TY - THES A1 - Motalebi, Mahgol T1 - Immigrant's Home in the Making through Spatial Practice; The Case of Iranians in Berlin N2 - Due to the significant number of immigrants in Europe, especially Germany, integration is an ongoing subject of debate. Since the 1970s, with the emergence of the discussions on ‘place,’ it has also been realized that the immigrant experience is associated with location. Nevertheless, due to the challenges in capturing the place and migration relevance, there is a gap in understanding the role of the migrant’s geography of experiences and its outcomes (Phillips & Robinson, 2015). This research aims to investigate the extent to which both the process of objective integration and the socio-spatial practices of high-skilled Iranian immigrants in Berlin outline and influence their sense of belonging to Berlin as the new “home.” The embedded mixed-method design had employed for this study. The quantitative analysis through Pearson’s correlation technique measured the strength of the association between Iranians’ settlement distribution and the characteristics of Berlins’ districts. The quantitative analysis provides contextual data to get a greater level of understanding of the case study’s interaction with place. The units of place intend to demonstrate the case study’s presence and possible interaction with places around their settlement location that relatively shapes their perception. The qualitative analysis comprises ethnographic fieldwork and semi-structured in-depth interviews with a homogeneous sample of Iranian immigrants in Berlin that provide data on individual and ethnic behaviors and trajectories and analyze the complex interactions between the immigrant’s experience and the role of place. This research uncovers that Iranian highly skilled immigrants are successful in integrating objectively; However, in regards to their state of belonging, it illustrated the following: The role of socio-ethnic culture of the case study in denotation of home and belonging; Iranian high-skilled immigrants’ efforts towards reaching a level of upward mobility overshadow their attempt to shape social and spatial interaction with Berliners and Berlin itself, which manifests both in their perception and use of urban space; and finally, the identification practice and the boundary-making as an act of reassurance and self-protection against the generalization of adjacent nationalities, demonstrated in the intersection of demographical settlement distribution of Iranians in Berlin and the ethnic diversity, impact the sense of belonging and place-making. KW - Migration KW - Soziale Integration KW - Stadtsoziologie KW - Iranierin KW - Iraner KW - belonging KW - integration KW - Berlin KW - Iranian immigrants KW - Migration KW - Berlin Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:gbv:wim2-20230925-64266 ER - TY - THES A1 - Baron, Nicole T1 - Natural Urban Resilience: Understanding general urban resilience through Addis Ababa’s inner city N2 - This dissertation describes the urban actors and spatial practices that contribute to natural urban resilience in Addis Ababa’s inner city. Natural urban resilience is a non-strategical and bottom-up, everyday form of general urban resilience – an urban system’s ability to maintain its essential characteristics under any change. This study gains significance by exposing conceptual gaps in the current un-derstanding of general urban resilience and highlighting its unconvincing applicability to African cities. This study attains further relevance by highlighting the danger of the ongoing large-scale redevelopment of the inner city. The inner city has naturally formed, and its urban memory, spaces, and social cohesion contribute to its primarily low-income population’s resilience. This thesis argues that the inner city’s demolition poses an incalculable risk of maladaptation to future stresses and shocks for Addis Ababa. The city needs a balanced urban discourse that highlights the inner city’s qualities and suggests feasible urban transformation measures. “Natural Urban Resilience” contributes an empirical study to the debate by identifying those aspects of the inner city that contribute to general resilience and identifies feasible action areas. This study develops a qualitative research design for a single case study in Addis Ababa. The data is obtained through expert interviews, interviews with resi-dents, and the analysis of street scene photos, which are abstracted using Grounded Theory. That way, this thesis provides first-time knowledge about who and what generates urban resilience in the inner city of Addis Ababa and how. Furthermore, the study complements existing theories on general urban resilience. It provides a detailed understanding of the change mechanisms in resilience, of which it identifies four: adaptation, upgrading, mitigation, and resistance. It also adapts the adaptive cycle, a widely used concept in resilience thinking, conceptually for urban environments. The study concludes that the inner city’s continued redevelopment poses an incalculable threat to the entire city. Therefore, “Natural urban resilience” recommends carefully weighing any intervention in the inner city to promote Addis Ababa’s overall resilience. This dissertation proposes a pattern language for natural urban resilience to support these efforts and to translate the model of natural urban resilience into practice. KW - Stadtforschung KW - Urbanistik KW - Stadtsoziologie KW - Urban studies KW - Urban resilience KW - Built environment KW - Co-production KW - Grounded theory Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:gbv:wim2-20210428-44166 ER - TY - THES A1 - Che, Fei T1 - The Socio-spatial transition of Beijing, in between communal space and associative space N2 - Abstract In this research, based on socio-spatiality as the starting point, it has conducted extensive city space analysis to advance a new urban social space theory. Resting upon the basis of traditional continent philosophy, this social space theory has adopted the structuration methods, at the same time trying to build certain combination between theoretical frame work establishment and empirical observations. Therefore, the socio-spatial transition study is neither a macro theory of traditional structuralism nor a typology of urban planning theory, or a positivism social geography, but an operative theory on practical purpose. Firstly, what’s distinct from the traditional structuralism is that this study examines the endless transiting structural relations, not macroscopic narrations of absolute definition and structure. In fact, any city and space are always co-existed in their structurational transiting relationship, thus research in transition has become the main body of this study. And case study is a must for research in transition, as part of efforts to apply the structuration concept into practice reason. Secondly, this study first establishes the fundamental structuration concept of socio-spatial transition, which, as an operative tool, is applied to conduct transition analysis on specific case about the City of Beijing. Therefore, as a social space theory, referring to as science, remains criticism of traditional continent philosophy. However, this criticism did not working on the level of ideology or conceptions, but on transiting under structural relations, keeping it from incompetent ideology criticism of continental critical theory. Unfortunately contemporary urban and space development have now gone extremely unbalanced under a background of globalization; yet traditional macro theories are incapable of either producing significant impact on practice or helping people identify practical problems. While facing general issues, particularly the Chinese urban issue category established on a meta-structured city mode, the micro-case study has plunged into dilemma for unknowing either to ask questions or to answer questions. Therefore, this study is set to identify dilemma and find direction for future relevant research. In this dissertation, Beijing is used as a model, and structuration methods as tools. It has extensively analyzed the social-spatial transition of the city space of Beijing, acquiring brand-new knowledge of its urban space development. It is helpful to an in-depth understanding of the city space development not only in Beijing, but also in many other cities that were influenced by the capital model of Beijing. Since the start of reform and opening-up, China has created a unique development mode of the new-styled metropolitan and urbanization in history. This research is expected to analyze or decode what China’s urban development in between communal space and associative space. KW - Stadtsoziologie KW - Socio-spatiality KW - transition KW - communal space KW - associative space Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:gbv:wim2-20150721-24368 ER -