-makers of all kinds. Community provides a tangible bridge between micro and macro, individual and society, identity and Culture (Deas 2013). Within a post-

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Fordist context in which governance replaces government, Community rhetoric is particularly relevant in regenerating cities: Community conveys a sense of ‘the local’ and therefore fits into the picture of shared responsibility of state and citizen. In the 1990s, ‘community empowerment’ became the key phrase used to describe this new relationship (Paddison 2001: 194). The fact that Community always seems out of reach (Day 2006: 9) or a ‘paradise lost’ (Bauman 2001) provides further impetus to capture or re-invigorate it in development projects. The appeal of Community has a distinct history. Today’s use of the term Community references its use in the 1970s, when it was linked with social empowerment. In the 1970s context, Community provided the anchor for connections and commitments to be activated on a level above and beyond divisive identity markers such as gender, ethnicity, age or class. While Community is often conceptualised as the antidote to the socially erosive effects of globalisation and neoliberalism (Paddison 2001: 194), in its contemporary use the concept has, in effect, been re-fashioned to suit the needs of a free market neoliberal context of competitiveness and deregulation. Now, the concept of Community typically denotes the idea of geographically-bounded groups that will foster social capital (Amin 2005; DeFilippis 2001; Mayer 2003). Scholars have pointed out that re-building local Community is seen as the solution to area-based economic hardship (Amin 2004; Blokland 2003; Rose 1999): a way to nurture small economies, stimulate entrepreneurship and eventually catalyse economic growth.

How Urban Policy Imagines Community Community has been the main object and subject of regulation in Britain since the first formal urban policy in 1968 (Imrie and Raco 2003: preface). The instrumentalisation of Community for fuelling economic growth was a key feature of Thatcher’s Conservative government in the 1980s, and those policies which have endured ever since (Deas 2013: 77). Community was also the basis for New Labour’s so-called Urban Renaissance strategy in the 2000s (Imrie and Raco 2003), seen in Tony Blair’s emphasis on area-specific regeneration schemes and aspiration to build, strengthen and empower ‘active communities’ (Blair 1998, as cited by Wallace 2012: 51). The idea of activating residents as local experts in neighbourhood regeneration was particularly explicit in the Neighbourhood Renewal

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Unit: New Deal for Communities initiative 1998-2008 (Foley and Martin 2000; Lawless et al. 2010) and the City Challenge and Single Regeneration Budget (six rounds between 1994 and 2000), which was particularly ambitious in the scale of participation and partnership between local government, private sector and local communities. More recently, the concept of Community has appeared as a central pillar of the current UK coalition government’s “Big Society”. Launched in 2011, the idea of the Big Society relies on the existence and strength of Community to provide for itself via bottom-up management, shifting away from the role of the state as provider. The rhetoric is based on tackling social problems by strengthening communities and removing dependence on ‘the system’. However, critics suggest that the increased appeal of Community (and inclusion of the not-for-profit sector within policy) is mainly due to fiscal pressures rather than ambitions for social justice. Local government is increasingly calling on local communities to fill the gaps created by state retrenchment and the devolution of responsibility in social services, welfare, health and housing (DeFilippis 2009: 225). The Localism Bill, introduced in 2010, operationalises community-led development of the Big Society. The Bill is highly relevant to the current urban regeneration landscape in London, because it was used to found the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC). In addition, it provides the legal frame for the Community Right to Buy, a crucial piece of legislation for the development plans of Stour Space in Hackney Wick (discussed later in the chapter). While the idea of the Big Society is to increase decentralisation and encourage bottom-up developments, Mike Raco (2012) and Jonathan S. Davies (2002: 319-320) argue that top-down strategic planning remains the conventional model of development, despite the language of Community being firmly integrated within regeneration. This brief policy overview provides an important lesson: definitions of ‘the local community’ within planning have changed according to different interests. Its various incarnations demonstrate that Community is a political construction serving particular regeneration goals. A more recent development is that “‘the local residents community’…[has] become a rhetorical device to demonstrate the social benevolence of regeneration projects” (Baeten 2001: 299). Given the lineage of Community rhetoric within UK policy, the task of this chapter is to unravel current constructions of Community in the neighbourhood setting, with this policy context as a foundation.

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The next section considers the language of Community within German policy. The insertion of Community (Gemeinschaft) within German urban policy has been more subtle than in the UK. This is largely due to the National Socialists’ misuse of the term Gemeinschaft, specifically their reading of Community as exclusive and closed, and their policies rendering ‘non-German’ ethnic groups outside of the remit. Rather than providing an overarching or paradigmatic concept within urban policy, Gemeinschaft often describes groups of people in distinct social spaces such as co-housing communities (Gemeinschaftliches Wohnen, or Baugemeinschaft) and inter-generational communities (generationenübergreifende Gemeinschaften). When German policy-makers refer to a more abstract notion of social groupings, which in the UK context would directly be referenced with the concept Community, SenStadt prefers to use the language of society or neighbourhoods (for example, policies that refer to solidarity in society/‘Solidarische Gesellschaft’ or strengthening neighbourhoods/‘Kieze stärken’). The emphasis is on promoting Community as inclusive groupings with benevolent intent. While Kiez and Gemeinschaft have a very similar meaning to Community, the choice of language within policy marks an attempt to reject the ideological language of Community, steering instead towards more neutral and inclusive definitions1. Despite these political manoeuvres, there is nevertheless strong recourse towards communitarian thinking similar to that in the UK, in which social capital and local participation are seen as the solutions to stabilising deprived neighbourhoods in Germany’s towns and cities. The urban development programme Social City (Soziale Stadt) is the most striking example of Community rhetoric within urban policy. Launched in 1999 (with a new phase developed in 2012) it exemplifies the idea that community cohesion is a means of countering socio-spatial polarisation. The supplementary programme ‘Local Social Capital’ and its direct reference to “fostering a sense of community” (BMVBS 2008: 8) confirms this. The Social City programme entails collaboration between the federal government, federal states, local authorities and citizens. The aim is to tackle urban exclusion by first reviving the social bonds in districts with special development needs (Stadtteilen mit besonderem Erneuer1 | Kiez is a distinctively urban formation – as opposed to Gemeinschaft, which is not keyed to a particular social structure in the same way.

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ungsbedarf ), and then reviving the bonds between these districts and the rest of the city (Nowosielski 2012: 301). The aims of Social City are parallel to those of the Localism Bill in the UK, reflected largely through the language of citizen responsibility and partnerships. The current coalition government agreement (Koalitionsvereinbarung 2011-2016) has maintained the engagement with Community, specifically in its reference to ‘Social City, Stable Communities’ (Soziale Stadt, stabile Kieze). The agreement states that civil society engagement, participative strategies and the development of urban districts are integral foundations for the future of Berlin. This section, outlining how Community is imagined in UK and German political discourse and how it is expressed in policy, demonstrates that despite different histories and political agendas, the appeal to Community in UK and German urban policy converges. In both national contexts, local urban regeneration is typically based on communitarian ideals of a re-moralisation and stabilisation of society via social capital. The next section focuses on exactly how Community is conceptualised in the planning arena, within London 2012 and Mediaspree.

How Planners Conceive & Make Community Strengthening and building Community was key to London 2012 planning. In the 2005 Olympic bid, London was represented as ‘a community’, communicated through images of its multi-cultural history and the notion of unity and harmony through this diversity (Falcous and Silk 2010). As Angharad Closs Stephens puts it, in the Olympic narrative “difference is celebrated as part of the community’s postmodern identity” (2007: 9). However, just as was seen in the discussion of the term Culture in the preceding chapter, there are inconsistencies in the definition of Community throughout official London 2012 documents, specifically the scale at which it is conceptualised. This highlights the slippery nature of the term Community and the way it has been used to suit a range of different agendas over time. The success of London’s Olympic Bid (submitted to the IOC as a pitch) rested on its commitment to building a lasting social legacy for the existing communities of East London. The bid document states: “The most enduring Legacy of the Olympics will be the regeneration of an entire community for the direct benefit of everyone who lives there” (London’s Candidate file, London Organising Committee for the Olympic

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Games 2005: 19, emphasis added). This report shows a clear reading of Community as spatially bounded to East London, specifically relating to the “communities that border the park” (Community Engagement Policy 2012: 12), and temporally bounded to the present, because the emphasis is on benefits for people who currently live in the East End. London Mayor Boris Johnson confirms that ‘existing communities’ surrounding the park site are central to his legacy vision (Design for London and London Legacy Development Corporation 2013: 4). This conceptualisation of Community equated to existing social groups is relevant because the existing population in and around Stratford have continually been defined as chronically deprived (Davies 2012). Consequently, including these marginalised groups within the Olympic vision was seen as the necessary benchmark for Olympic success. Crucially, given the area’s ‘social problem’ status (outlined in chapter one), ‘community groups’ of Hackney Wick Fish Island were explicitly referenced as benefitting from the momentum of Olympic development (Design for London and London Legacy Development Corporation 2013: 43). The policy of “convergence” (Host Boroughs Unit 2009) is another clear formulation of Community being imagined as the existing, deprived Olympic Fringe neighbourhoods. The idea of convergence is to close the deprivation gap between East and West London through measurable outputs so that “within 20 years the communities who host the 2012 Games will have the same social and economic chances as their neighbours across London” (Host Boroughs Unit 2009: 1). The language of Community is used in this policy to emphasise that the London Olympics were for the residents, and if the regeneration legacy is to be a success, a positive transformation of the ‘existing community’ will prove that it has served its purpose. By focusing Olympic-led regeneration and legacy on the concept of Community, London 2012 planners sought to distance themselves from the planning mistakes of the nearby Docklands and Canary Wharf, in which top-down planning and a strong neoliberal agenda (Lees and Ley 2008: 2380) created a wide gulf between mobile employment cultures and existing working-class lives. However, despite the convergence documents being careful to emphasise this new model of development for the community, critics argue that this strategy actually represents the rationalisation of East London gentrification. Convergence can be analysed as a policy of replacing the working-class with new mid-

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dle-class residents rather than improving the socio-economic chances of existing populations (Watt 2013). While the bid documents and convergence strategy imply a commitment to existing communities, there is a shifting conceptualisation of Community in official Olympic planning documents, with a growing emphasis on new Community. It must be stated that definitions of Community as existing residents or new residents are not mutually exclusive. However, the two definitions indicate a new agenda that has developed since 2005. One of the five ‘Olympic Promises’ of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) was “transforming communities”. This was to be achieved by “build[ing] over 9,000 new homes, a large proportion of which to be affordable; and provid[ing] new sport, leisure, education and health facilities that meet the needs of residents, business and elite sport” (Department for Culture Media and Sport 2008: 8). The “new homes” are to be delivered within the frame of the Legacy Communities Scheme. The scheme very clearly defines Community in terms of the five new residential areas – Chobham Manor, East Wick, Sweetwater, Marshgate Wharf and Pudding Mill – to be built in the Queen Elizabeth Park before 2040 (queenelizabetholympicpark.co.uk). This indicates not only a definition of Community as new residential neighbourhoods, but also suggests that Olympic planners imagine Community over a long time frame, hence the projection of Community into the future. This perspective is reflected by Sir Robin Wales (Mayor of the London Borough of Newham), when he states: “We need to develop communities” (Wales 2008). This indicates that Community is seen as an aspiration rather than something tangible that already exists. The label “NEW COMMUNITIES” marking Hackney Wick Fish Island in one London 2012 document (Mayor of London 2012: 16) demonstrates the tension between ‘existing’ and ‘new’ communities, in this case going against the idea that it is precisely the Olympic Fringe where ‘existing’ communities need to be supported. While this inconsistency in definitions of Community does not necessarily reflect inadequate planning, or strategic manipulation, it does indicate mixed agendas. Juliet Davies asks: “Is the purpose of imagining community predominantly driven by the economics of the Olympic project – the aim being to market the vision of the site to prospective buyers? Can such views, otherwise, genuinely create the beginnings for making complex, mixed, contextually specific neighbourhoods?” (2012). The changing definition and use of Community by London 2012 offi-

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cials can be seen as a strategic manoeuvre, part of the competitive game: benefits for ‘the community’ were staged in a certain way during the bid process in order to gain IOC favour and trigger funds, and later amended to suit the priorities of the competitive urban growth machine. This not only demonstrates the power of language within the field of urban regeneration but also indicates subtle movement within the field, with institutions employing certain words appropriate for certain contexts, toying with meanings and trying to improve their position: playing the game with skill. The concept of Community is also used flexibly in the planning documents that set the idea of Mediaspree in motion. The earliest development plans (Hemprich and Tophof 1994), conceived in the years after the fall of the Wall, mention the need to “stabilise existing urban quarters in Friedrichshain” (SenStadt 2001: 23), however, the main emphasis is on the uniqueness of the River Spree, the need to link east and west, and the construction of dense residential and office blocks. The emphasis is on making the most economically efficient use of space, with no explicit mention of existing temporary users or communities in adjacent areas. The negligible role of existing Community in this early development plan is substantiated by the fact that the Hemprich and Tophof plan (1994) – the only master plan for the area that might have included surrounding neighbourhoods in planning – was largely ignored by various investors and developers (Hofmann 2011). The understanding and use of Community shifts slightly in the SenStadt plans of 2001 (Spreeraum Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg: Leitbilder und Konzepte). In this document the language of Community appears in statements such as “participating actors need to agree on a common strategy” and the aim of “socially-oriented land policies” (2001: 32). In addition, the document mentions plans to include citizens’ initiatives into planning, as well as linking with nearby Kieze. However, the concept Gemeinschaft only appears once in the document in terms of the “investor community” Mediaspree (Investorengemeinschaft), suggesting that integrating the concept Community was not well-defined or substantiated during this period. Tellingly, the biggest change in the language of Community has been since 2008, the year in which the citizen referendum against Mediaspree took place. The referendum brought a discourse of Gemeinschaft into focus within Mediaspree planning. Since 2008, formal planning documents have explicitly emphasised citizen participation, cooperation

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between residents, the Senate and investors. This language of Community is consolidated with the slogan ‘Riverbank for Everyone’ (Ufer für Alle) which appeared not just as the motto for the Mediaspree Versenken protestors but was also included in the foreword of a Senate publication (SenStadt 2008: 4), indicating that since the referendum there has been an effort to consider Community in a wider sense. In addition, increased reference to the value of public space can be seen as part and parcel of increasing discourse on the communal benefits of urban regeneration schemes. Therefore, while Community is not referenced directly, it is implied through other concepts. The 2008 referendum displaced some of the earlier planning paradigms (based on economic reasoning), and catalysed new socially-orientated considerations. However, when considering the German case in comparison to the UK it is notable that the concept Community is relatively limited, and reference to Gemeinschaft is also sporadic. The most frequent reference in planning is to the concept Kiez, highlighting that planning professionals and political actors favour the spatial language of Community rather than association with social groupings. In both the London 2012 and Mediaspree plans there is a similar emphasis on Community being a useful tool within urban regeneration processes. The implication is that Community can bridge the gap between formerly divided parts of the city, bringing together east and west. However, in both cases planning documents largely understand Community on a city-wide scale, specifically in terms of creating new communities. Critical theoretical readings of Community will now be introduced, demonstrating why the concept holds such power within political discourse and providing a point of reference for the critical empirical discussion.

How Theor y Defines Community In sociology, the concept of Community is commonly intertwined with notions of place, belonging and identity, which largely explains its intuitive appeal and insertion within political debate, especially within urban development. Orthodox community studies highlight the alienating effects of global forces on urban social life, in which individualisation is a sign of the ‘fall of community’ (Simmel 1905/1950, Putnam 2001). These accounts align broadly with the earliest sociological work on Commu-

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nity, specifically that of Ferdinand Tönnies (1887/1957) and the Chicago School’s ethnographic work (Park 1915, Wirth 1928, Zorbaugh 1929/1983), both of which equated Community with territory-bound connectedness, social structure and cohesion. In Britain, Young and Willmott’s (1957/2007) study of tight-knit working-class kinship in London’s East End is one of the most influential community studies to date, despite critiques that the researchers romanticise working-class community lives. The sociologists examine networks of dependence and mutual support (‘community ties’) displaced by post-war social housing policy and urban renewal. Young and Willmott’s discussion of social capital in shaping community life is particularly relevant for this discussion. As their research indicates, Community is often identified as the spatial expression of social interaction (notably developed by the Chicago School) and the way in which individuals can counteract the size and potential alienation of the city (Paddison 2001: 194). Social scientists since the 1960s have defined the concept of Community as slippery (Abercrombie et al. 1984: 44), elusive (Pahl 2005), soggy (Stacey 1969) and ideological (Urry 2000). As Stanley Cohen puts it: “‘Community’ is one of those words…bandied around in ordinary, everyday speech, apparently readily intelligible to speaker and listener, which…however, causes immense difficulty” (1985: 11). Many contemporary scholars are critical of accounts that limit the meaning of Community to a territory. Postmodern accounts are particularly critical of the concept of Community, suggesting it is a dangerous construct, the exclusionary nature of which is hidden behind a facade of inclusionary rhetoric (Paddison 2001: 202). Twinning Community (cohesion) and (geographic) space is a politically charged assumption, with the implication that a neighbourhood deemed to have no Community is defined as ‘in decline’ (Blokland 2003: 7). The ideology underpinning this view allocates blame to residents in those localities and justifies a policy approach based on the principle of self-help rather than structural inequality. Consequently, many current debates understand (global era) Community not in terms of geographic or physical proximity (usually defined in terms of a neighbourhood, for example Putnam 2001) but rather as a social construct beyond the boundaries of space and time, defined in terms of networks (Blokland 2003), flows or imagined communities (Anderson 1983/2006). While Talja Blokland argues that community is “always political – always intensely connected to power” (2017:

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7) she also stresses the importance of more thorough analyses; “to say that community was ‘imagined’ or ‘symbolic’ was not good enough” (2017: vii). Bourdieusian theory can be used to further develop the general sociological analysis of Community, emphasising its constructed meaning through language. Through a Bourdieusian lens, top-down constructions of Community can be analysed as manufacturing consensus in order to reproduce dominant interests. Seen in this way, constructions of Community within urban policy are a way of monopolising the definition of Community within the field. Dominant definitions of Community not only encourage consensus, but by discouraging conflict and resistance towards these definitions, they also reproduce asymmetry in positions of power and domination. Fran Tonkiss provides a critical account of traditional Community, and offers a theoretical antidote along Bourdieusian lines. Tonkiss points out that the problem with instrumentalising consensus (via Community rhetoric) is its means of social control: “[t]he impulse for community falls away on one side into pious vacuity or squeamish euphemism, is elsewhere engineered as an object of government, marked out as territory or used to police sameness” (2005: 28). While the concept of Community is commonly referenced in regeneration discourse, critical sociology – in particular Bourdieu’s framework – shows that Community must be understood not just as a “material, socio-spatial context for everyday living” (Wallace 2012: 2) but also a totalising construct and “normative tool by which to legitimise relationships and processes designed to meet political ends” (Paddison 2001: 195). The way in which Community is constructed and the language of Community is deployed by a range of agents will now be revealed within neighbourhood contexts in London and Berlin.

D iy U rbanism as ‘D ynamic C ommunit y ’ DIY or Do-It-Yourself urbanism typically refers to the renovation of ‘empty’ areas or buildings by non-professional urban actors. Although the goals of DIY urbanist projects differ, they typically appropriate urban space for common, rather than private use, and encourage participation of residents (Pagano 2013: 338). Consequently, DIY urbanism is often considered the expression of local community action. While these projects sometimes straddle the boundaries of legality, increasingly (especially

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post-recession) DIY urbanism is recognised by policy-makers as a sign of vibrant social capital, active citizenship and self-help in neighbourhoods: ultimately a cost-saving means to fill the gaps left by lack of state investment and market failure. James Holston talks about the “localism and strategic particularism” of “spaces of insurgent citizenship” (1998: 51), highlighting that new narratives of belonging and participating in society can be fostered within these heterogenous practices.

Winning & Losing the Game in London Stour Space Stour Space is a multi-functional venue located alongside the Lea Navigation canal in Fish Island, directly opposite the Olympic stadium (see figure 5.1). Opened in 2008, it houses over 40 artists’ studios, a large gallery space, and the popular Counter Café, which overlooks the Olympic stadium. Stour Space constitutes one portion of the previously disused industrial warehouse Vittoria Wharf, the remainder of which has been converted into live- work units. The Stour Space founders and staff pride themselves on being self-sustaining without public funding; the studios are subsidised by corporate and private hire. Emphasis is on creating a ‘hub for collaboration’: supporting innovative business, entrepreneurship and the development of creative enterprises. Its public role is sustained through a host of exhibitions, workshops and a market. Stour Space plays an interesting role within the process of Olympic-led regeneration because of the increasing attention on Hackney Wick Fish Island, particularly on artists and their role in developing the area bottom-up. Relevant in this context is that Vittoria Wharf has been registered as one of the UK’s first Assets of Community Value under the Localism Act 2011, giving weight to its local characterisation as a successful ‘dynamic community’. However, as this section will show, this legal framework has not secured the fate of Stour Space, highlighting the ambiguities of Community as lived in the neighbourhood context. This section demonstrates that the Stour Space founders and their collaborators possess the cultural capital and habitus to construct Community in a way that fits smoothly with official urban regeneration discourses, specifically in terms of Culture-led regeneration. However, Community as embodied by Stour Space in its micro-scale is still secondary to concepts of Community on a larger scale and in terms of the wider field of economics.

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Figure 5.1 Stour Space in Hackney Wick Fish Island, with Olympic stadium in the background. Photograph taken during Hackney WickED festival, July 2011

Stour Space is represented by its founders and managers as the manifestation of lived Community. Stour Space also fits into the conceptual mould of DIY Urbanism (Iveson 2013) having been co-founded by HWFI residents, who organised, funded and carried out the construction work themselves in a piecemeal process. The autonomy of Stour Space from professional planning processes means long-term, sustainable change in neighbourhoods. The founders’ lack of financial capital means that claim to space is made via discourse on Community: ‘community-led development’ is presented as leveraging neighbourhood strengths and making modest, incremental alterations over time in order to strengthen the fabric of the local community. As Kate Hill, manager of Stour Space, states, “I definitely think Stour is community… Most people who come here feel that they are walking into some kind of community, or part of the community, or that they can influence the community through Stour Space… We’re

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like the ambassador for the area” (interview 03.09.2013). This idea is supported by the promotion of Stour Space as a ‘public building’ that supports the ‘wellbeing of local people’ (hackneywick.co.uk). The organisation’s website suggests that “Stour Space has become a hive for local participation, business development, and niche recreation… Stour Space was once a disused, unsafe building, and through the intuition and motivation of the local community it has blossomed into a multi-functional venue, that can service a large variety of needs” (Stour Space 2014). This highlights the project-founders’ interest in representing the Stour Space identity as an inclusive cultural community in which ‘society profits’. A recurring representation is that Stour Space is not just providing a space for the artist residents in the area but also the whole host of other people living and working in the neighbourhood. “It’s probably the place where the arts community and the business community and the resident community can come and interact in an informal way” (Kate Hill, interview 03.09.2013). ‘Community’ in this sense seems to be conceptualised as a broad and open category, consciously framed to be as inclusive as possible. Leon Kennedy, who has worked with Stour since 2011 observes: It’s really interesting on Saturdays, people bring their mums. So you get all the people who live in warehouses who look a bit like hipsters, and you get all their mums with blue rinse. But that’s the kind of cross-community space that Stour is… It’s approachable and it breaks down barriers (interview 03.09.2013).

In this sense the language of Community represents the project as a kind of ‘experimental utopia’ (Lefebvre 1996: 151) in which HWFI residents have a stake – via Stour Space – in building the neighbourhood community in which they live. Because its founders reject the idea of speculative development and place value on cultural and social space, Stour Space is portrayed as opening an alternative possibility for urban development via informal and marginal practice. While the founders and managers of Stour Space lack economic capital, they are rich in social and cultural capital, evident in their competent team of managers. Stour Space is framed by its founders as grassroots DIY urbanism that has been conceptualised by amateurs. This representation does accurately reflect the informal beginnings of the project, however it obscures the fact that many of those now involved in the day-to-day running of Stour Space are highly educated professionals. Stour Space director Kate Hill defines herself as an ‘East End local’ having

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grown up in Stratford, but having previously worked as a Social Enterprise Consultant for 10 years, with work experience in Ethiopia, Germany and Canada, it becomes clear that the energy behind Stour Space’s current development is now streamlined, strategy-based and professionalised. This is not to say that the goals of local participation, nor vision of inclusive Community have diminished, it does however highlight that the project initiators are aware of their unique position within an Olympic-led urban regeneration framework (spatially under LLDC governance), and are fighting to make the most of their capital in order to benefit. The staff acknowledge that the project fits into the picture of Culture-led regeneration as conceived by formal planning agencies, with Stour Space therefore occupying a privileged position. Leon Kennedy explained: “our relationship as a cultural community is quite good with the LLDC, but I imagine it is a totally different ball game if you are Leabank Square [mainly social housing tenants] or a business owner” (interview 03.09.2013). Kate Hill reinforces this point: The amount of skills in this area are incredible. We have everything: architects, accountants, lawyers. We have what we need. We just need to allow them to do what they can do. And we’ve seen that happen in Stour, things happen fast. We created a shop in a week. If we could just multiply that ethos… (interview 03.09.2013)

She highlights that the project was born from individual actors being motivated, vocal and opportunity oriented, acting fast and fighting on the principles of self-help: We wanted to register for some things [with the council, but] we didn’t exist on the council maps, so we had to fight to be acknowledged. [We said to ourselves] We are here, we do want to pay our rent, or taxes or whatever it is. We learnt early on that we need to raise our voice and say that we’re around rather than wait for people to come to us… And I’ve learnt a lot… It’s the first time where I realised that you can go to a meeting and actually be who you are, and still have a voice. That is fascinating and surprising. I always thought that tension meant you would lose favour. But I’ve now seen that creating tension…can actually make you earn you earn more respect (interview 03.09.2013).

This reveals that the Stour Space team increasingly realised that they possess social capital that can be translated into skilful moves within

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the game of urban regeneration. Stour Spaces’ persistence and outward expression of ‘dynamism’ was crucial for establishing dialogue with the LLDC, local authorities and developers, and more fundamentally, contributed to the survival of the project. Framing themselves as an ‘incubator for start-ups’ demonstrates that the project initiators used the ‘creative class’ ideology of Richard Florida, the language of fostering new Community as favoured by planning professionals. While Stour Space do not draw boundaries between themselves and other neighbourhood groups, communicating their ideals through a language akin to Florida has the potential to lapse into a rhetoric of Stour Space as deserving and those without the will to mobilise and help themselves as undeserving. The formal registration of Stour Space as an Asset of Community Value might be read as a clear sign that this experimental, inclusive and socially-orientated notion of Community has been integrated into formal planning. The label Asset of Community Value allows smaller organisations to compete with larger companies on the open market by providing additional time to raise funds, make a deposit and create a business plan (Localism Act 2011). In theory, this new legislative mechanism provides an alternative to the traditional process of development where the highest commercial bidder buys and develops land, and should provide the ground for DIY urbanism – in this case Stour Space – to thrive. This means that the private landlord of Vittoria Wharf, is obliged to take into account the existing community residing in the buildings. However, the neighbourhood dynamics are more complicated than the Localism Act envisages, ultimately throwing into question the value of DIY urbanism as a legitimate part of official regeneration strategy. This is best illustrated through the messy politics of Community, as demonstrated by the red line that now runs through Vittoria Wharf. In the summer of 2012 the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) compulsory purchased a large portion of Vittoria Wharf. The long-term plan is to demolish this section of the building in order for developers to construct a pedestrian bridge over the Lea Navigation canal in 2020. The bridge is a formal planning requirement that would connect the new ‘legacy community’ of Sweetwater (still in planning phase) to the existing Olympic Fringe neighbourhood of HWFI. However, the location of the planned bridge overlaps with Vittoria Wharf, so that almost half of the Vittoria Wharf structures would have to be demolished in its construction. Currently a legislative line divides the section of Vittoria Wharf owned by the LDA (now LLDC)

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and the remaining section still owned by private landowner Palmlane Estate. The result is a strange spatial set-up in which this imaginary dividing line separates the Wharf into two halves: one half set for demolition, the other put up for sale by its private landlord. Concretely this means that in one unit at Vittoria Wharf half of the residents now pay their rent to the LLDC, while their flatmates continue paying rent to their private landlord. The division has been marked by a red line drawn onto the floor by the disgruntled residents as a way to highlight both the banality and gravity of the developer’s power to ‘divide and conquer’ the residents. The visualisation of the red line (see the graphic in the event flyer below, figure 5.2) was part of some residents’ challenge to the planning process, in which public discussions were organised to debate and question the regeneration process. Concretely, this involved talking about the future of Vittoria Wharf residents with invited experts during two so-called ‘Wick Sessions’: firstly at the event Hackney Wick and the New Localism (19.04.2013), and then Co-Producing the Makeshift (11.07.2014). The Wick Sessions suggest that community feeling was strengthened in the round of discussions that emerged as a result of the CPO, or even that the threat of displacement itself spurred the residents to consider themselves ‘a community’. This highlights the ambiguous relationship between regeneration processes and definitions of Community – both top-down and bottom-up. Figure 5.2 Event flyer for discussing the future of Vittoria Wharf. (Affordable Wick 2014)

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If we consider the bizarre red line divide of Vittoria Wharf and the effect it would have displacing half of the existing, self-defined ‘live-work community’, then the Olympic planners’ idea of “nourishing what is there” and “supporting existing communities” falls flat. Opportunity for a community to govern itself – actively promoted in the Localism Act – is revealed as a far more complex issue than presented in legislation. While the listing of Stour Space as a Community Asset appears to be a step towards the ability of the community to self-govern, questions remain as to whether this label really does secure their tenure. Given increasing land values, it is unclear whether the existing community can continue to exist in the neighbourhood. The planned bridge at Vittoria Wharf highlights that the understanding and definition of Community as new residents – an economised definition that equates Community with capital investment – trumps the definition of Community as existing social groups. However, my analysis of the empirical data also points out that ‘Olympic planners’ should be understood as a heterogenous group. Individual planners may be sensitive and attuned to local needs, meaning that Community is largely economised within the upper echelons of state planning, inscribed within the logic of state orthodoxy. This is reinforced by Leon Kennedy, who suggests that existing social structures are taken seriously by the LLDC, but individual planners are constrained by what they must ‘deliver’: They want to deliver flats that have return on their investment so that they can make the money and pay them off, which is going to push the price up for everyone else, because they have to… I think there is an awareness that it’s a real challenge to try and maintain affordable spaces in Hackney Wick. They are aware of that, but I don’t know if there’s an answer to that, or whether they’ll achieve that. They’re not ignoring it, they’re aware it’s an issue. I don’t know if there even is an answer, but they are certainly trying to be helpful (interview 03.09.2013).

This highlights a crucial point, namely that small-scale grassroots development and state-led LLDC development operate with divergent agendas. DIY development as carried out by Stour Space is only valued by the state when it fills a gap left by market failures, because empty buildings are a sign of urban decline and flight of local capital (Deslandes 2013: 217). In other words, Community, as produced by DIY urbanism, seems to be useful within formal regeneration schemes when it complements the neoliberal

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logic of growth-orientated development (for example, New Economy tech start-ups), or enhances the (consumer) experience of large-scale, top-down development schemes. In this peripheral role, DIY urbanism is a productive occupation of space, not only growing the long-term economic value of neighbourhood space but also producing social value in terms of fostering social relations. This analysis indicates that the language of Community plays an ambiguous role within the dynamics of the regeneration game, with the contradictions evident when comparing what appears to be Community-orientated legislation (such as the Localism Act 2011) with experiences of policy in the neighbourhood context. While Stour Space founders and staff use their cultural and social capital to benefit (at least in theory) from the Olympic-led regeneration processes, the next section provides an interesting comparison, telling the story of a residential group that did not succeed in constructing Community in a way that aligned with a narrative of ‘dynamic community’. Clays Lane, a residential estate, differs from Stour Space because it no longer exists. The estate was once located at the heart of the proposed London 2012 Olympic site, described as an “experiment in building closeknit communities” (Bishopsgate Institute 2013). Officially, it was the Clays Lane Peabody Estate (formerly Clays Lane Housing Co-operative), once the UK’s largest purpose-built housing estate, constructed in the Borough of Newham in 1977 for vulnerable single people2 . Reflecting this ethos of mutual support was its motto “A community – not just a housing estate”. Founded jointly by Newham Council Housing Cooperation and University of East London (formerly Polytechnic of East London), the estate comprised 57 shared houses (in which four, six or ten people lived), and 40 self-contained bungalow flats. However, rather than being labelled as productive or dynamic, this group of residents was represented by Olympic officials as a dysfunctional community and on these grounds was displaced from what is now the Olympic site. The story of Clays Lane shows how conflicting definitions of Community, specifically the language of ‘failing community’, was used to justify the demolition in the case of Clays Lane. This directly resulted in this group of marginalised people, lacking

2 | As George Yates explained (interview 26.08.2011), ‘vulnerable people’ on the estate included those who were socially vulnerable (such as discharged prisoners) or medically vulnerable (such as those who had chronic physical illness).

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the relevant forms of capital and the habitus, being displaced from the game. Clays Lane was set in semi-wild green space neighbouring a gypsy-traveller site and Park Village, the two UEL student-residence towers (demolished in 2005). In total there were between 420-500 people living on Clays Lane estate; all contractual tenants who were members of the co-operative, a high percentage of whom were black or from various ethnic minorities. The idea of the co-op was to help integrate the marginalised residents back into social life, with its courtyard system encouraging social interaction and mutual support between residents. Social relationships were fostered through self-governance within the co-operative system. After the estate was subject to a Compulsory Purchase Order by the LDA in 2006, it closed in July 2007 (see figure 5.3) and was demolished in September 2007. Scrutinising the years leading up to the residents’ eviction and their subsequent relocation provides a valuable insight into the power of language within the game. The difference between London 2012 planners’ conception of Community and how Community was lived and experienced by the residents provides an insight into the dynamics and power relations of urban regeneration. Figure 5.3 Clays Lane Estate prior to demolition, June 2007. (Source: Mike Seaborne, Museum of London Archive)

London 2012 planning professionals regarded Clays Lanes Estate as a socially and economically dysfunctional community, backed up by the findings and conclusions of the Audit Commission’s Inspection Report in 2005. The report stated: “We have assessed Clays Lane Housing Co-operative as providing a ‘poor, no-star’ service that has poor prospects for

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improvement” (Audit Commission 2005: 5). When the Compulsory Purchase Order of Clays Lane Estate was decreed in 2006 (the first step towards the demolition of the estate), many residents took up the offer of relocation without further negotiation. This seemingly confirmed the Audit Commission’s assessment that Community in Clays Lane was fleeting, or even non-existent. However, when considering the political ideals on which the estate was conceived (the cooperative model), combined with the perspectives of some long-term residents, another image of the estate emerges that challenges notions it was a ‘failing community’ and therefore dispensable within the regeneration game. The views of two former Clays Lane residents juxtapose the formal Olympic planners’ perspective. Long-time resident Clive Jones, aged 63 (at time of interview), was resident in Clays Lane for 16 years. He could be described as an organic intellectual owing to his autodidactic skills – evidenced in his central role within the Clays Lane Former Tenants Association. Jones was not only committed to fighting the CPO on a full-time basis but also campaigned for increased compensation for residents’ relocation and represented the estate’s residents at various public meetings. His dedication to challenge the authorities continued after the estates’ demolition, as he channelled his research towards a general anti-Olympic stance through involvement in the Games Monitor website. Having spent many years opposing the Clays Lane demolition he states, “I devoted my life to this” (interview 11.08.2011). When asked whether he considered Clays Lane a community, Jones states: “[the Olympic authorities] had community and they demolished it… [T]hey say that they’re sad, but that’s the price of progress”. When probed further, Jones’ views on the politics of the language of Community are strikingly similar to Bourdieu’s ideas: I think that when these programmes [like the Olympics] are put forward, they always have the kind of publicity blurb… And this thing about ‘supporting sustainable communities’: What does it exactly mean? What is a community? What does it mean to sustain them? I think it’s just language which they feel obliged to use… And I think in the same way with ‘sustaining communities’, exactly what this means and how it’s used. It actually ends up being used in ways which may have exactly the opposite impact. Essentially it is planning language about mixed developments, that’s what it comes down to. That’s [their definition of] ‘a community’ and we don’t conform to that because we were a single type community, we were not a mixed development, we didn’t have families. The idea now is that a development

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has to have a mixture of types, families, young people, single people, etc, living in a place, to give it whatever it is… We were a fantastic community in the sense of getting together, mixing and all the rest of it, but that didn’t count in their definition, but even then I just think it’s a meaningless concept ‘sustaining communities’ because it’s entirely a planning-economic definition (Clive Jones, interview 11.08.2011).

Interestingly, Jones’ account of Clays Lane does not idealise Community in defence of the co-op as one might expect. He is frank in admitting that the estate was not an especially inviting place, a surprising admission in the context of defending its existence. As Jones describes it, the estate stood at the top of a hill, was fairly run-down, surrounded by cars and rubbish; an industrial estate was located further down on the same road. This view of bleak and unwelcoming surroundings is confirmed by George Yates, another Clays resident, who describes his first experience of the estate: I walked [into Clays Lane Estate] and the gypsies was burning off cable in their paladin bins, and the community centre in Clays Lane was bathed in smoke. And I thought to myself, here are all these sort of small Rottweiler dogs breathing through the smoke and sort of feral children. I thought this really looks like downtown Beirut, so that was my first impressions of going there. That was 1991 (George Yates, interview 26.08.2011).

According to Jones, residents did not make the best use of the facilities, especially the community centre, which he describes as “under-used”, a laundry room that became defunct as people increasingly bought their own washing machines, and a small shop that could not support itself. George Yates also highlights that the co-op committee was fraught with disagreements. Yates himself was taken to court by another committee member after an unsuccessful coup: “I used to call it ‘co-op wars’, you know, going to the committee meetings. Lots of people withdrew from them because they were very combative meetings… A system of perpetual revolution” (interview 26.08.2011). Nevertheless, both George Yates and Clive Jones describe their attachment to the estate. George Yates explained that, “On Clays Lane, there was a complete social context within to live, and the availability of that, I thought was a godsend”. Yates explicitly describes Clays Lane as a community, referring to the sense of loss he

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felt when moving out of the estate and the value he placed on the social relationships fostered there: The real reason that I think it’s a tragedy [the closure of Clays Lane] is an emotional one. Because on the day before I left Clays Lane I was living in a community of around 450 people of which I probably knew a third of them by name, and certainly could recognise all of them, or at least most of them, but definitely there were 30 or 40 people who I’d recognise fairly well. The next day I’m living on my own in a purpose-built bedsit… And so for a few weeks I felt really that I’d been robbed of, well, 400 people (George Yates, interview 26.08.2011).

Clive Jones’ definition of the Clays Lane community rests almost entirely on the close- knit social relations between residents and a sense of mutual support and everyday reliance on neighbours. Jones juxtaposes his reading with the legal definition of Community as proposed by a London Borough of Hackney councillor, explaining how their views diverge: I think community is a very difficult concept… If you have a community, does it need to be sup- ported? In a sense the whole idea of community is that it is self-sustaining. What the [Clays Lane] community consisted of was people going to each other’s houses and talking to another and helping one another if they needed to get to the shops or whatever. That was actually what made the com- munity work. The bits which in a sense were add-on, often didn’t work, were the administration and the maintenance… In our case, we were specifically told ‘you are not a community’. Gaskell [LBH councillor] actually said “you’re not a community. The travellers are a community, because they have legal status, you don’t have that legal status”. Even though we were an incredibly diverse community, I counted 40 different nationalities amongst people I knew, there were probably more. But no, [they suggested] we weren’t a community, just a collection of individuals who would be dispersed (Clive Jones interview 11.08.2011).

One of the most striking points mentioned here is Jones’ suggestion that local authority employee Andrew Gaskell defined Community purely by legal status, as a means to justify the Clays Lane evictions. While Jones’ statement should be analysed within the context of a long-standing political battle charged with high emotions and Gaskell’s perspective should not be analysed as representative of all other councillors, the suggestion that Community could be understood in such a reductive way is

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important. Community in this sense is failing if it cannot display inner cohesion or prove its legal status. Yet, when Clays Lane residents were initially approached by the LDA about possible relocation in 2003, Fluid Architects conducted a survey (in August 2004). One of the aims of the survey was to discern whether there were residents who would like to move “as a community”. The Fluid Survey shares some of the Audit Commissions concerns about the Estate, highlighting that personal security, sharing space and anti-social behaviour contributed to ‘existing issues’. The estate suffered under mismanagement and a dysfunctional complaints procedure. However, the Fluid Survey also emphasises the unique character of Clays Lane, which is largely overlooked and disregarded by Olympic authorities: What emerges very strongly from the consultation process, both from the Residents Survey findings, and from the experience of the Fluid team working intensively on the ground for many, is the unique character of Clays Lane. This is of particular importance because many of its qualities are greatly cherished by residents, but will not be easily replicated elsewhere (Fluid Survey 2005: 51).

Despite the existing issues and conflict between residents in the estate – divided opinions on the Olympics, Olympic-led development and subsequent need for relocation – this residential community provided 500 marginalised people with homes at a rate lower than market value, and, crucially, a housing structure that encouraged mutual support through its design. In the Fluid survey (2005: 26), two important questions stand out. When asked why they moved to Clays Lane, 125 (57%) of the 296 respondents specified that they lived in Clays Lane due to “housing need”, which commonly refers to homelessness. When asked what the pros and cons of being part of the co-operative were, the most common ‘pros’ were related to the social life on the estate: “community spirit/sense of community” (169 from a total of 294 responses) (Fluid 2005: 28). The survey responses suggest that residents felt that Clays Lane Estate provided some form of Community. While discourse on the London 2012 legacy centred on sustaining Community, the type of Community at Clays Lane was not legitimate or valuable in the eyes of Olympic authorities. The dispersal of the Clays Lane residents after the demolition was a complex and drawn-out procedure, including attempts to organise a joint move, initially for 30 residents, later seven. During the Olympic Games, the site where Clays

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Lane once stood housed the Athletes Village, which has since been refitted as residential accommodation and “creating a real mixed community” (East Village London 2014: 2). The dispersal of the co-op residents, which marked the end of a communal social housing experiment, can be analysed as the demolition of an economically unstable social institution (which would have required vast investment) to make space for residential units that will ultimately create profit – exemplifying the privatisation of space within neoliberal growth agendas. Clays Lane, while not representing an outwardly cohesive and conflict-free community, ticks all the boxes for an ‘existing community’ worthy of support: local, diverse, and fulfilling a crucial role in providing social housing. The fact that the estate put into practice experimental communal living, albeit with tensions and failures, made it a unique housing initiative in London, and even Europe. Ash Amin asks: “why expect so much from community in such places?” (2004: 8), and this question is valuable when considering the case of Clays Lane. The way that the Clays Lane community was described as failing indicates a process of pathologising its residents, and suggests a reading of the space that overlooks the social bonds between people, focusing instead on economic viability and aesthetic qualities. The story of Clays Lane Estate demonstrates the messy and complicated nature of Community in its breadth. The residents of Clays Lane did not constitute a cohesive or homogenous group, nor did they form a consensus regarding their relocation, compensation, nor their attachment to place. However, this residential enclave did represent a functioning residential community in the sense that single people relying on state support were able to live independently, with the help of support networks that were largely constructed through the architectural form of courtyards and shared flats. Everyday communal living meant those with health problems could be supported by their neighbours. The Fluid Survey highlights the unique relationship between the space and people in Clays Lane, which the report describes “will not be easily replicated elsewhere” (2005: 51). The analysis suggests that Clays Lane residents – denied the label of Community by authorities – stood in the way of the neoliberal logic of Olympic-led regeneration, and consequently became losers in the regeneration game. After its demolition, the community of Clays Lane was represented, and in a sense revived, in the Supplement Gallery in East London (see figure 5.4). The Clays Lane Live Archive and event-series took place in August 2012, the culmination of four years of research by artist Adelita

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Husni-Bey. As a point of comparison, the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in central London hosted the Hackney Wick Takeover in February 2014, opening up the “DIY occupation of the area” to a wider public (Victoria and Albert Museum 2018). Both events were participative in the sense that the Clays Lane Archive was a long-term collaboration between the artist and former residents, and for the V&A Takeover current practitioners were invited to curate the museum space with their own projects. Comparing these two representations of Community affected by London 2012 is a way of showing how Community is imagined, defined and constructed via cultural institutions, within a web of discourse and power. The two events unravel the inherent hierarchies in which Community is defined, and the disparity between for whom and for what purpose these art spaces are making representations. Figure 5.4 Clays Lane Archive, Supplement Gallery, August 2012

The aim of the Clays Lane Live Archive was not just to map the everyday history of the estate with ex-residents but also to chart the process of its demolition ahead of the London 2012 games. Husni-Bey collected photos, documents, videos and artwork from ex-residents, emphasising that the collection and collation of material was a form of dissent against the

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formal narratives of London 2012 regeneration. The Archive includes former resident Clive Jones’ detailed documentation of the challenge against the CPO and George Yates’ meticulous mapping of the Clays Lane: “I surveyed the estate horizontally with a tape measure and vertically by counting bricks” (interview 26.08.2011). As Husni-Bey states on the Supplement Gallery website: “seen together as part of the Clays Lane Archive these examples constitute acts of resistance which still have relevance as the claims of the Games’ Legacy await to be proven” (Supplement Gallery 2012). The production of these personal stories as counter knowledge to the official London 2012 narrative was the defining feature of the exhibition, confirmed by the fact that the Archive is now housed at the Bishopsgate Institute, renowned for its focus on radical East London histories, social struggle and alternative lifestyles. The Archive is defined as ‘live’ by Husni-Bey to reflect its participatory nature; it has the scope to expand to accommodate new material donated to the Bishopsgate from ex-residents. The Hackney Wick Takeover at the V&A provides an interesting comparison. The Takeover was part of a monthly programme of Late Night sessions, sponsored by MasterCard, in which “creative communities” are invited to curate the museum for one evening – for the third event in the series, artists and designers from Hackney Wick Fish Island curated the museum with workshops, installations and films. The organisers frame the objective of the event in terms of opening up discourse: “the V&A raises questions about the impact locality and creativity has on community... The Hackney Wick Takeover will present a snapshot of the unique cultural scene in the area while also highlighting issues faced by the creative community” (Victoria and Albert Museum 2018). This indicates that the event intended to stir debate, perhaps question the role of artists and ‘creatives’ in gentrification processes and ask questions of representation. Many of those taking part explicitly played with the notion of Hackney Wick as an exportable good, a brand that can be showcased in a sanitised museum space. One of the groups involved was the interdisciplinary Foxtrot Collective who created a souvenir shop, selling key rings and postcards. This was intended as a parody of Hackney Wick as an artistic hub, questioning what influence the now well-worn clichés of Hackney Wick as ‘vibrant’ and ‘arty’ are having on both urban cultures and urban transformations. While the V&A did not shy away from some political questions surrounding urban development, questions remain as to the agenda of the museum, as well as those taking part. I attended several Cultural Interest Group meetings

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in Hackney Wick before the V&A event, in which various questions were raised by concerned residents concerning the V&A Takeover. Residents’ qualms included the decision process leading to projects being accepted or rejected: some felt the V&A were honing in on the ‘stars’ of Hackney Wick, while others feared that the neighbourhood and ‘creative community’ were being branded and packaged as a tourist destination. The fact that there was a ‘community take-back’ event in Hackney Wick following the V&A ‘takeover’ indicates that there was some unease at this kind of museum representation amongst the participants and non-participants, and a desire to present the everyday cultures outside the institutionalised walls of the prestigious art museum. In both the Clays Lane Archive and V&A Takeover curators made choices about which material was included and excluded and how exactly to present it. However, the explicit aim of the Live Archive was to give voice to, and collaborate with, an under-presented community who had been displaced, allowing the archive to grow with time. The V&A Takeover – despite allowing practitioners to appropriate the museum for one evening – fundamentally exhibited a small selection of the “creative community” in a high-culture institution. This left some residents feeling that the representation of Hackney Wick masked the neighbourhood’s diversity. My analysis of the V&A Takeover indicates how a narrow reading of what constitutes a ‘dynamic community’ is produced and reproduced by cultural institutions, with the effect that the winners keep winning and losers keep losing. The two exhibitions show the disparity between representations of the dynamic “creative community” in the V&A, and the displaced and dissenting voices of Clays Lane Estate, exhibited with the political agenda of re-establishing collective memory and concretising a dynamic social group, which was denied official recognition as a community. While formal Culture-led regeneration schemes have arguably paved the way for policy to value broader definitions of Community, especially since the 2011 Localism Act (to include for example, DIY urbanism), it seems that political discourse still largely conceptualises Community through economic parameters. The discussion of Stour Space and Clays Lane suggests that normative ideas on social capital and a rhetoric of selfhelp are still seen as markers of social dynamism – with groups that fail to play with and manipulate the language of politically-instrumental Community, losing out in the game of regeneration. Clays Lane Estate resi-

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dents, many of whom were amongst the most vulnerable people in society and lacking the habitus or capital to game-play, were unable to make the demands required to present themselves as a flourishing, cohesive and outward-looking community – essential within the wider logic of neoliberal development. The case study of Holzmarkt will be discussed next, showing that the dynamics in Berlin follow a similar course.

Integrating the Alternative in Berlin Holzmarkt (timber market), a development project located on the bank of the River Spree, provides an interesting comparison to Stour Space in London. Holzmarkt and Stour Space are similar not only in their self-presentation as ‘creative communities’ producing DIY urbanism from below, but also in their attempt to span the tension between economic success (through professional business structure) and socially-minded development and ‘sustainability’. The Holzmarkt site is currently under construction and over the next few years a series of new developments including a hotel, restaurant, theatre and club will be built through a cooperative model. The Holzmarkt development can broadly be divided into two components. Mörchenpark is a public space and garden project, which will sit alongside the Eckwerk, a dense construction (up to 12 storeys high) of student housing, urban agriculture and commercial use, “a space for those who ask smart questions and find the right answers” (Holzmarkt 2013). Unraveling the dynamics of urban regeneration through constructions of Community within the Holzmarkt development provides a valuable insight into the dynamics of the regeneration game in Berlin and insights into convergence between London and Berlin. My analysis of the Holzmarkt case shows the extent to which the language of Community is stretched and re-framed (at the grassroots level), in order to develop strategic planning goals. The Holzmarkt team position their development explicitly against the formal regeneration scheme Mediaspree, drawing on Community rhetoric to make the distinction clear. The Holzmarkt concept is framed as a viable alternative to the Mediaspree concept. The message is that the Mediaspree development plans had no space for fostering Community, whereas building a community lies at the heart of the Holzmarkt concept, communicated with the ‘village’ at the centre of the development:

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The major investors [sic] project “Media Spree” with its dense, lifeless business development was rejected by the population in a referendum. Their goal [of the referendum] was: “Spree riverbank for all.” The Holzmarkt takes this decision seriously. Under this name, a new village will now be built, which is organized as a cooperative and where the community interest counts (The Eckwerk, n.d.: 28, bold in original).

The history of the project is crucial in understanding why the initiators have emphasised transparency and the language of Community. The current Holzmarkt site (and project in a wider sense) evolved from Bar25, a world-famous nightclub that operated between 2004 and 2010. Bar25 began as a mobile bar in 2003, settling illegally on the banks of the River Spree, on Holzmarktstrasse, in 2004. It began as a small and informal project on what was then a stretch of ‘wasteland’, part of the informal economy of the post re-unification techno scene. Given this history, Bar25 is typically imagined as an organically grown community and ultimate example of DIY urbanism. It was constructed illegally on a site owned by the state-company Berlin Municipal Refuse Collection (Berliner Stadtreinigungsbetriebe, BSR). Despite increasing popularity over the years (and with a notoriously harsh door policy) the nightclub maintained its wild and ad hoc image with wooden self-built structures. By 2010 the site housed much more than the initial club, including a restaurant and cabins where the founding members lived. The initiators describe the Bar25 project as follows: “In its entirety it embodied a kind of a Berlin Neverland: an autonomous magic kingdom with its own radio station, restaurant, spa area, outdoor cinema and circus tent with concert stage” (Bar25 co-initiator Steffi-Lotta, Holzmarkt 2013: 2). Given its illegal status and therefore precarious nature, the Bar25 group were evicted from the site seven years later, in September 2010, in preparation for the sale of the BSR land and development of the site for office blocks, as part of the Mediaspree plans. However, as a result of the protest against the Mediaspree scheme in 2008 the site was not sold and the Berlin Senate looked for a new developer to invest and build on the site. In 2012 a new tender was opened for the sale of the waterfront BSR land, but this time Bar25 initiators were formal contenders in the procedure. The irony of the situation was clear: Bar25 were tendering for the purchase and development of the Holzmarkt site they had been evicted from only a few years earlier. The intervening years – between their

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eviction and standing as formal contenders in the tender – are crucial, indicating that this was a period where the Bar25 team amassed and transformed their capital and planned strategically. After the eviction from the original site in 2010, the Bar25 initiators opened a new club, KaterHolzig, in a former soap factory located directly opposite the former Bar25 site. It housed a restaurant on the top floor, as well as artists’ studios and offices. From this new site, the team worked on launching a campaign to buy and develop the site where their former Bar25 once stood. In its 2012 tender, the group proposed a multi-million-euro development scheme with financial backing from Stiftung Abendrot, a socially sustainable Swiss pension fund. They were the highest bidders and in October 2012 won the tender to buy and develop the site. As developers the former Bar25 initiators are now regarded as legitimate actors in Berlin planning. Although Bar25 began as an archetypal temporary project, product of Berlin’s post-reunification techno subculture, its evolution provides a lens through which to follow political planning manoeuvres. The way in which Bar25 (illegal and temporary nightclub initiators) evolved into Holzmarkt e.V. (developers) illustrates professionalisation in which constructions of Community played a vital role: the language of Community was not only a survival strategy but also a means of launching the Holzmarkt project as commercially viable. The Holzmarkt team conceptualise Community in legal terms, through the co-operative model (Genossenschaftsmodel) whereby members pay the entry sum of 25,000€ (plus 5% fee). Legal matters are organised through the Co-operative for Urban Creativity (Genossenschaft für Urbane Kreativität, GuK). Similar to the principle of the Clays Lane Cooperative, each cooperative member is eligible for one vote in the general assembly to make joint decisions. This legal framework provides the Holzmarkt project with a concrete vision of making Community through two distinct levels: the democratic decision-making within the scheme, and ‘city making’ on a wider Berlin scale. However, the high entrance sum of 25,000€ makes the project more exclusive than the project organisers seem to imply. Holzmarkt present their development scheme as an experimental community promoting openness and transparency. This social orientation is especially stark when contrasted with the former Mediaspree development plans outlined in the land-use document (Flächennutzungsplan Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg). The historical context plays an important role

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here. A common critique of Bar25 was that despite its subcultural, temporary and inclusive aesthetic, the club essentially privatised state-owned space (BSR land), which reinforced boundaries and excluded people from the riverbank. Clubbers not only had to get past the bouncer to gain access to the riverbank (the strict door policy at Bar25 was notorious), but also had to pay for the privilege. This explains why it was especially important for Holzmarkt to base their development plans on an open notion of Community that would extend beyond the privileged ‘creative’ few. Given this context, it is especially relevant that the Holzmarkt brochure states that the development is “about fairness, transparency, participation and control, to strike a balance between creativity and capital” (The Eckwerk n.d: 44). Explicit reference made to “community interests” (The Eckwerk n.d: 28) show this new commitment to inclusion. Consequently, on the Holzmarkt website, Community is communicated through the notion of togetherness, particularly in reference to the divided history of Berlin: “Where the scar between East and West is still visible, a vibrant urban quarter is to be created that connects Friedrichshain, Kreuzberg and Mitte. No wall, no fence will block the view on the Spree. The Holzmarkt will attract people from Berlin and the world, delight, inspire and bring them together” (Holzmarkt 2015). The fact that the site was open during weekends, before the construction work began, is testament to the commitment to the idea of transparency and participation. These ‘open days’ had a festival atmosphere, including live music and food stalls, but also information boards explaining the development plans and space where people could plant flowers and children could play – in the spirit of Community that Mörchenpark wants to create (see figure 5.5).

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Figure 5.5 Holzmarkt site, June 2018

The idea of a village as the cornerstone of the new development highlights that a rhetoric of Community is the way to ensure the regeneration of this space holds communal value. Paula Wenzel, a Holzmarkt employee and board member of GuK, explained: “The Village. That is what we see as the centre of the community and the heart of the project” (interview 03.07.2012). This is also reflected in the Holzmarkt Brochure, which uses ‘The Village’ to promote the idea of building community spirit and collective resources: “Village: A constantly changing place with sparkling creative energy. In the alleys, artists and musicians are working in their studios next to bakers, barbers, natural food stores, merchants and craftsmen. The market place is a gathering point for the neighborhood” (Holzmarkt 2013: 9). The village is linked to the idea of creating a space where citizen and city can interact in a novel way, as Paula Wenzel explained: We want to create something where everyone can profit, be that culturally, socially, or in a certain sense monetary, of course…[we want to promote] communal wellbeing. I wouldn’t call it idealism, but you need to look at the relationship between a citizen and his/her surrounding environment. That is established through

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feelings of ‘home’. If the person can actively participate in the process and can grow his/her vegetables there, then that is a very different relationship to the home… It plays a huge role in the whole urban development, for the whole city of Berlin. Berlin doesn’t have money, but it does have space. If the people are able to make their own homes, in these spaces, then very different relationships between citizen and city will follow (interview 03.07.2012).

This kind of ‘community building’ is presented as a solution to the lack of Community in the area. The Holzmarkt team construct a narrative of a site that previously had little social value, but which Bar25 and now the Holzmarkt project will fill with possibilities for interaction and collaboration: It was a kiez-less area where the Bar 25 used to be. If you look at that area, there’s Radialsystem [cultural venue] and the Berlin Water Works, but other than those, nothing is happening there, and then there’s a petrol station on the opposite side. When the Bar[25] was still there, there were lots of small shops on the street, and the petrol station made profits like never before! (Paula Wenzel, interview 03.07.2012)

Wenze presents Bar25 as the lynchpin for interactions, entrepreneurial spirit and informal urban developments from below. She suggests Bar25 was adding value, creating communal and inclusive public space, all of which will return once the Holzmarkt project is realised. The Holzmarkt team promote themselves as the alternative, Community-orientated voice to the otherwise commercially-driven urban development agenda in Berlin. However, on closer inspection, the Holzmarkt narratives of ‘building community’ follow a normative development agenda, especially when considering the notion of ‘the village’. This is most obvious when asking who exactly is seen as constituting the future community. The Holzmarkt brochure outlines that the development will cater for students (student housing), artists (studios) and new-media professionals (offices for start-ups): “In the Eckwerk we want to bring together the most prolific and inspiring forces. Students, founders, artists, researchers, entrepreneurs, programmers and craftspeople – from the city, from the country side, from all around the world” (The Eckwerk n.d, bold in original). However, as there is little mention of anyone else, for example individuals who may not be typically defined as “prolific or inspiring”, this suggests

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that the vision of Community as defined by Holzmarkt is relatively narrow and exclusive: a population of young, mobile ‘creatives’ who fit neatly into the creative city paradigm. While the tagline of the anti-Mediaspree protesters – “Spree River for Everyone” – has supposedly been adopted by the Holzmarkt project as a sign of allegiance with the protesters, when considering the development plan this has also been interpreted rather loosely. The Holzmarkt development plans show that the Spree River will be free for “everyone” with enough money to afford the restaurant or hotel, and ‘alternative’ enough to gain entry to the club. Johannes Seifert, founder of the initiative Stadt Neudenken, is critical of the Holzmarkt intentions on these grounds: “Bar25 is highly commercial. They’ve opened a Bar25 luxury resort in Mexico. There is a huge amount of entrepreneurship here. They’re entrepreneurs, but in the political realm, because they defend specific interests, perhaps without knowing it” (interview 09.05.2012). The commercial underpinnings of the Holzmarkt concept have provoked media critique (Meinhold 2013) as well as disapproval from actors involved in anti-Mediaspree actions. The common charge is that Holzmarkt represents avid capitalism, specifically gentrification in disguise. Some members of the initiative Mediaspree Versenken do not see the Bar25 team as pursuing community ideals. One member of Mediaspree Versenken questioned the inclusive nature of the project, citing the 24-hour crèche that allows ‘clubbing’ parents to off-set their children while they party (or as Meinhold 2013 puts it, “so the parents can go and coke their brains out”), and the presumed ‘friends of friends’ system for accessing studio space: In their concept, I don’t really see urban development for the citizens. I don’t really see how there can be much participation. Of course, they’re following their own interests. They want to realise their own project there, I don’t really see a fruitful relationship developing with them… I can’t really see the real benefit for citizens within their urban development plan (Andreas Kühne, interview 11.07.2012).

Other critics have similar qualms. Karina Meyer, speaker in the Berlin House of Representatives (Bündnis90/Die Grünen) cites the exclusive ‘face control’ of the former Bar25, stating her ambiguous view of the Holzmarkt project, similarly on the grounds that it serves ‘the public’ less than its own (economic) agenda:

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Of course it’s better to say let’s give [the land] to people who are trying to establish local structures. But the project as it is conceived now is also ambivalent. The creators of Bar25, Katerholzig & co., have created their own building consortium, plus their economic pillar with the bar. And there’s a little bit of public use on the side, with Mörchenpark. I’m not heart and soul for it…however, as the Borough and under Sven Keller [mayor], we support the Holzmarkt in the changing of the B-Plan (interview 28.06.2012).

Given that the Holzmarkt development plans conceive of facilities and institutions geared towards profit, the language of Community seems to serve the purpose of obscuring dense construction and the entrepeneurial orientation of the project. Hartmut Krause, an urban planner and researcher, explains: “It’s a vision, not of ‘city’ but of what they want to offer, and what they are actually creating. It’s very idealistic. But in order to make this idealism possible, one has to be able to invest classically. And that’s fascinating” (interview 10.12.2013). The imagery produced by the Holzmarkt team reinforces this point. The technical details of the Eckwerk are rendered fairly vaguely in CGI images, masking the scale and density of the development, which would otherwise reveal vast financial investment taking place on the site. The fairy-tale aesthetic, which the team use to promote the scheme, indicates an attempt to avoid any parallels between Holzmarkt and the previous Mediaspree plans for the same site (see figure 5.6). While the team present themselves as accidental urban pioneers and innovative actors whose mission it is to show politicians and city administrators what urban development can look like (with the language of Community used to prove this point), one must question to what extent this development does represent an experimental community that provides an ‘an alternative’ from the normative logic of the game.

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Figure 5.6 Board at the entrance of the Holzmarkt site, explaining its history “It was and is there again. Welcome to the Holzmarkt. A wonderland, full of stories, a space for people of all colours, a place for ideas and unicorns, dreams, fantasies and dogs without leash”, June 2018

Stefan Thiel, an employee responsible for the planning administration of the Mediaspree developments within SenStadt development suggests that only time can reveal the Holzmarkt agenda: “more socially orientated? More inclusive? Ask me that again in 10 years. You can only ever judge that in hindsight” (interview 05.07.2012). While the project initiators present themselves as promoting an ‘alternative scenario’ for waterside development and re-thinking the old Mediaspree paradigm, the way that Community is defined and packaged highlights that their vision may not be a radical substitute. The Holzmarkt development does disrupt the former plans for dense office structures, however the new plans still fit within a model of the competitive city, with Community defined as the new ‘creative’ residents and workers. The Holzmarkt team are winners in the game of urban regeneration – in the sense that they are formally integrated into urban planning. However, they have been criticised for not being genuinely Community-orientated and have therefore lost support from the wider network of activists, accused of selling out.

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Social and cultural capital are the defining factors in Holzmarkt currently winning the game. A crucial aspect in the group’s recognition as formal actors within urban development is its ability to frame its plans as self-help and beneficial to the city as a whole. Paula Wenzel explains that Holzmarkt framed the project so “we would be relieving the city from obligation. We want to support the city” (interview 03.07.2012). Her claim that Holzmarkt will “support the city” could be analysed as a general, banal, or off-hand remark. However, it can also be read as a sign of the convergence and complicity between ‘the city’ (Senate and Borough level) and Holzmarkt around neoliberal ideals – such as growth in the technology sector and the importance of attentive city branding and attracting knowledge workers from abroad. This analysis chimes with Hartmut Krause’s suggestion that Holzmarkt “are very clever because they have…given the city what it wants”. He qualifies this by citing that the Holzmarkt plans include the provision of student housing (which the Senate is keen on boosting) and will integrate space for start-ups, both of which the Borough of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg supports and provides funding for. Careful not to openly critique the project, he states: [The Mörchenpark concept] is totally hyped. Everyone thinks it’s great: a park where you can plant and grow your own carrots, and veg, and culture for kids and adults and so on. And I don’t want to criticise it, it’s just that the whole concept is surely an economically viable concept. They did everything right, if you want to see it like that! And I think that’s precisely their strength: they don’t really provoke (interview 10.12.2013).

The last point Krause makes is crucial. The Holzmarkt development plans “don’t provoke” because their language is in alignment with many of the current urban development agendas in Berlin. This skilled game playing is due to the rich cultural capital of the team. Paula Wenzel who has worked with the team since using Bar25 as a case study in her Masters thesis in Culture Management, illustrates how her educational capital, specifically her knowledge of Richard Florida’s creative class thesis and its relationship with city branding, is relevant to communicating the project in the ‘right’ language: It’s like Montesquieu’s philosophy of basic human rights. The French Revolution. I think Montesquieu and Jacques Rousseau were the philosophers of human

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rights. If that is the case, then Richard Florida is the Montesquieu of the creative economy. He wrote a book outlining the basic principles… I wrote my Culture Management master thesis about it, that’s why I know. I wrote about culture as [a] city marketing factor for Berlin. Personal creativity and the potential for creative work is much more important now than qualifications and experiences. Berlin is a place for research, the sciences, the knowledge economy, tourism and culture. This is exactly what creativity needs. In the Holzmarkt plan, we are picking up on all of these character traits of Berlin. It’s all thought through in a sustainable way (Paula Wenzel, interview 03.07.2012).

This kind of narrative has been crucial to the evolution of Holzmarkt in recent years. Having someone well-versed in the economic benefits of the ‘creative economy’ within new urban developments was key to the temporary and ‘alternative’ Bar25 professionalising and being taken seriously as contenders in Berlin’s development. The Holzmarkt team’s social capital is key. In the years leading up to the sale of the BSR plot, the Holzmarkt team became politically vocal. Karina Meyer highlights the power of lobbying as a strategy for getting a broad range of political support: The Holzmarkt team are here [at the Berlin Parliament] at every single assembly meeting, and they chat with everyone. They’re always emailing stuff. They have earned an A* when it comes to lobbying. Because they’re here all the time, they have even managed to get support amongst the Conservatives and the SPD [Social Democrats] (interview 28.06.2012).

This illustrates that the Holzmarkt team – a group of agents with the ‘right’ habitus, social and cultural capital – were able to frame their project in a way that speaks to current development paradigms and agendas. By constantly lobbying a broad range of parties with the right language, this group, which was losing in the game of urban regeneration, was able to convince not only financiers but also politicians of their vision. Habitus and capital therefore enabled a skilled framing of Community and Culture, in the way that neoliberal rules of the game prescribe. Comparing the development of Holzmarkt with other informal and illegal residential groups that existed next to Bar25 on the Mediaspree site, the priorities and political requirements for inclusion in Berlin’s urban development landscape become clear. One example is Schwarzer Kanal, a queer political and cultural community project and caravan allotment. The project was

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founded before the Bar25, but their lease ended in December 2009, and the group was evicted 20 years after its founding by the landowners Hoch Tief in March 2010: After years of discussion and fights about eviction or political solution now there was made a difficult decision: Wagonplace Schwarzer Kanal is moving and will leave the place of Michaelkirchstrasse and our neighbourhood in rage but also with new hope. Concerning gentrification, expulsion and media spree we are aware that we are defering. But we also hope that like this we can save the project with a view of a longer perspective… Over the last few years, our location in the Mediaspree development zone in central Berlin has put us in the firing line of an invasion of big companies, and the gentrification of Kreuzberg-Mitte (Liebig34 2010).

There are many factors that differentiate Schwarzer Kanal from the Holzmarkt group, but one of the most significant is the image of Schwarzer Kanal as a politically motivated group with anarchist tendencies. The point here is not to make a direct comparison but to highlight that the Holzmarkt group have, over the years, managed to produce an image of themselves and of their project that is politically safe, inclusive and in line with the image the city wants to present to the world: Berlin as the Creative Capital of Europe. Fundamentally, the skilful use of language hints at the different, and perhaps conflicting, priorities of the Holzmarkt developers. An employee of Stiftung Abendrot, the Swiss pension fund financing the Holzmarkt development, states, “There are more stupid ways to invest” (Dr. Hans-Ulrich Stauffer, TwentyFive Films Berlin 2013). This soundbite suggests that the ‘open’ perspective on Community that Holzmarkt claims it wants to stimulate is part of a strategic language that is being used – at least to a certain degree – to conceal the commercial exploitation of the Spree according to the classic Richard Florida formula. The image of an open, transparent and Community-orientated development, with ample public space and access to the “Riverbank for All” has more to do with language than content. Any hint of NIMBY politics or exclusion has been rhetorically swept away in order to present the potentials of DIY urbanism: a dynamic and healthy vision of Berlin’s future regeneration landscape. While this section showed how Community rhetoric intersects with DIY urbanism, the next section explores how the

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relationship between protest networks and urban regeneration is shaped by the language of Community.

P rotest N e t works : R e -I nventing the  L anguage of C ommunit y ? This section focuses specifically on the protest networks formed against London 2012 and Mediaspree development plans: the citizen initiative Mediaspree Versenken (Sink Mediaspree) and the Games Monitor website. In the spirit of 1989 revolutionary action, thousands of people protested against Mediaspree development plans in Berlin by staging their dissent in rubber dinghies on the River Spree. Direct democracy was then enacted through a citizen referendum in 2008. In London, protest against the 2012 Olympic event and associated urban developments was expressed on a smaller scale. User groups negatively impacted by London 2012 – including Manor Garden Allotments, Save the Marshes and Eastway Cycle Track – contested land-use alterations and displacement, but the groups remained largely committed to individual causes rather than united in a coalition.

Staging Protest in Berlin The citizen initiative Mediaspree Versenken positioned itself against the Mediaspree developments with the demand for ‘more neighbourhood’ (mehr Kiez). In 2008, with the motto ‘Spree Riverbank for Everyone’ (Spreeufer für Alle), the initiative launched a campaign to gather the 30,000 signatures needed to instigate a citizen referendum in the borough of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg. The initiative demanded that any future development along the river should fulfil three criteria: 1. No more high-rises to be built (high rise was defined as anything above the traditional Berlin eaves height of 22 metres). 2. A minimum 50-metre space to be left between the river and any new buildings, in order to create a publicly accessible river promenade. 3. No further car bridges to be built, only bridges for pedestrian and cycle use. Having collected over 30,000 signatures, the referendum took place in July 2008. It was an astounding success for its initiators, with 29,786 people (87%) voting to support the Mediaspree Versenken demands. The strategy of focusing protest on the

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single issue of staging a referendum while mobilising a wide breadth of Berlin ‘cultures’ – including left-activists, people involved in the techno music scene, and residents – proved successful. In a climate of victory, it was proclaimed that the Mediaspree development was now sunk, because public opinion seemed overwhelmingly against the outdated, office-focused construction plans. The successful referendum campaign and positive media attention that Mediaspree Versenken received at the time symbolised a renegotiation of the entire Mediaspree scheme. The consortium Regionalmanagement Mediaspree e.V. was disbanded, and since 2008 the term Mediaspree is more likely to bring to mind a battle cry rather than an urban development project. The immediate result of the 2008 referendum was catalysing discussions between representatives of Mediaspree Versenken, the borough of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, temporary users, investors and property-owners. In the months after the referendum, a series of regular roundtable debates (‘Sonderausschuss Spreeraum’) were organised by the Borough Assembly (Bezirksverordntenversammlung). The aim was to foster productive dialogue between the various groups, and translate and implement the referendum demands into concrete urban plans. However, in December 2009, after over a year of meetings, Mediaspree Versenken representatives formally withdrew from the discussions, stating that they were not leading to any ‘real’ participation. What became clear during this time was that the result of the referendum was not legally binding: the Senate and borough could take the 87% voters as guidance, but were not legally obliged to enforce the demands on investors. This highlights the messy realities of direct democracy and strategic political manoeuvring. More specifically, the changing role and perceptions of Mediaspree Versenken demonstrates the dynamics of the game and shifts between winning and losing. Before the referendum the initiatives were aligning with the logic of the game, using the language of Community to mobilise a coalition of left-activists, cultural producers, and ‘ordinary citizens’. In this phase, the language of Community and Culture were combined, speaking specifically to creative city policy agendas. However, given the initial success in playing the game, the protests against Mediaspree are now fragmented between those that play the game extremely well (Holzmarkt, as outlined above) and those who are increasingly rejecting the neoliberal rules. More recently, Mediaspree Versenken have been criticised for showing NIMBY tendencies and following an anarchist agenda,

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and consequently – despite their initial success – they are now losing the game. Social and cultural capital were pivotal in the skilful game playing demonstrated by Mediaspree Versenken. The Mediaspree Versenken protests were quickly linked to a discourse on the Right to the City, which had significant political leverage, and the skill in this rhetorical formulation highlights that protesters had the right habitus and capital to conceptualise this link between specific urban development issues in Berlin and a global political-philosophical movement. The explicit demand for public space along the Spree and framing of Community as inclusive provided the basis for a narrative that could counter the proposals for private office space as proposed by the Mediaspree scheme. By framing their demands in this way – around the communal benefit of rejecting corporate development – the initiative was able to mobilise a broad coalition. The motto Spreeufer For Everyone was a clear message that the protests against Mediaspree were for ‘the community’ of Berlin, defined as ‘everyone’ (a central theme of the protests since 2008, see figure 5.7). Tenant organisations and representatives of the techno scene were united by the anti-Mediaspree cause because each group had something to lose from the Mediaspree developments. This alliance between established left-wing activists, subcultural actors, marginalised actors and ‘creative’ milieus is significant (Dohnke 2013; Scharenberg and Bader 2009), and can be considered a new kind of protest movement (Novy and Colomb 2013). The demonstrations in July 2010, with the slogan ‘Save your City!’ (Rette seine Stadt!) best illustrate this point: over two thousand people protested against the unfulfilled demands of the referendum, which was seen by many as the only (and potentially last) chance to prove the power of direct democracy in the area.

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Figure 5.7 Demonstration against the Mediaspree development plans. In the foreground banner reads: “KIEZ STATT PROFITWAHN…MEDIASPREE VERSENKEN!” (Kiez instead of profit... Mediaspree Versenken!). In the background: “SPREEUFER FÜR ALLE!” (Spree Riverbank for everyone!), July 2013

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The inclusive nature of the Mediaspree Versenken protests fits the idea of ‘active citizenship’ as imagined by policy-makers. Initiators framed the referendum as a chance for citizens to be part of an all-encompassing protest community against top-down urban planning. They flagged up the inherent contradiction between the Senate’s agenda to enhance Berlin’s image as a creative city by promoting existing sub-cultures while simultaneously pursuing regeneration via property-led commercial developments – which threatened the existence of the sub-cultures being promoted. Consequently, the referendum demands were largely seen as providing a concrete alternative to Mediaspree rather than merely staging a reactionary or NIMBY protest against urban development. Mediaspree Versenken presented the Mediaspree plans as out-dated, going back to a time in the early 1990s when the optimistic prognosis was of massive economic boom. The plans for the privatisation and commercialisation of urban space along the Spree came during a time when it was presumed that huge amounts of office space (opposed to housing) would be needed in the future. The production of flyers before the referendum boosted the skilful conceptualisation of Community, specifically the notion that the Mediaspree developments would threaten the potential for communities to flourish along the river. The graphics on the flyers were an important component in representing the Mediaspree agenda as outdated. One of the first graphic renderings, which helped mobilise support, depicts the proposed Mediaspree development in red, emphasising the density and height of the buildings (see flyer, figure 5.8). The production of these images can be seen as a visual prompt, or even scare tactic, reminding the general public that the Mediaspree developments were not for the benefit of developing more Community for Berliners but rather functioning to satisfy the demands of investors and developers and a profit agenda. In addition to the visual cues in the flyers, the protests were themselves staged as colourful and loud events, communicating the idea of expressive citizenship, and capturing media attention.

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Figure 5.8 “Macht mit beim BürgerInnenbegehren: SPREEUFER FÜR ALLE!” (Participate in the Citizen Referendum: SPREE RIVERBANK FOR EVERYONE!). Mediaspree Versenken flyer used to instigate the July 2008 referendum. (Source: ms-versenken.org)

The initiative’s symbolic capital is exemplified in the support received by Sven Keller, former Mayor of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg (Green Party). With Keller’s support the protesters not only reinforced the link between the initiative and a wider political philosophy of the Right to the City, but also confirmed that the difficult outcome of the referendum raised questions about the underlying power dynamics of urban development. Sven Keller’s language demonstrates his ability to scale up the Mediaspree Versenken issues to a broader political agenda: I think the struggle around the so-called ‘Mediaspree’ is significant, it has such resonance even beyond Berlin, because it became clear that these conflicts also have a symbolic character. It ultimately concerns the questions: Who determines how the city develops? Who is actually in charge? Is it the owners who have the money, the capital, or is it politics? The administration, or is it the citizens, or the lobby groups? Who is it ultimately? One can, of course, simplify this to the question: Who does the city belong to? (Sven Keller interview 22.03.2012)

The construction of Mediaspree Versenken as a community of engaged citizens helped sharpen the image of two juxtaposing ideological communities in a fight over urban space. Despite reproducing a worn-out cliché

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of ‘good’ citizen versus ‘evil’ developer, media reporting typically pitched citizens against business interests, or, as the political magazine Der Spiegel framed it: ‘Developers and Dreamers Battle over Berlin Identity’ (Scheuermann 2008). This juxtaposition of ideologies was symbolised by two characters seen as leading the two respective communities. In 2008, architect and activist Carsten Joost was seen as heading the ‘protest community’ and businessman Stefan Sihler was seen to speak for the ‘investor community’. This cliché of citizen versus developer, fostered by the media, benefitted the protesters and played a significant role in Mediaspree Versenken gaining the majority in the citizen referendum. It was when the image of ‘the citizens’ as a cohesive group began to fragment that it became more difficult to sustain the image of a ‘communal’ fight. Since toppling their spokesperson Carsten Joost in March 2012, the initiative’s broad coalition is now fragmented and reduced to a small core of activists. As a result, the cultural capital that came from the ‘cultural producers’ within the coalition – crucial in creating a winning strategy for protest – is diminished. What is left of the protest against the regeneration of the Spree has now radicalised. The founder of the citizen initiative Stadt Neudenken (Rethink the City), reflected on this notion that Mediaspree Versenken now represents a more exclusive grouping and a more complicated relationship to notions of Community: “I think there are now only a few artists involved in Mediaspree Versenken, because it’s so politically left that it’s actually quite close to the autonomous scene… They are very, very left. Very anti-capitalist” (Johannes Seifert interview 09.05.2012). His suggestion that the initiative has radicalised is particularly relevant because Stadt Neudenken formed on the political ground of the citizen referendum in 2008. However, rather than voicing dissatisfaction at current urban development agendas via citizen protest, Stadt Neudenken members focus on lobbying for a more democratic urban policy (discussed in greater detail below). Seifert’s notion that the Mediaspree Versenken initiative has suffered under the splintering and increasing radicalisation of the group is supported by analysing the results of the citizen referendum. Gabriel Ahlfeldt (2011) found that what worried the referendum voters in 2008 more than rising rents and displacement was the disappearance of cultural institutions along the River Spree waterfront. This suggests that it was not necessarily the concern for the Right to the City that brought people to the polling station but rather a right to retain certain

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lifestyle choices that the residents see as part of the social landscape. This highlights an important point: without the cultural capital of the cultural producers (who were involved in protest in 2008, before the group splintered), the Mediaspree Versenken initiative has become associated with autonomous politics, generally perceived as confrontational rather than initiating productive critique. Bourdieu’s terminology helps us to explain that the splintering of the group after the referendum resulted in a loss of capital, which meant that the group were increasingly unable or unwilling to use the language of Community in line with the game and hence lost their political traction. The protest network Mediaspree Versenken had an effect on social and political change in Berlin. The question remains whether the initiative was merely a temporary constellation with short-lived success, or whether it had longer-term consequences. Critics point out that despite the success of the referendum, the politics of urban development in Berlin remain aggressively neoliberal. Karina Meyer, states: “right here [along the Spree] you can see the hardest form of capitalism you could possibly imagine… It’s still the same mentality as ten years ago. It’s about maximum profit, the entertainment sector and the media sector” (interview 28.06.2012). However, others point out that the citizen referendum was only introduced in 2006, and was therefore still a fairly new political instrument in 2008: when Mediaspree Versenken instigated the referendum it was in fact the first time this instrument of direct democracy had been used. The effect of the protest and referendum did change the language of the game, but only in a way that became clear in subsequent years. The referendum can be analysed as pushing not only Green Party politicians but also the conservative CDU party to support new ways of developing the city through participative processes. One example is the Berlin Senate’s acceptance that citizens had rejected their development plans for Tempelhof in the 2014 referendum (as discussed in chapter three), suggesting change within the political arena and more specifically taking the result of citizen referenda more seriously than in 2008. Hartmut Krause suggests that recent development projects in Berlin owe their success to the Mediaspree Versenken referendum: I don’t think projects like KaterHolzig, Spreefeld and similar could exist without the citizen referendum in 2008. Well, they wouldn’t have had it so easy. They wouldn’t have had the political tailwind, or produce as much headwind… I think that without

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the citizen referendum and without the protest, it would’ve been a lot more difficult for politicians to influence the plans in specific places; to rein-in specific projects. You’re in a better position for negotiation if you have the pressure of the street [protest] on your side. Because then you can say to the investor, we’re offering you something, but you also have to do something (interview 10.12.2013).

This suggests that the Mediaspree Versenken initiative, and more specifically the citizen referendum, animated the culture of public discussions around urban development in Berlin – and that these discussions about the neoliberal frame of the game have contributed to its logic shifting. The initiative not only called into question the value of corporate design and property-led development for the city’s residents but also developed a consciousness about the role of citizen participation within politics – questions that are now better integrated within contemporary political discourse. The fact that the Senate now distances itself from the label Mediaspree suggests at least a symbolic departure from the idea that the media industry can simultaneously fix any number of urban problems. The political traction of the initiative Stadt Neudenken can be seen as a consequence of the increased focus on urban development in Berlin, if not a direct product of the 2008 referendum. The role of capital and habitus is highly relevant in explaining the success of the initiative and why this particular initiative is now leading grassroots discussions on Berlin’s urban future. Stadt Neudenken has been successful in proposing new ways of dealing with the sale of publically-owned land (Liegenschaftspolitik). The initiative asks questions about which criteria are used for the bidding process, questioning the traditional process of selling land for maximum profit regardless of the development concept (design and use). Johannes Seifert is co-founder of the initiative and as a trained sociologist has the cultural capital to make sophisticated claims and critiques of the current political process. Seifert studied under the urban sociology professor Hartmut Häußerman and was funded by the Böll Stiftung (the educational arm of the Green Party); his language and confidence with urban theory makes him an appropriate candidate to make decisive political manoeuvres. Describing the success of Stadt Neudenken, politician Karina Meyer explains: “You need to hit the right nerve, and some do it better than others” (interview 28.06.2012). She explains that the combative nature and populist strategy of Mediaspree Versenken was impera-

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tive to their success in 2008, but suggests that this strategy is not suitable to the current development discourse. This claim chimes precisely with Bourdieu’s description of language and power. The ‘right nerve’ in this sense is speaking the right political language and appropriating the right strategy that suits the political climate. While the Mediaspree Versenken coalition hit the right nerve in 2008 with a colourful and loud staging of discontent via protest, the right nerve within the current development debates in Berlin seems to be strategic political lobbying. Stadt Neudenken’s advantage is their ability to tease out the finer details of state finances and to make clear the economic value of the state keeping creative institutions going in the long-term. The initiative framed this agenda by arguing that ‘the communities of the future’ are the most important investment opportunity for development now. Contemporary urban regeneration along Berlin’s Spree waterfront must be considered in the context of the 2008 protest and subsequent referendum. They are crucial in understanding development dynamics in wider Berlin – regardless of whether Mediaspree Versenken is classified as a ‘success’ in terms of putting urban development on Berlin’s political agenda, or as a ‘failure’ in terms of Meyer’s point that these tactics are not suitable for the current context. As the analysis reveals, the effects of the citizen referendum have had long-term implications for Berlin’s planning, which are evident in a widening of discourse on citizen participation (for example, the Tempelhof referendum in 2014) and the sale of state-owned property (catalysed by the Stadt Neudenken initiative). This demonstrates that the Mediaspree Versenken initiative was successful: it got all the actors in the field talking about the frame of regeneration; the logic of the game. Mediaspree Versenken reoriented the game to regard some aspects of neoliberal planning as a problem, necessitating debate and hopefully change. The initiative changed what the key agents in the game were debating and the language used but failed to shape the fundamental neoliberal nature of the game – a task that new agents such as Stadt Neudenken are approaching using different strategies. While protest was a highly mediated and dramatic process in Berlin, contestation of London 2012 took a rather different form.

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Networked Coalitions in London Games Monitor is a network of the most critical voices against Olympic-led developments in London. Having evolved from the group No London 2012, the network comprises of researchers, journalists and activists, and operates through the Games Monitor website. In their own words, Games Monitor functions simultaneously as a “discussion forum, research body, press and political lobby” with a focus on “debunking Olympics myths” (Games Monitor 2018). Since its founding in 2005, Games Monitor has produced over 75,000 words of analysis (Gibbons and Wolff 2012: 468) exploring the impact, financing and governance not only of the London 2012 Olympics, but also of other sporting mega events. Games Monitor is an interesting case study in relation to Mediaspree Versenken because both are networks that contest the normative urban regeneration narratives of large-scale development schemes. However, Games Monitor do not see themselves as a community, nor are they (or their content) bound to specific spatial parameters. The Games Monitor network is largely defined by knowledge production and sharing information as a means of protest. This focus has united contributors ever since London won the Olympic bid in July 2005, when it became clear that protesters could not prevent the London 2012 Games from taking place. The network links together key actors within Hackney Wick’s urban regeneration game (who appear earlier in this chapter). Temporarily the social world of businessman Freddy Lawson collides with that of former Clays Lane resident Clive Jones. Lawson’s high position in the game is acknowledged by Games Monitor and his networking expertise is drawn on by Clive Jones, who is a regular contributor to the website. The Games Monitor website functions as an outlet for voices critical of the Olympics in its wider sense, with site topics ranging from displacement, legacy, sustainability and planning. The website has one of the most comprehensive document archives on Olympic developments, including downloadable London 2012 documents, facts and figures based on Freedom of Information requests, and extended opinion pieces. The collection of documents and analysis aim to reveal the ideological underpinnings of the official London 2012 narrative and demystify the idea of ‘legacy’. The language used in all of the texts indicates that the network takes a rigorous analytical approach – for example, the subject of ‘urban regeneration’ is analysed as a process and discourse. The website

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homepage references both Marshall Berman and Pierre Bourdieu, setting the tone for a critical deconstruction of the Olympics with astute theoretical framing. Most articles focus on the unequal distribution of benefits to the winners of the regeneration game, or in Games Monitor’s own words: “We seek to deconstruct the ‘fantastic’ hype of Olympic boosterism and the eager complicity of the ‘urban elites’ in politics, business, the media, sport, academia and local institutional ‘community stakeholders’” (Games Monitor 2018). The reference to ‘deconstructing’ makes clear that this is investigative scientific research based on evidence that largely avoids populist claims. The website’s stance largely converges with critical urban theory, specifically in its analysis of London 2012 as a ‘neo-colonial’ megaproject disguised as a benevolent regeneration project. The social and cultural capital of Games Monitor spokesperson Clive Jones is crucial in presenting the network as an articulate and coherent group, despite the different factions represented within. Jones’ opinion is that Olympic development is a class war, but by admitting that he had an upper-class upbringing, he is open about the irony of the situation: “I’m a bit of an idiot in the sense that I [went] to public school but was sitting there [as a child] saying ‘public schools are bloody outrageous!’, arguing with my father at the back of the car, saying ‘all of these kids going to ordinary schools, they’re having a lousy time, and I’m privileged’” (interview 11.08.2011). While this interview excerpt might seem off-topic, it is particularly valuable in demonstrating Jones’ self-reflexivity and cultural capital, also relevant within the context of Olympic development being perceived as class warfare. Jones’ role within Games Monitor, which he himself indicates is a little surprising given his upbringing, contributes to the overall framing of Games Monitor’s critique. This is not to say that Games Monitor’s articulate critical voice is a product of Jones’ privileged background. Rather, through the lens of Bourdieu, unraveling the capital (resources) the group has at its disposal – such as Jones’ ability to articulate micro issues within a wider frame of social justice – is an important element in understanding the way the network represents itself and whether, and how, it wins or loses the game. The benefits of Jones’ social capital are revealed in a seemingly banal statement: “I got in touch with Freddy Lawson, one of the leading business people, and he put me in touch with a publicity agent who was trying to promote stories to the press” (as cited by Gibbons and Wolff 2012: 468). This statement reveals the valuable links between the

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various counter-Olympic narratives, and also, crucially, the importance of capital; in this case Jones knowing that Lawson would be the key to media partners and all-important press coverage. While Jones’ poor health prevents him from engaging with Games Monitor on a full-time basis, the enjoyment he gets from debating for the Clays Lane cause and compiling information for Games Monitor is a crucial factor in understanding how he has consistently managed to contest London 2012 development, despite it being “a very intimidating process” (as cited by Gibbons and Wolff 2012: 468). Jones’ interpretation of the Olympic process as “theatrics” indicates the value of his habitus and capital within the Games Monitor network: It’s about tactics. How do you deal with these people? In a sense it’s theatrics. I can cope with someone giving me a hard time, but what the hell, I might as well make an issue out of it! And you get to have more of an argument. And you try and squeeze concessions out of them, because that’s what it’s really about. You have very little room for manoeuvre (interview 11.08.2011).

Jones’ reading of Olympic development as merely part of the wider global Olympic game is crucial in building a strategy to counter official Olympic discourse, even if this does not constitute winning in a conventional sense. Games Monitor’s links with academia is part of Jones’ capital, crucial in the network’s dissemination of knowledge beyond the activist realm. The CITY journal interview with Games Monitor (quoted above) demonstrates the convergence between academic and activist research. In the interview Clive Jones suggests topics that could provide fruitful research agendas for CITY readers, stating that London 2012 is framed by “neoliberal planning rules” – indicating his ability to competently use academic discourse. A specific link between Games Monitor and the academic arena was the anti-Olympic reading group based at Birkbeck, which invited Clive Jones to speak. The reading group provided a space in which the boundaries between academic discourse and activism blurred, and in which Olympic discussion was approached from various perspectives. Alongside Games Monitor are various other initiatives in Hackney Wick that also contest the grand narrative of the Lea Valley as ‘wastelands’ and London 2012 as an exemplary case of urban regeneration. It is important to consider these interventions alongside the research-based work of Games Monitor as a means of better understanding the dynamics of the game and the way that the normative language of Community is

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mobilised, or deliberately not mobilised by players. The projects described here sit at the intersection between art and architecture, but all are political or dissenting practices that focus on collaboration and knowledge exchange as a means to disrupt normative development agendas and the path led by market forces. The Wick Curiosity Shop, established in 2007, is one node in Hackney Wick’s network of London 2012 critics. The Shop is a “small-scale archive and cultural space dedicated to the specific locality of Hackney Wick and Fish Island” (Wick Curiosity Shop 2012) and therefore has similar aims to Games Monitor, in wanting to extend knowledge and widen public imagination of the space and neighbourhoods around the Olympic site. The project now functions primarily via the website, through which visitors can browse the different ‘curiosities’. The website tells the unofficial ‘minor history’ of Hackney Wick through oral histories, memorabilia, songs and stories from, or about, Hackney Wick. Tim Newman, founder of R-Urban, the agency that conceptualised the Wick Curiosity Shop, states: The idea of the Wick Curiosity Shop was to look at [Hackney Wick] and the things that are special about it, but also the special things people can do, to bring out a form of cultural production that exists and might not be recognised, out into the open and perform it at the festival… In a way it’s a bit like a museum, but it’s also about a stage. We tried to bring all that Hackney Wick culture together, and the way we work is through a series of smaller events… And everything that is in the Shop, I think this is an important principle, are things that we have a personal relationship with. So we have done something together, it can even be quite small, or a bigger event. So it’s not about going and researching everything in Hackney Wick that might be included in an archive, but it’s a form of collaborating. And through that collaboration you establish a relationship and that relationship manifests itself in the [Wick] Curiosity Shop (interview 14.09.2011).

As Newman explains, the aim of the Wick Curiosity Shop is to act as “an agent for collaboration” – a platform for further cultural activity and a means of documenting change in the area with local residents. The point of the Wick Curiosity Shop is to avoid an overarching narrative of the area and to focus on the patchwork of local knowledge and working-class history that might otherwise be disregarded. The emphasis on the value of the small scale highlights an ambition to provide a counter to the grand narrative of London 2012. The projects on the website are largely, although

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not exclusively, framed around the topic of planning and protest, with reference to Olympic developments. More recently, R-Urban organised the Wick Sessions, which have brought specialist topics into the public realm, and provide a concrete example of efforts made to translate planning and development jargon into a digestible form for layperson consumption. These discussions are valuable in understanding the regeneration dynamics of Hackney Wick Fish Island. By talking about planning in an informal environment, the Wick Sessions largely broke the language boundaries that Bourdieu sees as crucial to maintaining knowledge and power. The momentum gained from the Wick Sessions catalysed the extension of the Hackney Wick Fish Island Conservation area, indicating the power of collective action on planning practice. The Affordable Wick Campaign conceived by architect Richard Brown is a project linked to both R-Urban and the Wick Curiosity Shop. Brown lives in Vittoria Wharf and is campaigning for a grassroots regeneration strategy. His ability to offer practical solutions to the displacement of selfmade live-work spaces has resulted not only in his MA project being published in abbreviated form by the locally produced Wick Newspaper but a further publication being funded by the LLDC. His lobbying to widen participation in the planning process received local attention because he parked his self-built cabin-on-wheels in front of the Neptune Wharf development site in Hackney Wick with the intention of presenting the construction scheme to residents and to facilitate comments as a form of planning consultation. The Affordable Wick Campaign and others networked via R-Urban are part of a discursive culture that is open to dialogue with politicians, Olympic planners and citizens. Brown’s practical approach to contesting Olympic-led developments has led to communication with the LLDC planning department, discussions with developers and ultimately some amendments to development plans. In his ‘fantasy’ project of creating a collective self-build structure on an industrial scale, to be located on the Olympic site, Brown uses the language of Richard Florida to cement his view that “artists and developers do have more in common than meets the eye” (Affordable Wick 2014). His reference to the ‘creative classes’ and emphasis on the commonality between artists and developers suggests he knows the neoliberal logic of the game and is playing to the rules. He insinuates that planners should take notice of artists, because they have valuable social and cultural capital, which may prove useful for

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developers. Vice-versa, developers have financial capital that could fund artistic projects or innovative DIY regeneration. Brown’s language aligns with normative planning paradigms, resulting in him winning, at least on a neighbourhood level, in terms of receiving funding and effecting change in development plans. While Brown seems to align with the normative planning language of Olympic authorities and could be accused of being co-opted by the LLDC, his ability to ‘hit the right nerve’ with a winning strategy within current urban regeneration discourse (similar to Stadt Neudenken) while calling into question the normative logic of the game indicates a significant contribution to challenging consensus and presenting a viable alternative. The production of images can be understood as a language of critique, which can be used to challenge the smooth space of consensus and neoliberal urban visions produced by Olympic authorities. One example has already been noted: Richard Brown’s plans for the Neptune Wharf development, displayed for a wider public to interrogate. While this is an obvious example of using image as a means of political leverage, other images have been produced that critique the logic of the urban regeneration game in a more subtle way, in which the line between art and activism is blurred. One example is Alessandra Chilá’s photograph Hackney Wick (2007) (see figure 5.9). This photograph can be analysed as a political act by showing Hackney Wick Fish Island as a working space of routine and banality. While this photograph and many other artistic practices have been produced broadly within the frame of art rather than direct political activism, they can be understood as critical art, which questions dominant hegemony and makes “visible what the dominant consensus tends to obscure and obliterate” (Mouffe 2007: 4). The production of such an image (also produced as a postcard) is a practice against celebratory accounts of top-down development, and is therefore broadly similar to the images produced by the initiative Mediaspree Versenken in its language of discontent and aim to communicate an alternative discourse for a particular space. Crucially, the images do not just tell specific stories, or relate to a specific agenda – in a wider sense, critical art practices also hint at the constructed nature of ‘regeneration’ and its associated concepts.

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Figure 5.9 Alessandra Chilá, Hackney Wick. Part of the ‘Olympian Visions 2007’ series

In some cases, artistic and architectural critiques of the normative logic and language of urban regeneration have captured the imagination of Olympic planners, notably Richard Brown’s work. However, as the discussion has outlined, many projects are artistic, temporal and mobile, or appear solely online, so their format makes them more elusive in the face of potential co-option by authorities. In this sense, they also disrupt the notion of ‘protest’ or contestation as a physical phenomena that is spatially bounded. The networks described here (including Games Monitor) are not winners in the game, if winning is defined as urban development being produced in their vision. However, the practices (projects, text and image) are framed as an alternative way of understanding urban regeneration, emphasising the value of small-scale urban interventions on a neighbourhood level. The interventions are micro-political acts – bottom-up productions of knowledge, which when taken together provide an alternative vision for urban ‘regeneration’ and crucially, a relational understanding of how a wider understanding of Community could be framed.

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The protests against the Mediaspree developments and the resistance against London 2012 seem to have little in common. The initiative Mediaspree Versenken initially mobilised around one concrete event: the right to stage a public referendum in 2008. Critics of London 2012 remained more fragmented, despite having the Games in 2012 as a common starting point. The political weight of the London 2012 Games, with no precedent to preventing the Olympics, gave Games Monitor a different playing field. However, on closer examination – and through the lens of Community – similarities emerge. Both case studies demonstrate that valuable social networks were created through resistance to development. In both London and Berlin, various social groups, some of whom were particularly unlikely collaborators, came together to produce an alternative picture of urban regeneration to that provided top-down by city authorities. While the protests against the Mediaspree developments fostered public debate and opened up critical political discourse, the legal structures and dynamics in the years following the successful referendum in 2008 reveal the power of the neoliberal logic of the game – a common theme in both London and Berlin. The discussion sheds light on unorthodox, messy and chaotic constructions of Community that cannot be confined to a particular space, and which are consequently excluded from urban policy. Analysis shows that while urban planning discourse and policy often frame protest and contestation as disruptive and counter-productive, this presumption can be turned on its head when considering neighbourhood dynamics. Considering Chantal Mouffe’s (2005) plea for agonistic pluralism, this section demonstrates that protest and counter-hegemonic discourses against urban regeneration provide a way of widening the concept of Community, which could be useful in the practical understanding of development processes and re-invention of Community within urban regeneration. In summary, this chapter shows how skill in manipulating the language of Community defines the parameters of winners and losers in the game of urban regeneration. However, the analysis shows that the game is flexible and groups with the ‘right’ resources, willing to concede to neoliberal logic, can change their position in the field. Two collectives practicing DIY urbanism – Stour Space in London and Holzmarkt in Berlin – did precisely this. While there are substantive differences in the agendas of the two groups and how they are perceived by other actors and within the political field, observing their game playing moves makes it

5 ‘Community’ in Urban Regeneration

clear that winning in the game requires the ‘right’ habitus and capital. It shows that individuals and groups with ample social and cultural capital, confident and competent in communication and political lobbying, are defined as productive communities and inscribed (or co-opted) within policy. Individuals and groups deemed unruly and a danger to political consensus are denied the official label ‘community’ and excluded from formal regeneration discourse, which can, as the case of Clays Lane shows, lead to a brutal exclusion from the game in the form of displacement. Protest networks, which have a more combative relationship with politics and are not easily exhibited or co-opted as ‘local community’, have a more ambiguous role within the game of urban regeneration. These networks are an important part of the game because they demonstrate that urban regeneration is not just produced at the level of national discourses, political agendas and economic growth agendas but also through local aspirations and at the scale of micro-practices. The analysis demonstrates that Mediaspree Versenken, Games Monitor and the networked interventions in Hackney Wick Fish Island inserted new words into the game. Mediaspree Versenken is an example of where the linguistic parameters themselves have changed as a direct result of protest. While the language of participation, Community and art has largely been appropriated by state agencies in both London and Berlin, each form of protest discussed here has contributed to disrupting a smooth neoliberal game, presenting an alternative. The next chapter draws together the discussion from the preceding chapters and indicates the (political and theoretical) importance of describing and interpreting these interventions.

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It has been noted that most critical analyses of neoliberalism arrive at the same, predictable conclusion, which boils down to: “neoliberalism is bad for poor and working people, therefore we must oppose it… [T]he rich are benefitting and the poor are getting screwed” (Ferguson 2009: 166). Indeed, these are what the conclusions in the previous two chapters point to; the “instruments of battle” symbolise a cycle whereby winners continue to win and the losers continue to lose. However, this conclusion can be taken one analytical step further. The previous chapters demonstrate that the policies and practices known as ‘neoliberalism’ are contested and reworked (Peck et al. 2013), indicating that the dichotomy of winning and losing is not always black and white. While the Bourdieusian framework sets the tone for an analysis of structural inequality and a somewhat predictable pattern in the reproduction of dominance (Butler 1999), Bourdieu also provides the tools for analysing field dynamics as fluid. Bourdieu’s interpretive frame allows us to analyse cracks in the system: new players can change the field subtly, people can reinvent themselves, and this movement means that there is space for change. The book therefore presents a nuanced picture of urban regeneration that not only interprets the dynamics of the (unjust) social world but also reaches “beyond the politics of denunciation” (Ferguson 2009: 169). Using Bourdieu’s field theory as a tool, the book reveals common patterns in London and Berlin to which urban research has not, so far, drawn attention. Despite significantly different historical contexts, political ideologies and fiscal climates, the (power) dynamics of urban development converge: in both Berlin and London the concepts Culture and Community are instrumentalised by all actors, in order to gain power (and

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ultimately win) in the game of urban regeneration. Substantive similarities – the findings – are the main focus of this concluding chapter. Chapters four and five delved into the social worlds of two neighbourhoods bordering large-scale regeneration schemes: Hackney Wick Fish Island and Rudolfkiez. Analysis shows that words (language) used within the game of urban regeneration, as in any other social game, are the products of the complex work of symbolic construction; words are used for strategic advantage. Concepts can be summoned to exist or vanish, extended or restricted through the act of representation (Pilario 2009: 98-99). Culture and Community are two central pillars within urban regeneration discourse. Consequently, the power relations of urban regeneration are revealed by documenting how the two concepts are instrumentalised, and who has a monopoly over ‘legitimate’ definitions. The power-centred, field-theoretic approach, as championed by Bourdieu, provides a corrective frame with which to challenge the view that urban regeneration is necessary ‘progress’ that benefits all. The reordering of urban space – commonly referred to as “urban regeneration” – is shown to be a complex interaction of everyday, mundane and discursive practices that contribute to creating new forms of exclusion. Urban regeneration can be understood as a war of words. Capital and habitus define whether individuals and groups feel resonance or repulsion with the logic of the game, and therefore define the parameters of inclusion or exclusion. The neoliberal logic of the game is crucial. Manoeuvring with definitions occurs within a context of neoliberal politics and consequently, having a “feel for the game” (Bourdieu 1994/2001) requires an understanding of neoliberal rationale, which on the neighbourhood level relates to catalysing local economies, supporting entrepreneurial activities and encouraging “active citizenship” and self-help. The intricate dynamics revealed in this book have a political relevance that extends beyond the case studies Hackney Wick Fish Island and Rudolfkiez.

The I nstruments of B at tle A key finding is that within the process of urban regeneration the concepts Culture and ‘community’ are instrumentalised to serve particular economic and political interests. The concepts are wielded in a battle of words whereby dominant definitions of Culture and Community consti-

6 Conclusion

tute what Bourdieu terms “symbolic violence” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992/2007). The important questions are: how exactly are Culture and ‘community’ wielded, who consequently wins and loses, and why this matters. The why question ultimately concerns the comparative analysis: How differently is the urban regeneration game played out in Berlin and London? The book offers a set of conclusions that link urban regeneration processes with neoliberal politics. It demonstrates that the game of urban regeneration in London is tightly organised, with relatively clear winners and losers. The long history of neoliberalism in the UK means that neoliberal ideology has seeped into the language and policies of urban regeneration. Neoliberalism has adopted a soft, insidious and unassuming Blairite-type form, which is all-encompassing. Consequently there is less capacity for resistance. In contrast, Berlin’s game is more open: while the dynamics of winners and losers is apparent, this is not an extreme game. This may not seem surprising, especially when considering the different national capitalisms of Germany and the UK; the divergent political, social and economic contexts. But the findings provide a more nuanced perspective. The game in Berlin is more open because the Berlin version of neoliberalism is more ambiguous. On the one hand, the game is more aggressively neoliberal than expected, evident in the crass, monolithic neoliberalism of the Mediaspree plans. On the other hand, the aggressive and thus overt neoliberalism creates more space for resistance. The empirical findings from which these conclusions are made are now outlined.

Culture: Moving Beyond the Commodification Thesis Winning definitions of Culture align with the creative city paradigm. The implication of following the creative city agenda is that normative understandings of Culture are framed around a growth theme in which commercial interests dominate: staging the neighbourhood for tourists and promoting selected existing alternative cultures in order to market a ‘place’. In London, Hackney Wick Fish Island has been reimagined by Olympic planners as a cultural hub, embodied by the White Building, a new cultural centre, café and pizzeria. This attractive canal-side renovation signals the transformation of the neighbourhood from a derelict industrial edge-land to a player within London’s vibrant culture industry. In Berlin, Rudolfkiez has similarly been conceptualised by politicians and planners as a neigh-

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bourhood that can be ‘saved’ or de-risked by the creative class, exemplified by the transformation of the former light bulb factory into Oberbaum City, an office complex primarily serving internet start-ups and media companies. While the dynamics in the two case studies do describe the classic equation of money following culture (and vice-versa), and therefore align with the ‘commodification of culture’ thesis, the empirical data takes this point one step further by inserting language as a decisive factor in the production of new hierarchies. The discussion in chapter four shows a twofold mechanism: either actors conform to the dominant definition of Culture (specifically the vision of urban development via the creative city paradigm), or risk being bludgeoned by it. In both the London and Berlin case studies some actors are highly successful at conforming to dominant definitions of Culture yet simultaneously manage to construct their own version of Culture’ within this frame, consequently reaping the benefits. These are the obvious winners of urban regeneration in their respective neighbourhoods. Freddy Lawson and Wolfgang Berg have different biographies, but their ability to competently construct a winning vision of ‘neighbourhood culture’ follows a similar trajectory: their habitus and capital is suited to the logic of the field. Both Lawson and Berg understand the neoliberal logic of the game of urban regeneration, which means they can, also, subvert (tweak or refine) the rules of the game from within. Lawson defines Culture around notions of industry, heritage and craft, as a means to legitimate and promote the future of his fish smoking business. His story of Hackney Wick Fish Island as a typical industrial East End enclave has become a central theme in the LLDC’s vision of the future of the area. Through a Bourdieusian lens, this is evidence of the conversion of political and educational capital into economic benefits. Similarly, Berg’s ability to construct a narrative of the middle-class history of Rudolf Quartier based on his own family history has cemented his vision of bourgeois Culture at the core of the neighbourhood’s future. As a successful film producer with experience in managing finances and people, he has set up a citizen initiative to restore the neighbourhood church and has driven a new image of the neighbourhood through oral history research and a publication. In both cases, the proficiency of these winners to establish their favoured identity of the neighbourhoods can be best illuminated in their (largely successful) attempts to name the areas: ‘Fish Island’ and ‘Quartier Rudolf-

6 Conclusion

platz’. However, importantly, these winning narratives are not the only constructions of Culture within the respective neighbourhoods. In London and Berlin there are actors whose constructions of Culture do not fit within the normative planning frame. These actors remain largely excluded from the process of urban regeneration. In Hackney Wick Fish Island, the elderly working-class residents of the Trowbridge Estate practice their marginalised Culture largely within the spatial parameters of their housing estate. These residents’ understanding and construction of neighbourhood Culture is largely based on the industrial factory base in which they (or their relatives) were previously employed: Lesney’s toy manufacturing and Clarnico’s confectionery factory. The Trowbridge Estate residents do not communicate their Culture to a wider public, but rather through personal recollections and narratives. One actor who has been active in promoting the working-class social history of the neighbourhood is Frederick Harris. His attempt to integrate the working-class narrative of Hackney Wick into the agenda of Olympic-led regeneration provides an interesting case, complicating the black and white dichotomy of winning and losing. Harris’ capital and habitus does not allow him to ‘game play’ as smoothly as Lawson, yet his skill in archival research and confidence in telling the story of Eton Manor Boys Club, has cemented his role as local historian. Through Harris’ initiative, the story of Hackney Wick Fish Island Culture – as told through the lens of working-class poverty, philanthropism and self-help – has been re-told in the Hackney Museum. But the fact that the story is retold in a museum context and on a ‘local’, borough scale rather than for the global stage indicates the place of this narrative in the historical past, remaining largely out of sight within the dominant frame of current LLDC regeneration. In Berlin, there are parallel dynamics at work. In Rudolfkiez the community centre members largely understand the neighbourhood history and Culture in terms of working-class employment and a specifically East German history. Despite some of these residents enacting their own piecemeal ‘regeneration’ of the area through actions such as tree-planting in the late 1990s and making improvements to the Rudolfplatz Square, they largely reject the neoliberal logic of the game, which diminishes their ability to fight for their vision effectively. Therefore, Culture as they imagine it remains marginalised. Why do these micro stories, which emphasise the multiplicity of Culture, matter? What can they tell us about the process of urban regener-

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ation? Chapter four shows that the Cultures promoted by Freddy Lawson and Wolfgang Berg largely coincide with creative city Culture as imagined by urban authorities. This indicates that representations of Culture that successfully promote the neighbourhood as attractive for visitors and investors are likely to become dominant and legitimated within regeneration policy. The White Building and Oberbaum City – presented as innovative redevelopments that signal the future of the two neighbourhoods – are the physical manifestations of desired Culture and the kind of neighbourhood Culture that will be promoted in the future. The fact that the kinds of Culture Lawson and Berg envision converge with the ideals behind these redevelopments, specifically the idea that the creative class is the solution to the ‘urban problem’, confirms that winning actors in the game of urban regeneration must conform to neoliberal logic. By showing that winning conceptualisations of Culture are contested, however, reveals the violent (symbolic) mechanisms behind their legitimation. This book demonstrates that Culture is part of a creative city strategy that compliments and enhances property-led regeneration rather than providing an alternative (Peck 2005; Jakob 2010). Consequently, rather than playing the role of democratising agent within urban regeneration, Culture should, as chapter four makes clear, be understood as a method of control (Zukin 1995), an instrument that can sharpen the boundaries between inclusion and exclusion. The interdependence between constructions of Culture and Community reinforces this point, as will be explained next.

Community: Space for New Constellations? Winning definitions of Community are those that equate Community with inwardly cohesive, place-based groups, and crucially, those that put the principle of self-help or ‘active citizenship’ into practice (discussed in chapter five). These dominant definitions of Community obscure the complexity of social relations, rendering antagonism and dissent as an obstacle to consensus. Chapter five highlights that the lack of imaginative space for understanding Community in a flexible and broader sense restricts the capacity for marginal social groups to be included within formal development schemes. Social groups or collectives that understand and define themselves as ‘communities of resistance’, or those that do not claim to be internally cohesive, do not fit within the normative frame of Community as defined by consensus.

6 Conclusion

Chapter five also shows the point at which definitions of Culture and Community collide, and why this is important for understanding the dynamics of the regeneration game. As indicated above, social groups that present themselves as ‘creative’ cultures are able to reap the benefits conferred by the creative city agenda. Consequently, the creative city agenda has opened the game, which was traditionally dominated by those with economic capital, to actors with social and cultural capital. However, there remains significant continuity: only actors and groups with some form of suitable capital can gain access to the game. Groups that push the boundaries of how normative Community is understood, and foster unlikely collaborations or share knowledge in innovative ways, are typically still denied formal legitimation as a Community. This discursive act is not only symbolic violence in a theoretical sense but carries real consequences visible within spaces of urban regeneration. Nevertheless, there is a chance for unconventional forms of Community to be accepted and supported within formal regeneration schemes, but only if the unorthodoxy does not clash with the growth-orientated model of development. Stour Space in London and Holzmarkt e.V. in Berlin are two collectives that can be described as practicing unconventional, bottom-up urban development, specifically so-called Do-It-Yourself (DIY) urbanism. These two groups can be described as marginal actors within formal regeneration schemes. However, both groups have to a large extent managed, through their social and cultural capital, to integrate and implement their vision of ‘making’ the city within formal urban development. The actors driving the Stour Space and Holzmarkt projects, despite certain aspects of precariousness, have professionalised and competently framed Community in a way that speaks to their respective cities’ (neoliberal) political and economic goals. The analysis in chapter five shows that this is because these two DIY collectives are seen as practicing self-help and aiding the creative city agenda rather than hindering it. Therefore, although the look and feel of these bottom-up development projects distinguishes them from formal regeneration schemes, they largely converge in their alignment with neoliberal ideals of urban entrepreneurship and economic growth. Consequently, chapter five shows that both in Berlin and London the framing of urban regeneration through the creative city paradigm has opened a space for ‘innovative’ bottom-up projects such as Stour Space and Holzmarkt to be politically endorsed and financially supported. However,

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herein Bourdieu’s framing becomes crucial: only those individuals and groups willing to shape their ‘alternative’ (perhaps even autonomous) ideals within the structure of neoliberalism, twisting their understanding of Community to fit within a profit-orientated model, are eligible to win in the game. Put simply, marginal but ‘entrepreneurial’ groups are co-opted within larger, formal regeneration schemes. This means that while those framing themselves as ‘creative’ communities have a chance at playing the game, those who are deemed ‘uncreative’ or against an ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ remain excluded. In London, members of the Clays Lane cooperative housing estate became losers of the game, bludgeoned by narrow, top-down definitions of Community and consequently, physically displaced by London 2012 development. As described in chapter five, this group of social actors could not (due to lack of social capital), or were consciously not willing, to present themselves as an internally cohesive and outwardly open Community. Clive Jones and George Yates’ descriptions of the estate from the residents’ perspective do not wholly clash with those found in formal reports, specifically the notion that physically it was not an inviting place, and that tensions between residents were common. However, it is precisely the fragility of the social relations, largely based on mutual support between socially marginalised individuals that were the essence of Community life on the estate. Nevertheless, dominant definitions of Community in this case were used to delegitimise the group and frame the individuals as inactive, inadequate and failing in their capacity to constitute cohesive relations similar to traditional Community as imagined by 19th century theorists. Parallel dynamics can be noted in Berlin. Various groups (such as Schwarzer Kanal) that claimed their space along the River Spree in the 1990s around the same time as Bar25 are now being systematically displaced in order to make space for investor-led regeneration. While this process of redevelopment in itself illustrates the politics of neoliberalism at work, what is perhaps more interesting is the way that Bar25 managed to change their fortunes from losing to winning: Bar25 did not necessarily change their aims and objectives, but consciously activated their social capital and re-framed their concept of Community from being inverted to being open and inclusive. What this transformation confirms is the centrality of capital and habitus in shaping entry to the game. Using the example of protest networks, chapter five asks whether citizen resistance can be conceptualised as making new Community rather than

6 Conclusion

necessarily damaging or hindering ‘community’ building. The discussion highlights that urban regeneration discourse would benefit from talking about ‘communities’ of dissent (plural), which could include networks of artistic counter-narratives or acts of collective protest against regeneration schemes. In London, protest against London 2012 was neither cohesive nor focused on one central ‘problem’. However, the multitude of smallscale interventions in protest against London 2012, driven by artistic and political motivations, can be conceptualised as producing knowledge in innovative ways and forming coalitions between diverse social actors. Similarly in Berlin, the protest platform Mediaspree Versenken highlights the value in thinking about Community in a broader sense than urban policy allows, specifically because a wider frame allows urban regeneration to be understood as a process that is produced not just by policy but also in and through practices of dissent. The discussion in chapter five, mapping constructions of Community, reveals urban regeneration as a mechanism that enacts systematic symbolic violence against those without the right capital. This exclusionary mechanism is often obscured by language such as ‘localism’, which suggests a new democratic phase in the history of urban development. In London and Berlin similar patterns emerge: the way in which Community is wielded in order to weaken the already weak does not represent an opening in the structure; rather, it proves that established structures of hierarchy are still functioning. There is no ‘new space’ for new constellations of Community – unless the constellations are willing to bend, stretch and manoeuvre within the rigid frame of the game rules structured by neoliberal political goals.

C oncluding R emarks There are glimmers of “progressive possibilities” (Ferguson 2009: 169) and “spaces of hope” (Harvey 2000) within grassroots developments and small-scale city-making. This book intends to give discursive room to these opportunity spaces. While it is difficult to find examples of ‘winning’, whereby actors do not become co-opted, there are glimpses. The initiative Mediaspree Versenken and the network Games Monitor represent these traces of hope; examples of urban development politics where another path could have been taken. These different forms of protest have achieved

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debate and discussion, bringing to the fore the repressive character of the urban regeneration game and challenging existing consensus. In London, Games Monitor continues to present a counter-hegemonic discourse critical of Olympic-led developments, and in Berlin, the Mediaspree protests have made space for development projects that do not follow a strict logic of profit (such as the Spreefeld cooperative). While these two protest networks have not fundamentally changed the logic of the neoliberal rules, it is important to value their agonistic force, which aims to disrupt the smooth space of neoliberal capitalism (Mouffe 2007) – as struggle and conflict are the way that fields can be altered. Put simply, the logic underscoring the game of urban regeneration can only be changed with continued provocations by grassroots activism, which make visible dominant consensus and simultaneously present alternative paths. Depending on how these actors negotiate the field, these disruptions can form a decisive part of how urban regeneration is lived.

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