@article{SanderWeissermel, author = {Sander, Hendrik and Weißermel, S{\"o}ren}, title = {Urban Heat Transition in Berlin: Corporate Strategies, Political Conflicts, and Just Solutions}, series = {Urban Planning}, volume = {2023}, journal = {Urban Planning}, number = {Volume 8, No 1}, publisher = {Cogitatio Press}, address = {Lissabon}, doi = {10.17645/up.v8i1.6178}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:gbv:wim2-20230524-63845}, pages = {361 -- 371}, abstract = {In the field of urban climate policy, heat production and demand are key sectors for achieving a sustainable city. Heat production has to shift from fossil to renewable energies, and the heat demand of most buildings has to be reduced significantly via building retrofits. However, analyses of heat transition still lack its contextualization within entangled urban politico-economic processes and materialities and require critical socio-theoretical examination. Asking about the embeddedness of heat transition within social relations and its implications for social justice issues, this article discusses the challenges and opportunities of heat transition, taking Berlin as an example. It uses an urban political ecology perspective to analyze the materialities of Berlin's heating-housing nexus, its politico-economic context, implications for relations of inequality and power, and its contested strategies. The empirical analysis identifies major disputes about the future trajectory of heat production and about the distribution of retrofit costs. Using our conceptual approach, we discuss these empirical findings against the idea of a more just heat transition. For this purpose, we discuss three policy proposals regarding cost distribution, urban heat planning, and remunicipalization of heat utilities. We argue that this conceptual approach provides huge benefits for debates around heat transition and, more generally, energy justice and just transitions.}, subject = {Berlin}, language = {en} } @misc{MendoncadeAlmeida, type = {Master Thesis}, author = {Mendon{\c{c}}a de Almeida, Karina}, title = {Why isn't Google welcome in Kreuzberg? Social movement and the effects of Internet on urban space}, doi = {10.25643/bauhaus-universitaet.4244}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:gbv:wim2-20200924-42446}, school = {Bauhaus-Universit{\"a}t Weimar}, pages = {132}, abstract = {Advances in information and communication technologies such as the Internet have driven a great transformation in the interactions between individuals and the urban environment. As the use of the Internet in cities becomes more intense and diverse, there is also a restructuring of urban space, which is experienced by groups in society in various ways, according to the specificity of each context. Accordingly, large Internet companies have emerged as new players in the processes of urbanization, either through partnerships with the public administration or through various services offered directly to urban residents. Once these corporations are key actors in the digitalization of urban services, their operations can affect the patterns of urban inequality and generate a series of new struggles over the production of space. Interested in analyzing this phenomena from the perspective of civil society, the present Master Thesis examined a social movement that prevented Google to settle a new startup campus in the district of Kreuzberg, in Berlin. By asking why Google was not welcome in that context, this study also sought to understand how internet, as well as its main operators, has affected everyday life in the city. Thus, besides analyzing the movement, I investigated the particularities of the urban context where it arose and the elements that distinguish the mobilization's opponent. In pursuit of an interdisciplinary approach, I analyzed and discussed the results of empirical research in dialogue with critical theories in the fields of urban studies and the Internet, with emphasis on Castells' definitions of urban social movements and network society (1983, 2009, 2015), Couldry's and Mejias' (2019) idea of data colonialism, Lef{\`e}bvre's (1991, 1996) concepts of abstract space and the right to the city, as well as Zuboff's (2019) theory of surveillance capitalism. The case at hand has exposed that Google plays a prominent role in the way the Internet has been developed and deployed in cities. From the perspective accessed, the current appropriation of Internet technologies has been detrimental to individual autonomy and has contributed to intensifying existing inequalities in the city. The alternative vision to this relies mainly on the promotion of decentralized solidarity networks.}, subject = {Soziale Bewegung}, language = {en} }