Erdkunde: Archive for scientific geography (Vol. 62, No. 4)

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Description

There is today clear evidence of the increasing heterogeneity and fragmentation of urban life styles. Although it is now more than two decades since “new urbanity” first surfaced as a subject of discussion (cf. Häussermann and Siebel 1987), it has more recently once again been at the focus of interest, not least in connection with the debate on tendencies towards “reurbanisation”. This explains why the Stadt- und Regionalwissenschaft liches Forschungsnetzwerk Ruhr (SURF – a research network for urban and regional sciences in the Ruhr Area) proposed a session dedcated to this topic at the 2007 Congress of German Geographers in Bayreuth.) The papers which were presented there are to be found in this number in revised form.

In the context of restructuring metropolitan regions, three general issues are of particular importance. The congress session and the papers assembled here, attempt to provide answers to the questions these raise:

• What new forms of urbanity are appearing in the context of the economic and societal changes currently taking place in metropolitan areas? What spatial impacts do they unleash? The keywords associated with these questions include: demographic change, diversification of life styles, the relocalisation of life styles and patterns of daily life, new forms of civil-society urbanity, the significance of urbanity within the knowledge economy, new urbanity as a locational factor in the competition between metropolitan regions, new types of segregation and fragmentation.
• What constructs and concepts of urbanity underlie the plans and actions of public- and private-sector actors? What challenges facing society and the economy are these concepts intended to respond to? The keywords associated with these questions include: concepts of multifunctionality on different scales, of polycentricity and recentralisation, the cluster patterns associated with new urbanity in the network city, the “creative city” and the “convenient city”.
• To what extent is this giving rise to a strategic construct of new urbanity, to the production of new urban spaces in the context of urban renewal and the reshaping of cities by private- and public-sector actors? What constellations of actors are emerging? What options are available here to public-sector actors to exert control or guidance? The keywords associated with these questions include: the economisation of urban-development policy, the economic instrumentalisation of art and culture, new approaches to planning, and strategic approaches under the watchword of planning through negotiation, publice-private partnerships, the new urban deal.